[Pil-pc-oceania] Unofficial report - national community gardens, food security conference

[pacific-edge]

MARCH IN MELBOURNE is a meteorologically confused time. One day, it's hot
and sticky - T-shirt weather. The next, it's cold and windy - jackets are
the order of the day. Then the rain comes, not in any great downpour but in
sporadic showers, for this is a city in drought.

There's some indefinable quality about this southern metropolis that makes
it a more... how do I put it?... a more humane city than its bigger, brasher
cousin to the north. It's easier to move around, a property enhanced by the
frequent tram service, and the long, long main roads take you on long
journeys through the suburbs. Unlike Sydney, Melbourne is not a a fractured
entity broken by harbours, ridges and valleys.

Melbourne is also the city that, late in March this year, hosted the
Australian City Farms & Community Gardens Network (ACFCGN) national
conference. This was the fourth such event, but the others - first at
Bendigo, then the Sunshine Coast and then Adelaide - were more internally
focused. The Melbourne ACFCGN crew - in the guise of Cultivating Community
and other supporters - thought that something more ambitious was in order.
And they delivered.


THE CONFERENCE - AMBITIOUS, WELL ATTENDED, SUCCESSFUL, INSPIRING
People came from all states - and, yes, that includes those well away from
the eastern seaboard - WA, Tasmania and the Northern Territory. There were
two from Christchurch, though I do not list them as coming from other states
because New Zealanders get a bit touchy about that. Those two came from the
community garden milieu in that pleasant, flat, windy and sometimes freezing
city.

The Victorian Minister for Housing opened the conference which was held in
the somewhat ornate but faded Victorian (the period of history, not the
state) opulence of Collingwood Town Hall. There, a changing audience
numbering in the hundreds gathered to listed to speakers such as David
Holmgren, co-founder of the Permaculture design system; international
relocalisation and local food advocate, Helena Norberg-Hodge; gardener and
author, Jackie French; ABC television's gardener, Jerry Coleby-Williams;
Indian campaigner and author, Vendana Shiva; the UK Federation of City
Farm's Mike Marston; gardener and author, Jackie French and others.

Given that the themes of the different days - school gardens and education,
community gardening, seed saving (I was the Seed Savers' Network's annual
conference) and food security - attracted the same core of attendees but a
differing peripheral audience, the number of attendees may have been higher
in total than that of the best-attended day.


NEW BOOK
Permaculture educator, Ian Lillington, launched his new book - 'The Holistic
Life - Sustainability Through Permaculture' - at the conference.

A review of the book will appear in the near future, however the volume is a
welcome addition to the design system's library of titles. Ian speaks of how
and why he became involved in the design system and how he used its
principles to design and build his earth construction house at Willunga,
South Australia.

Ian and family now live in Victoria and he is involved in training in the
accredited Permaculture training courses.


SPEAKERS INFORM, INFLUENCE AND INSPIRE
David Holmgren delivered a speech more focused and action-oriented than his
Sydney peak oil address with Richard Heinberg. The impression was that he
has had time to polish and refine his message of 'Earth Stewardship'.

He spoke of a " ...design system coming from Permaculture to look at food
security in this world of less energy". Permaculture remains relevant, he
said, because "it is about people and food, about connection with nature,
tools and community".

David's mention of 'tools' struck me as interesting. It reminded me of
Stewart Brand and Harold Rheingold's 'Whole Earth Catalog' of the 1970s,
which focused on access to tools for self-reliant living for the 'back to
the land' or 'alternatives' movement which was profoundly influential on
Permaculture, which emerged later that decade. Just as successive editions
of the Catalog made tools accessible, so too, I thought, does the
sustainability movement and Permaculture (often the same thing) bring new
tools for thinking and acting on the world.

David sees Permaculture having entered a "new wave" in the new century and
spoke of how localisation is the way forward, bringing with it the
development of local food economies. As with global warming, ideas spread,
he said, and " ...can change things quickly". If the awakening of the last
five or six years continues, David suggested, it could lead to policy
change.

This, too, is an interesting point worthy of a little thought. I don't know
if anyone has documented the change in public attitude over that short
period, but it seems that global warming, the potential peaking of the oil
supply and other topics have come to a maturity as political issues in the
past five to six years. Sure, they were there in the 1990s but not with the
political presence they now command. For sustainabiliity advocates - and
that includes Permaculture people - the question is about how we respond to
that change and seek to influence public perceptions and political policies.

