Towards a WA Food Agenda

The event was a follow-on from the Planning Our Food Future Forum, held in November, to continue the collaborative approach in establishing a food secure WA.

The scene was set with a presentation from Peter Batt (Peter J. Batt and Associates / UNFAO) on the New Urban Agenda highlighting the 17 UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDG’s) and our responsibility to achieve these.
The goals may seem large, but the Food Future WA initiative works towards these goals by producing sufficient quantity of food (goal 2) while being responsible in our consumption and production (goal 12), increasing our health and wellbeing (goal 3), securing clean water (goal 6) in an ever-increasing population and reducing our environmental impact (goal 13). The SDG’s are global, where we are bringing them to our own backyard and working collaborative as an entire community of stakeholders to achieve them.

With this setting and the diverse range of stakeholders in the room we focused on what we each saw as a food secure WA and the road blocks to achieving this. People wished to see a future with secure, sustainable, affordable and nutritious food, where the consumer is better educated and understands the supply chains to make informed decisions.

The suggested road blocks to achieving this vision included reduced resources; both financial and natural, lack of communication across the entire community, Government cycles and policy, and international policies and production yields. However, no matter how big or small the hurdle, the room was filled with like-minded people who were there to contribute to the big picture thinking of securing our local food production areas and food for the future generations of West Australians.