"I love that you've brought this to attention. An extensive database of uncommon but resistant and hardy plants/foods could be developed and organized by climate. Ease of growth and processing should also be taken in to account. I will try to…"
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LEARN2: Food security in my local area - Newtown
Food security in my local area : Newtown, Australia
I am one of the lucky ones: I live in Australia, a country rated second in the world on the Human Development Index (after Norway), and I live in an inner city suburb of Sydney called Newtown, where most people have a good standard of living and high food security.
However, despite our relative quality of life compared to the rest of the world, even in Australia approximately 1 in 10 people lives in poverty. Poverty_Factsheet.pdf
In Newtown we do have some residents who live below the poverty line, or are homeless, and also border two localities with greater poverty issues. In my own suburb on any given day there will be one or two people begging on the main street, someone selling The Big Issue (a magazine where half the cover price goes to a homesless person), a homeless man with mental health issues who hovers around, we have areas of public housing, elderly pensioners whose income hasn't kept up with the rising cost of living, and being close to a university there are many students living below the poverty index, some who 'skip dive' for food thrown out by restuarants.
In bordering council Marrickville, almost one quarter of residents struggle to make ends meet on low incomes.
In bordering suburb Redfern there is a high rate of poverty, particularly amongst sections of the indigenous community who have an average life expectancy a good twenty years less than the national average. x
Strategies currently in place:
- Good Start Breakfast program in primary schools, so children from underprivilaged homes get a solid breakfast each school morning. The school my daughter goes to also has sandwiches and fruit for children who don't bring their own lunch (in Australia, it is expected as 'norm' for children to take a packed lunch, so this is in place for those who can't).
- A number of charities provide either breakfast, lunch or dinner free on various days. However, to get meals every day a person would have to move around from suburb to suburb.
- Several small community gardens: inner-urban-community-gardens; marrickville community gardens
- Workshops to show people how to start a garden at home - particularly using small space carriageworks-kitchen-garden-workshop-expo
How to improve this?
While the community gardens and workshops are great, the participants are the people who already have good food security, rather than those who need it the most.
Living in an inner city area, most people are really limited for space, often with no backyard, and many people rent rather than own (not able to plant a garden because they don't own it and don't see much point when they might be moving on in six months).
Trying to move another step further - it would be great if landlords were given an incentive by the local council to establish vertical garden walls in their properties (e.g. at cost equipment that is tax deductible). Tenants would be required to attend a 2 hour workshop that teaches them the basics of maintaining their garden. The tenants then get to consume the food so long as they maintain the plants and seed new ones according to an easy to follow schedule.
I would also like to see edible plants be used in public space landscaping. Along the main road there are planter boxes that are changed seasonally, and while once they had chilli plants, mostly they have flowers or leafy plants rather than something edible. I also always feel like they waste these plants - when the season changes a truck comes and collects the plants for mulching. If they properly notified residents, we could collect the plants for our own homes. If they were edible plants, they could be used to feed the poor.
There are many small parks in my suburb, but none with anything edible. This is in part because they want to minimise maintenace, so they plant hardy native plants that don't need watering. However, why not plant a heap of "bush tucker"(native edible plants) - particularly in Redfern which has an indigenous community - and educate residents on how to use these native foods.
Unfortunately in the poverty cycle you sometimes find people who don't ever eat fresh fruit and vegetables, only processed foods, so it's not enough to just make these foods available. To have uptake of homegrown or community grown food, there needs to be an education campaign about how to cook and prepare simple meals from these base ingredients. Workshops that are well promoted and run in conjunction with community leaders are likely to get a good response. Creating a weekly cooking group out of a community centre can give people a reason to keep learning and implementing their new skills.
The issue of providing sustainable meat and dairy locally is a harder one. Animals require a lot more maintenance, room, and create hygiene issues. There is a large pond nearby that could perhaps be stocked with Yabbies or edible fish open to the public.
The other part about solving food security is of course to increase education, job opportunities, and provide better mental health facilities so that people can rise above the poverty line. These are all bigger issues that are hard to tackle locally.
One recent development in Redfern that is a huge step forward is the establishment of the National Centre of Indigenous Excellence (NCIE) which is cultivating talent and creating opportunities to develop brighter futures for young Indigenous people in the areas of sport, art, education and culture. It has fantastic facilities that are open to the community, including a health and fitness centre/gym for the wh*** family (including children), dance cla****, swimming pool, computers, accommodation, school, etc. This is a big step forward for this community.
[Edit - I have emailed my council alerting them to these suggestions with a link to Evoke, as I think many ideas people are suggesting, even for the third world, can be implemented in first world countries to great effect]
Views: 24
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Comment by Ayala Sherbow on March 11, 2010 at 6:22pm
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What an excellent, informative post! Good research and you provided some great ideas!
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Comment by Rahul Dewanjee on March 14, 2010 at 11:20pm
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Hi Luci. Absolutely excellent post. I really liked the section 'How to improve this'.
When I was in uni at UWS, I've participated in selling farm produce organised by UWS horticulture division in nearby Richmond (NSW) area in collaboration with our Hawkesbury campus kitchen (the kitchen would dish out cooked meals from fresh produce grown through sustainable practices in the uni annex area).
We were trying to understand how we could involve disadvantaged children (and usually homeless ones) to feel a sense of mission to take life positively. Something that Reciprocity Foundation in US does in a grand scale. I reckon there are some similarities to what you've suggested above.
Great post and very insightful indeed. Cheers!
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Comment by Mita Williams on March 15, 2010 at 7:14pm
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Great initiative to forward your work to your local representatives! +25 Spark!
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