TWO University of Western Australia researchers featured in the recently released world premiere in Perth of the multi award winning documentary “More than Honey” have been researching the life of bees for over ten years. Both UWA Professor Boris Baer, director of the Centre for Integrative Bee Research, CIBER,and his wife Dr. Barbara Baer Imhoof provided scientific information and some of their research is featured in this movie. The film was directed by Oscar nominated director Marcus Imhoof, Barbara’s father.
As Professor Boris Baer says, “One-third of what we eat is the result of pollination by bees and we are racing against time to halt the world-wide decline in bee populations,”
Read article and interview with Professor Baer and Dr Barbara Baer-Imhoof in WA Today.

PAOLO di Croce, Secretary General of Slow Food International was recently at the Slow Food in Australia national meeting in Hobart. Sixty five delegates attended this meeting, from convivia across Australia including representatives from all capital cities and country areas.
Paolo di Croce was recently interviewed on Bush Telegraph about sustainability of food systems. Slow Food International have recently been talking to and lobbying the European Union and the United Nations to shape policies to make food and farming system more sustainable. Read further and listen to the ABC interview with Sally Dakis.

ABC reporter Mary Gearin reports that The European Union is set to impose a two-year ban on three pesticides suspected of contributing to the global decline in the number of bees. Read her full report and the explanation of the pesticides ‘neonicotinoids’.
Fran Kelly of the ABC’s Breakfast Program interviews Peter Melchett, Policy Director of the Soil Association and Australian beekeeper and Executive Director of the Australian Honeybee Industry Association Trevor Weatherhead who expresses another view about what is happening in Australia regarding these pesticides. Listen to both interviews.

The Soil Association welcomes this ban, read their report and link to other articles

SlOW Food International Secretary-General Paolo Di Croce in conjunction with the Chair of the Australian Ark Cherry Ripe announced the inclusion of five perry pear varieties to the Ark, namely the Yellow Nuffcap, Moorcroft, Gin, Red Longdon and Green Horse.
These varieties were brought to Australia during the Victorian gold rush in the 1850s.Perry is a product from which a beverage has traditionally been made in England and Wales for more than 500 years. The main perry production is at Harcourt near Bendigo in central Victoria. The fruits, otherwise inedible were pressed for their juice and transformed into an alcoholic beverage. It was safer to drink a fermented beverage than the local waters.
The Australian Ark of Taste was established in July 2003. It aims to protect and preserve quality, small-scale production of culturally significant foods that are threatened with extinction, including critically endangered breeds of animals and heirloom varieties of fruits and vegetables. The Ark works to recognise and preserve listed foods’ heritage and taste and to promote and encourage agricultural and horticultural biodiversity. Read further

A recent article by Laura Clauscen in the Melbourne edition of Broadsheet highlights the developing interest in indigenous plants and foraging around Melbourne. Clauscen calls them ‘eco-culinary’activists. They are gathering native plants from tree grubs, wild berries, fruits, flowers, herbs, seeds and spices.
One such business in Melbourne, Native Oz Cusine directed by Malan an Aboriginal woman of the Gunditjmara and Wemba Wemba people is using indigenous produce to produce food for the Australian public.
Pat Mamanyjun Torres of Indigenous Harvest Australia has been involved over the years in developing an indigenous food coop around Broome. “Tilling the land” was a meeting held a few years ago that showed the potential opportunities for indigenous food development. Read report. Pat’s own business, Mayi Harvests is an Aboriginal Australian native produce business based in the West Kimberley region of Western Australia. But as Pat says, ‘the biggest challenge it faces is the lack of capital needed for its growth and development, other challenges include remoteness and access to bigger markets. Read Pat’s story.

AUTHORS of the article in the online journal “Conversation” Lauren Williams, Professor of Nutrition and Dietetics at University of Canberra and John Germov, Pro Vice-Chancellor, Faculty of Education and Arts at University of Newcastle examine the pros and cons of the Slow Food Movement.
Their conclusion to the article, “At the societal level, Slow Food highlights the need for changes to our food system. Our continuing studies in this area aim to gain an understanding of what attracts people to Slow Food and how this attraction may be translated into behavioural and wider social change”. Read article and join the conversation at the end of their informative article.

