ARISING from Disruption #5 with Rob Pekin, Food Connect, Salisbury, Queensland, Australia
Despite the hurt, pain and suffering of many, Rob Pekin believes this is an opportunity for society to take stock and rethink our values. It is a chance to realign with what is important to people, to be empowered in how they want to live their lives and unfold a new future for themselves. See notes from this conversation below.
Rob says it is an interesting but disrupted time for the Food Connect community at this time of lockdown and physical distancing due to coronavirus pandemic.
There are differing impacts on the three operations Rob and his partner Emma-Kate oversee: demand for the Food Connect local food box distribution system has quadrupled; the community owned Food Connect shed houses 27 social enterprise food business tenants adjusting to changes; and Food Connect Foundation community connection and culture events are indefinitely cancelled.
Food Connect has been enabling community supported agriculture providing local food and fair prices for farmers for 15 years, thankfully it has rained and farmers are up to the task of harvesting to meet the increased demand. Online systems and local delivery working well. We have been waiting for this moment, with demand from supportive existing and returning customers, and enthusiastic staff ready to ride the wave of increased demand for a local home-delivery food system they can trust.
Rob has advocated for a fairer local food system in an era of cheap fossil fuels and extractive agriculture which he says is now starting to unravel. Local food does not rely on global systems for supply chains. People are looking for trusted, nutritious local food to boost their immune system and to support their community.
Tips:
• This is a time for observing, staying cool and riding out the disruption that is beyond our control. Rob draws on resilience built during earlier personal loss of the family dairy farm during deregulation of the dairy industry, and turning that around to bring something (Food Connect) into the world that is useful.
• These times are what Food Connect is here for – the shed was purchased by the community to be resilient in tough times, to shape a new future for our food system and society.
• This moment in time is giving the world a shake. And what better way to be given a shakeup than to be send home, to spend time at home with family, cooking, homesteading and contemplating life? Use this as an opportunity to read and observe what is going on, and have conversations about what we need to do now to give people the confidence that things are going to be all right because we can have a recovery strategy for what are we going to bounce forward to. Settle into a new routine – because habits change in three months and this is a magnificent opportunity to reshape habits.
Changes:
• We are working in the complexity side of systems change – to change the way food systems work, and how property is owned, and to create a place where people make the world a better place.
• It behoves us – as people who been waiting for a global system shakeup – to provide information and messages of hope about how the world could be. The CBD and city centres may not necessarily be the centre of power and money that they once were. The neoliberal agenda is being reshaped, with so much legislation passed overnight around social justice issues.
• From a food perspective, people will look at food as nutrition and medicine to give themselves the best chance to build their immune system because we will face more viruses like this in future.
• On the other side of this crisis, there will be stronger regional economics because people are not trusting the global ‘just in time’’ supply strategy. People will focus on essentials, not consumptive items. They will use discretionary income in a different way, with more spending on quality nutrition.
• People will be more resourceful and self-sufficient – not in a protectionist way more as economic resilience. There will be a change to being more frugal, thrifty and repairing things, which is a conservative (not loony lefty) thing to do.
• Suburbs suddenly will become fuller as we drive to work less. We won’t be as consumerist as before. This is a portal into a new world as we want to imagine it and start talking about it – ecologically sustainable, economically resilient models that are not extractive. Capitalism is growth at any cost. This is our chance to tell another story, while people are at home and can inform themselves of a better way of how we can operate as a society.
• The essential things are: a roof over our heads, food to eat, friendship, love, community, a way to get from A to B and where we get our energy from. We don’t need cars, because we have bikes and can walk to our neighbours. We need to create spaces that are not just for sleeping in, and build houses that are economically resilient with passive systems.
• Not discounting the hurt, pain and suffering of many, and we are grateful to those on the frontline, but this is an opportunity for society to take stock and rethink our values. It is a chance to realign with what is important to people, to be empowered in how they want to live their lives and unfold a new future for themselves.