A Right to Food for Australia? How institutions shape food systems and their outcomes

Abstract

The current food system in Australia is underpinned by a neoliberal worldview that sees people as consumers, responsible for their own health. However, this system is fundamentally at odds with provision of equitable access to nutritious food and has become trapped in producing unhealthy and inequitable outcomes for society. In response, 2014 saw emergence of an alternative, human rights-based discourse in the Right to Food Coalition and its inaugural conference Putting Food on the Table: Food Security is Everyone’s Business. This development provided an opportunity to explore how this group perceives access to food, compared with framing of these issues in the literature. To do so, I asked: how does emerging right to food discourse in Australia challenge existing approaches to the food system and access to food? I approached this question through exploration of discourse at the Right to Food conference using a systems-thinking methodology. Analysis of the Right to Food conference demonstrated that the group’s perspective is largely consistent with critical approaches in the literature that express firm belief Australia’s food system is failing. Conference delegates identified inequitable access to nutritious food driven by socioeconomic inequality as the root cause of food insecurity. In order to challenge the institutional barriers causing this problem, the conference met and agreed to collaborate on future advocacy work with the aim to ‘get food security on the Australian agenda’. This perspective indicates consistency with literature criticising the de-politicisation of hunger and food insecurity in Australia and abroad. These findings suggested that equitable access to food, and the right to adequate food, cannot be achieved without government leadership and institutional reform. Application of a cultural adaptation template systems methodology illuminated the role of institutions in shaping behaviour in the food system and how the dominant paradigm can be challenged be this alternative, rights-based approach.