Does Australia need a food security plan?

The Global Food Security Index ranked Australia as 22^nd , well behind Nordic and European nations in terms of food security. According to the Inquiry Report from the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Agriculture into food security in Australia – Australian Food Story: Feeding the Nation and Beyond, which held 24 public hearings between November 2022 and August 2023, “the main reason for this ranking is the absence of a coherent national policy addressing food security. The lack of a coherent policy and the need for a national food plan was highlighted in evidence presented to the Committee.”

While the inquiry focused on agriculture and climate change, it did not take into account poverty and economic hardship, a fundamental root cause of food insecurity in Australia.

According to the Global Food Security Index, Australia is ranked first in the world for affordability of food, but 48^th for availability. Australia produces an exceptional amount of food, much of which is exported internationally, but food is not reliably, consistently available to all Australians for various reasons, including financial barriers and location (rural and remote areas are particularly vulnerable).

The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) defines food security as “when all people, at all times, have physical and economic access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food that meets their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and health life.”

There are six pillars that must be met to ensure food security: availability, access, utilisation, stability, agency and sustainability. Fundamentally, people need to have the freedom to choose what, when, and how they consume foods and to have the security of knowing the supply and availability of healthy, nutritious food will not be threatened by circumstances out of their control.

The inquiry report ultimately determined that in addition to introducing a National Food Plan, the Australian Government ought to appoint a Minister for Food within the portfolio of the Prime Minister and Cabinet, with responsibility for the development and implementation of the National Food Plan, regular monitoring and updating of the plan, and accountability for achieving outcomes and targets under the plan.

Threats to food security

The National Food Supply Chain Alliance has raised current and emerging threats to Australia’s food supply chain, including extreme weather events, rising costs, freight and supply disruptions, labour shortages, market concentration, and biosecurity.

The Alliance recommended “Australia urgently establish a National Food Security Plan to reduce the impact of disruptors on the nation’s food industry as well as trying to help reduce the impact on the Australian consumer.” The Alliance further noted that “despite countless reports and research in recent decades, Australia has so far failed to produce a nationally co-ordinated, cross-portfolio assessment of risks to Australia’s food supply chain along with measures to mitigate those risks.”

The National Food Supply Chain Alliance proposed the development of a National Food Security Plan, which would be a joint effort between the Australian Government and the food industry with input from state and territory governments and relevant NGOs.

In its presentation to the Committee, the Australian Institute of Food Science and Technology (AIFST) said the complexity of Australia’s food and grocery policy and regulatory system was hampering any efforts to create a uniform approach to food security. AIFST pointed out that 10 governments and at least 20 departments are contributing to policy development and regulations, further complicated by numerous agencies having responsibility for enforcement.

In their 2022 report, food relief charity Foodbank reported on the dire situation facing many Australian households, finding that in the past 12 months, more than two million Australian households (21 per cent) experienced severe food insecurity, meaning they ran out of food because of financial limitations and “at worst went entire days without eating.”

Foodbank’s subsequent 2023 report found 3.7 million Australian households (36 per cent) experienced moderate to severe food insecurity and 48 per cent of the general population now feels anxious or struggles to consistently access adequate food.

Without a national food security strategy, individual government departments have attempted to formulate and implement their own measures, to varying effectiveness.

Australia does not have comprehensive, or even basic, statistics on food security. There are the means to source this, explains Dr. Liesel Spencer, Associate Professor with the School of Law at Western Sydney University.

“We don’t have the data we need,” she tells LSJ.

“The last time we measured the national prevalence of food insecurity was the Australian Health Survey in 2011-2012. They used a dubious measuring instrument, which showed four per cent food insecurity. We tend to rely on charities for data, but they’re limited by sample size and conflicts of interest. We have a national health security and the census, both conducted by the Australian Bureau of Statistics, so both are relatively regular population survey mechanisms that could cover questions about food security, but there’s a really important caveat. It matters what questions we ask around food security. Just asking a single item question doesn’t give you a good reliable data set.”