Recently overheard that with the growth of farmers markets and many not for profit food groups that Slow Food does not have a role to play anymore in Australia. However in a recent posting on this blog, “Slow Food has become a force to be reckoned with, probably the only international organization that integrates concerns about the environment, tradition, labor, health, animal welfare”.

In the forward by K.B. Wilson of the Christensen Fund of ethnobiologist Gary Nabhan’s book “Where does our food come from” he comments.
“Gary Nabhan takes us back to the master and invigorates us with science as the practice of inquiry and discovery rather than the top down delivery of judgement and technology. He illuminates agriculture as an extraordinary process where culture technology and biology are applied to the landscapes with fascinating consequences that need to be thought about. Agriculture as practiced locally in places like the centres of diversity Nabhan visited is something he also shows us is beautiful,”it moves to palate as much as the eye can inspire to join movements like Slow Food”.

The master he is talking about is the Russian scientist Nikolai Vavilov who journeyed around the world in the early 20th century researching seeds and local farming practices. He developed a theory of genetic plant origins know as Vavilov Centres of Diversity, which is still used in scientific circles.
If there are ways to help improve the diversity of our plants then this study and research by ethnobiologist Gary Nabhan and the work that Slow Food does is for many a good reason to join the Slow Food movement.

Alternatives to GMO practices need to be encouraged and according to Nabhan, “more and more case studies indicate what they are losing, not just what they gain. Whether they are canola farmers in North America, sorghum farmers in Africa, or rice farmers in Asia, more food producers around the world now see that by uncritically adopting any transgenic crop that becomes available to them, they may lose control of the way their crops and certain weeds have positively interacted over many millennia.

Great work is still being done in Australia by the Australian Ark Commission led by Cherry Ripe which is identifying foods that are threatened with loss in Australia. See Slow Food Australian web site for further information on the Ark products of Australia.

THE Premier Colin Barnett last week visited the Eastern Wheatbelt with the Agriculture Minister Ken Baston to discuss with farmers their major concerns. There are not only the issues of over regulation, a high Australian dollar, low commodity prices, a series of poor seasons, and a cost of production that is higher than incomes but the feeling that they are not recognised and agriculture is not valued. Read full report

Recently Kukerin farmer Mary Nenke was invited to talk to group of wheatbelt farmers, The Muntagin Farming Alliance, about her Farming Champions, the group decided to adopt some of her ideas – fair trade not free trade; government recognition of agriculture as an essential service; removing stamp duty for farmers; increase grants to local governments in order for rates to be reduced. Read full article

As a result of these issues being brought to the public arena, the future of farming will be discussed at a forum arranged in Merridin on April 15th. Read further on ABC

A recent posting from Michael Bitman of the New York Times “Slow Food Quickens the Pace” highlights the maturing of Slow Food philosophy. At a recent Slow Food Youth Food Movement event Mark Bitman spoke to Carlo Petrini about his ideas. “It may be that Slow Food’s original focus on taste and the quality of food — on gastronomy — simply seemed too narrow, and therefore elitist. But at least since its “Puebla Declaration” in 2007, Slow Food has become a force to be reckoned with, probably the only international organization that integrates concerns about the environment, tradition, labor, health, animal welfare … along with real cooking, taste and pleasure. But in saying that, “small and medium sized farms have plummeted”. Read full article.

In a recent article in “The Land”, West Australian Liberal MP Nola Marino used the final week of federal parliament for 2012 to highlight mounting pressure on the financial viability of farmers. South Australian Liberal Rowan Ramsey said Australia has one of the lowest levels of government support for agriculture in the developed world and Victorian Liberal MP Dan Tehan said rural producers were hurting across the country.

Listen to Late Night Live “The Trouble with Small Farms” radio program. Philip Adams interviews farmers about farming issues. All the topical issues that concern the survival of small farming are covered.

Read Elaine Bradley’s 2012 Churchill Fellow report on small farming operations. One of her recommendations for the survival of small farms in Australia “is to continually increase the awareness of consumers of the importance of sustaining viable local food production systems. This can be done at all levels, from person to person conversations through to coordinated media campaigns”.
Read her full Churchill Fellowship report

On the 5th May at the Grove Sustainable Community Centre in Cottesloe Slow Food Perth is supporting a seminar about farming issues in Western Australia. This is an open meeting – all welcome. Further information from info@slowfoodperth.org.au