Shhhhhhh!

An article by Ken Ross

SShhhhssshh!

What?

Listen, can you hear it?

Yeah, that muttering sound, what is it?

Disquiet!

Disquiet?  Disquiet about what?

Well, that’s a bit of a long story, but I’ll do my best to shorten it.

O.K.  So, what’s it about?

Food insecurity, mainly, but a heap of other stuff as well.

Food insecurity, like famines and shit?  What’s that got to do with us?

Heaps apparently.  More than most people could ever realise.

Is this more of that ‘Conspiracy BS’, like what went on around Covid?

Nah, not if Government Departments are reporting back to the Government, that they believe it is real and that the Government needs to pull its finger.

You pulling my tit?

Nope.  I believe this is far too big for games and jokes, even if the bloody Coalition Government treats it that way.  This is bloody serious mate, and I reckon it’s time we bloody stood up to it.

Time to enlighten me, then.

Pass me another cold one, then I’ll settle in to it.  Thanks.  I’ll start by inviting you to cast your mind back to when you were a kid in the sixties, at primary school.  There were those that had, and those that had less, but virtually everyone had something – in your school and in your community.  Like, did anyone need school lunches provided for free, or did your community need a food bank?

Is that where this is going?  I think about this a lot.  I know that unemployment was basically zero back then, but this shouldn’t be about employment levels.  This country is awash with food.  We constantly get told how clever we are as a country at producing food, how NZ could feed 40 million people, and all that tripe, but it’s pretty bloody obvious the ones we’re feeding don’t live here.  How do you expect to get the best from a team, if it isn’t fed and cared for properly?  People are constantly urged to do more, lift their game for the sake of the country and economy etc., so one minute we are a ‘team’, then the next minute, when the sandwiches are being handed out, some people are pushed behind a door, and they totally miss out.

Yeah, I totally agree, but hey, I think I’m going to have to focus and shorten this, otherwise we will be schicker before we’ve solved it.  Let’s move on.  So, I’m talking ‘food insecurity’.  I’m not going to bother with United Nations definitions, or other more technical stuff like ‘Ecological Energetics’, ‘Ghost Acreages’ and ‘Phantom Carrying Capacities’.  I just want to focus on the more obvious stuff like having to provide food for kids in schools, and the proliferation of food rescue work and food banks in our communities – not that there is anything wrong with ‘food rescue’ work.  It’s brilliant, but the fact it is an absolute necessity for some people to be able to eat, in a country theoretically producing a huge surplus of food, does my head in.  So did what happened around Covid and the ‘Shutdowns’ that turned suburbs and towns into food deserts in a matter of several days.  It all points to a hidden fragility.  I say ‘hidden’ because stuff all people want to talk about it.  Food is really important – to all of us.  If the supply of it is really fragile, then that should be a huge issue, right?  But nobody seems to give a shit.  It’s all about “Up the Wahs”, or the next big concert in Christchurch.

Anyway, somebody has been watching, thank God.  Back in 2021, or maybe it was 2022, a group called ‘The Zero Hunger Collective’, commissioned a journalist by the name of Sonya Cameron, to investigate this issue.  The way Cameron went about it was interesting – she reviewed the aspirations, plans and actions of 30 communities and groups around Aotearoa (NZ), who had already started to work in this field.  The report Cameron produced was called “Realising Food Secure Communities in Aotearoa”, and it was released in May 2023.  Basically, what Cameron highlighted in her review, was the ‘conclusions’ of the 30 communities she had reviewed could be summarised into 6 common themes.  Those themes were: the food had to be ‘Local’ – produced locally, under local control, and secondly, the food had to be produced and distributed in such a way it was affordable for everyone in the community.  Thirdly, the growing and distribution of food had to connect people to each other and their environments, and fourthly, the focus had to be on health – healthy food and healthy environments.  Finally (themes 5 and 6), the food production systems had to be managed regeneratively, and the food system created in such a way it was as resilient as possible.

Bloody hell.  Good on her.  That’s a brave report.  Pity it is only from an NGO though.  Who is going to take notice?

Yeah, but it’s the next step that is really important, though I’m still trying to figure out how the next step happened.  I contacted the PA of the Labour MP, Dr. Ayesha Verrall, to see if I could get some information, but I’m still waiting on that.  You see, it seems the Cameron report made some good waves.  Whatever happened, sometime before, or just after the Cameron report was published, it seems the then Minister of Health (Hon. Dr. Ayesha Verrall), directed the Public Health Advisory Committee (PHAC), to investigate the ‘food security’ situation in NZ.  That committee reported back to government in May 2024, in a report titled, ‘Rebalancing the Food System’.  Unfortunately, a lot had happened between the commissioning and the publishing of the report, because we had a new, and very different Government in charge – the National, NZ First and Act, Coalition Government.  Now, as everyone already knows, bureaucrats are very circumspect in what they tell their masters.  Every report of this nature tends to have all its punches pulled, and every butt involved in its conception and presentation, is generally, tightly covered, to ensure wrath from above can’t land anywhere specific.  In spite of all of that, the report makes some telling statements and recommendations, plus it’s what it doesn’t say that is also telling when you read between lines.  One of the key statements, that gets repeated through the PHAC report, is just how much it “shares the vision of”, or agrees with the core findings of the Sonya Cameron Review.  It can’t really be as blunt as the Cameron document, but they were obviously delighted with Cameron’s findings.  The ‘Rebalancing the Food System’ report makes five, broad recommendations (to Government), that are further broken down to 13 more specific recommendations that give greater detail.  They align with the Cameron report in their own, mealy mouth way, but they don’t go where the body of the report’s ‘exploratory discussion’ went.  You see, the key is in the report’s title.  It speaks of ‘Rebalancing’ a food system that is ‘out of balance’.  All (that is ALL), the discussion and contribution within the report claims the greatest im-balancing factor within the food system, is (wait for it), that ‘we primarily grow food as an economic commodity, and primarily for export – we do not grow it primarily for people and their health, nor do we pay sufficient attention to the health of the growing environment.’  In other words, the imbalance is caused by our crazy and selfish economic and political system!

That might be news to you, but it ain’t to me.  Of course, the bulk of food grown in Aotearoa/NZ isn’t for our own people.  Their bloody job is to produce it for the capitalist class who will ship it overseas and sell it to the highest bidder.  Why is the price of butter going through the roof?  Don’t you know what happened in the Irish Potato famine?  Haven’t you read Marx?  Workers can seldom afford the goods they create in the factories for their capitalist bosses to make money from – even though it is their skills producing them.  Tell you what, I’ll predict something.  Watch when the budget comes out.  This Government, who obviously received the PHAC report in May 2024, 1 year ago, has already told us its priorities are: Tourism, Mining, Foreign students and Foreign Investors.  There is no way they will localise and democratise food production and focus on food health and the health of the environment, even though such a change would boost regional economies, increase meaningful employment, reduce health system costs and save our soils, lakes and rivers.  The ‘Elephant in the Room’ the PHAC report alludes to, is a ‘Pet’ Elephant, the Capitalist Pet of the Capitalist Parties, currently in control.  End of story, for a “Re-Balancing” of any food system, anytime soon, my friend.  Advice.  Go dig your own garden!

About Ken Ross

I have lived in Te Tai Tokerau for 34 years and am currently working (p/t) in the communities of the Far North as a Community Development Advisor.  I am totally passionate about the challenge of people ‘living well in one’s place’.  For me, a core element of this ‘living well’ is having a strong local economy that truly serves its community and causes no environmental harm. I see the core components of such a local economy being networks of locally owned Social Enterprises.  In Europe, these networks are called ‘a social economy’.