Spencer says there are effective tools in use overseas, so Australia does not have to reinvent the wheel.

“There are validated, internationally reputable survey tools that we can use for measuring food security in a way that is reliable and captures a more accurate and useful set of data about population food security,” she says.

The U.S. Household Food Security Survey Module offers a shorter version including six questions, or more comprehensive versions that ask either 10 or 18 questions.

“The 18-item module is the gold standard option,” Spencer says.

“It does a much better job than any of the other questionnaires at capturing food insecurity of children in a household, because otherwise a survey is asking the person responding, but it’s not capturing the picture of what’s happening with children in a household.

“We don’t have to come up with a new survey because that’s really expensive. We can just use the National Health Survey or the census.”

Crisis versus chronic food insecurity

Spencer has defined two forms of food insecurity: chronic food insecurity and crisis food insecurity. Chronic underlying food insecurity is experienced by vulnerable population groups, which the Foodbank statistics largely represent. Crisis food insecurity results from short-term shocks to the food supply system, such as major weather disasters like floods, bushfires and intense heat.

Spencer has proposed a comprehensive national law and policy response to the risk of chronic food insecurity would require, amongst other measures, a standard approach to:

• the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission and relevant legislation
• federal subsidies and incentive schemes
• federal community development and grant schemes
• remote and outback store funding schemes
• federal welfare (social security) law.

“Fundamentally, food insecurity is driven by not having the financial resources to obtain a healthy diet for yourself or your household, she says.

“Low-income, gender, race, age, geographical location, renting and single-parent households are disproportionally affected. We’ve got enough food produced in this country to feed ourselves and to export more than half of what we produce.”

Spencer says that addressing food security requires a holistic approach to the causes of financial hardship and access to nutritious food. The agriculture and food production industry are also essential elements in the solution.

“If we’re thinking about legislative agendas, and portfolios, there are a number of federal and state portfolios that have responsibility because it is complicated and intersected,” she says.

“On the other hand, it’s straightforward since any regulatory intervention we make that has the effect of lessening social inequality and poverty is, in effect, an intervention into the population’s food insecurity. Policy that drives housing unaffordability directly impacts on food security. The government could be investing in rent regulation, such as rent caps and rent freezing, regulating Airbnb, introducing disincentives for vacant properties, and building social housing to ensure the housing crisis is addressed as a priority.

“There’s a supermarket pricing inquiry and that’s a whole other raft of regulatory interventions that sit in competition and consumer law, and then there’s the supplier side of things, with farmers needing protection from unfair contract practices.”

No blueprint or ‘legal transplant’

There are overseas examples that can be used as reference points, but Spencer says her background in comparative law has taught her that we can’t cut and paste – or conduct a “legal transplant” – a blueprint from another country.

“There’s geographical, social, and cultural differences to take into account,” says Spencer. “Canada has a national Food Policy, but what works for Canada, where it gets to minus 20 degrees, is going to be different for Australia. What works in Japan, where they  have a food literacy and national school lunch program, would not necessarily work in Australian schools. First and foremost, Australia has to be thought about as a really distinct place and our food security regulatory framework has to fit us.”

However, in terms of inspiration, Spencer points to common law jurisdictions like Canada, the UK, and Scotland, which each have a national level plan.

“Scotland is a good example of crisis management because they instigated a food security unit inside their government owing to a wave of food system shocks, one after the other: COVID-19, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and Brexit. To stay ahead, anticipate and adapt, they’ve brought in this food security unit, and we should definitely be doing a locally adapted version of that for risk management.”

Above all, Spencer believes Australia needs “a dedicated federal government portfolio and Minister for Food, and an advisory council of experts in various disciplines.”

“We can’t have this ad hoc, uncoordinated response from different government departments and between federal, state and local,” she says.

“We know that a bunch of these really meticulous, expensive government inquiries gather dust. We really can’t afford to let that happen with this one. It’s really overdue. The know-how is out there. The power is sitting within the federal government today.”