David went on to say that, "The global to local message is profoundly
empowering", and that it links the local food movement to sustainability and
the "economics of happiness".


RELOCALISATION THE OPPORTUNITY, SAYS HELENA
The economics of happiness was also a theme of another keynote speaker who
has long been an advocate of local food systems in the UK and Australia,
Helena-Norberg Hodge (author, 'Ancient Futures'; co-author 'Bringing the
Food Economy Home'). After three decades of educating, campaigning, writing
and developing new components of relocalisation (Helena was influential in
the establishment of Byron Bay's weekly farmers' market) she come to the
conclusion that "the emerging relocalisation movement" can influence public
opinion and shape government policy.

"The economics of happiness, with the cultivation of community cultures of
place, are essential to combating terrorism. The consumer monoculture
destroys biodiversity and people's self-respect", she told an enthralled
audience.


GLOBAL COMMUNICATION SYSTEM ENABLES CARBON-FREE SPEAKERS
In keeping with the carbon-neutral objectives of the conference, Vendana
Shive spoke from Delhi by audio link and the UK Federation of City Farm's
Mike Marsden appeared "from the snowy Northern UK" on a large screen via
video phone, his talk illustrated by a synchronised Powerpoint presentation
projected on to an adjacent screen.

If the world chooses a reduced-carbon pathway with less international travel
and if we are to retain effective global communications, then such
technologies will have to become better developed and commonplace as well as
cheap, very reliable and ported to handheld devices such as mobile phones.
Their use at the conference may thus turn out to be a harbinger of the
future and the conference organisers are to be congratulated in deploying
them rather than flying overseas speakers to Melbourne.


WORKSHOPS APLENTY
There were workshops aplenty.

Sue Dennet from Melliodora, not far from Melbourne at Hepburn Springs, gave
a succinct run down on the many different ways of improving food security at
home - preserving, bottling, drying and so on. Understandably for a
conference in which food was a theme, the workshop was packed.

The Illawarra and Sydney food fairness alliances teamed up with Wollongong
City Council's sustainability educator, Vanessa Johns, to explain their
missions and activities. Council employs a staffer to focus on food security
in the region.


THE ENVIABLE RECORD OF CULTIVATING COMMUNITY
Cultivating Community CEO, Ben Neil, described how the work of the
association has grown to include 20 community gardens, two food cooperatives
in low income areas and the school-based garden-to-kitchen program.

Cultivating Community, the Victorian end of the Australian City Farms &
Community Gardens Network, has grown to employ a number of people to work in
assisting Housing Ministry residents develop community gardens for local
food production on the estates. They also assist non-estate community
gardeners and were involved in the Collingwood College school
garden-to-kitchen program with local chef and author, Stephanie Alexander.
Cultivating Community is now developing its own school garden-to-kitchen
program in which students grow, harvest, prepare, cook and eat the food they
grow at school.


TOURS TO INSPIRE
The tours day offered the choice of visiting either school or community
gardens.

Evident was the high productivity and good order of the estate community
gardens supported by Cultivating Community, gardens which are farmed mainly
by immigrant peoples.


OH, YES - THE FOOD, THE PLACES, THE PEOPLE
Let me tell you how good and inspiring the annual CERES Harvest Festival was
on Sunday, the last event of the week. There, I met the CERES Food Project
crew and was rewarded with home made baklava and dalmados just for taking
their photo for Community Harvest, sampled a home made red brewed by an
Italian gardener from grapes grown in the CERES community garden and enjoyed
a rather filling Harvest Festival feast featuring foods representative of
the ethnically-diverse people who come into CERES.

And not to forget mention of the sumptuous morning and afternoon teas and
lunches prepared by different caterers each day, and the conference dinner
at Lentil as Anything, adjacent to Collingwood Children's Farm. Lots of
varied food and no fixed prices - you pay what you think the food is worth.
Yes, a café run on trust.

Then there was the conviviality of impromptu meals with the crew from the
Illawarra - including Dan Deighton and his wild bunch of school and
community garden designer-builders - at places such as the Vege Bar in
Brunswick Street, Fitzroy.

