From 'food swamps' to 'food havens' and other fixes for our troubled food system
Do you find it hard to get affordable, nutritious food near your home? You might be living in a food swamp or a food desert. If there are no shops selling heathy food like fresh fruits and vegetables within a manageable walk, or trip on public transport, then you might be in a food desert. If your local neighbourhood has an abundance of takeaway joints, liquor outlets, bakeries, dairies and other convenience stores but its hard to find nutritious food to buy you might be living in a food swamp. We need to eat. It is a fundamental human right. But in our society right now 15-20 percent of people are food insecure, and that number is increasing, says Emily King, food analyst and author of Re-food, a new book published today. READ MORE: * Te Ao i Whiria: Exploring a vision for a mixed use of land * Align in the sand: When big dairy experiments with regeneration * Regeneration nation: What might our future farms look like? King says our food system is broken. The takeaway and throwaway culture of mass food consumption is the result of food businesses trying to profit from peoples vulnerabilities. Feeding ourselves before the world Food insecurity in New Zealand is ironic as we are a food exporting nation. Some 95% of our dairy output goes overseas, says King. We export enough diary to feed an estimated 39.3 million people, and protein foods to feed 11.7 million people. We grow enough food to feed people , yet we send it offshore along with our soil nutrients. We export high-quality, nutritionally-dense foods, and import ... a large proportion of discretionary and nutrient poor foods. Diets dominated by those foods are associated with non-communicable diseases like obesity, cancer and cardiovascular disease. We have a trade surplus of nutrients sending away good food to other people and importing crappy food for our own people. We're also importing foods with dubious human rights and labour standards that we can't really trace or match in the same way that we can with our own food growers and makers. Given the health problems and lack of access to affordable and healthy food for people in Aotearoa New Zealand, King says this is a disgrace. Supporting our growers Another concern is the loss of productive soil. We grow good food in our country. We have great market gardens and world-class orchards producing fruits and berries we can be proud of. But our highly productive soil well suited for growing has become more fragmented, due to residential developments. This is happening in rural-urban areas around the country, she says, particularly in the food bowl that once surrounded Tamaki Makaurau, Auckland. The Pukekohe Hub, for instance, has 4,359 hectares of some of the countrys most fertile land, generating around 26% of the countrys total domestic value of vegetable production. Yet even that precious resource is being steadily chipped away by sprawling, single-level housing developments. One report, Our Land 2021 , estimates that the area of highly productive land fell by 54% nationwide due to demand for housing, between 2002 and 2019. Housing is both necessary and lucrative, but our soil has great value as well. And as King puts it, once its paved, its gone. We got it around the wrong way. Food systems should be at the heart of the development with houses designed and built around them. King argues for city planning that recognises the value of versatile non-renewable soil resources and its all-encompassing benefits, including food provisioning, flood mitigation and pollution absorption. Food as a right, not just a business King says improving the food system starts with thinking about food as a human right. She has a vision of food havens, community hubs creating greater access to healthier and affordable foods and more control over choices. If we want to change the food system we need to change how it is accounted for in the economic system, she says. Change wont be easy. Were woven so deeply into the global food system, and that is so inextricably interwoven with trade and economics, that forging our own path is difficult. But, says King, imagine shifting from a export mindset to a trading system where we ensure that our own people are well-fed and cared for before we send food offshore. Emily King is a former environmental lawyer and founder of Spira. Re-Food published 30 June, 2023, Mary Egan Publishing.