Melbourne Slow Food people were there too, and they came on the bus tour of
community food gardens. After the tours, we finished the conference on
Saturday night with a party at Veg Out Community Garden in St Kilda, an
exuberant place that combines food production (including in the big earth
oven they built), the works of gardener-artists dotted through the
allotments and the conviviality of good company. Unfortunately, they had
none left of the crisp vintage they bottle under the Veg Out label, made
partly from grapes grown in the garden and with the support of a friendly
Yarra Valley vigneron.

So, we learned about food security in the southern capital - it appears to
be not all that different a situation to Sydney - learned about the
excellent work of Cultivating Community, saw incredibly productive community
gardens, heard people's inspiring stories and realised what an incredibly
capable, clever, insightful, imaginative and convivial bunch of people make
up the food security/urban agriculture/school food gardens milieu.


WHAT ARE THE LESSONS?
So, what can we - as a national, urban garden-agriculture and sustainability
education network - learn from this latest of our conferences?

CAPABILITY HIGH AND GROWING
The first learning is this: The ACFCGN now has the capacity to organise high
profile, ambitious events that attract people from all over Australia and
beyond. Our capacity has grown significantly since the first national
networking conference in cold, rainy Bendigo only a few years ago and the
Network is capable of attracting the attention of state government
politicians and national media (ABC Radio National and ABC radio Darwin
during the conference).

The growth of the Network's influence and reach is significant.


PRODUCTIVE ASSOCIATION PRODUCES STRENGTH
THE ACFCGN's strength is, in part, due to the diversity of those that make
it up. As a network rather than an organisation promoting a single practice,
the Network brings into productive association people working in community
gardening, food security, sustainability education, Permaculture, local
government, government agencies, community workers, food advocates,
edcuators and horticulturists.

It is because none of these sectors seek to dominate or exert undue
influence through the Network that they are successful in finding ways to
work together in a context in which their own agendas match those of others
in a productive matrix of action.


COMMUNITY GARDENS/CITY FARMS MEETING REAL NEEDS
Community gardens and city farms are meeting the real needs of people for
fresh food (though they can, of course, grow only a limited portion of a
family's food needs), for human company and friendship, for developing a
sense of place and community. That much was evident in the gardens visited
and among the conference audience.

With community development workers making use of the gardens, local and
state governments supporting them and the increasing number of them
appearing in our suburbs, it appears that community garden-agriculture is an
idea whose time has come.


GARDENS THE FOCUS OF SUSTAINABILITY EDUCATION
With ACFCGN associate organisations like CERES, Collingwood Children's Farm,
Northey Street City Farm and Macarthur Centre for Sustainable Living working
in sustainability education, it is clear that such places are among the main
sites for education and the demonstration of the innovative, sustainability
ideas that we need to move forward with confidence into a future challenged
by global warming, peak oil and social issues.

The majority of community gardeners want little more than to produce food
and a sense of place and community, however a smaller number are taking on a
broader role in sustainability education. This - sustainability education -
has grown into a major activity strand within the urban garden-agriculture
movement these past few years and it varies in scale from modest workshops
in how to compost and make a no-dig garden to the school's programs and
public workshops and courses of Northey Street, Collingwood Children's Farm,
CERES and others. As part of this trend, places like Northey Street City
Farm have directly integrated Permaculture education - including the
nationally accredited certificate courses - into its program of activities.
Northey Street has now become an important Permaculture education centre.
The IMBY project in Albury-Wodonga is set to do the same.


RETURN
We have now returned to our cities and towns, many of us inspired with the
people, places and ideas we met this changeable Autumn in Melbourne.

So, let's keep the contact we made in that city... whatever your project in
community gardening, food security, sustainability education and more, the
Australian City Farm & Community Gardens Network's website -
www.communitygarden.org.au - is there for you to place your stories.

And thanks, Cultivating Community and its associates, for organising a great
conference, great food, great company and great ideas.


^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
RUSS GRAYSON
journalism, editing, online journalism & content, photojournalism,
instructional manuals/communication services

PO Box 1045, Manly, NSW 1655 AUSTRALIA
info at pacific-edge.info
P: 0414 065 203
www.pacific-edge.info

TerraCircle international development team, Oceania
www.terracircle.org.au

Australian City Farms & Community Gardens Network
www.communitygarden.org.au
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^