Bethaney Turner

Embodied connections: sustainability, food systems and community gardens

Community gardens have been identified as providing a model for promoting sustainable urban living. They can also contribute to individual and community reconnection to the socio-cultural importance of food, thus helping facilitate broader engagement with the food system. Such processes may offer pathways to developing a deep engagement and long-term commitment to sustainable living practices predicated on the development of new forms of environmental or ecological citizenship. However, little attention has been paid to how this can be adequately harnessed. Based on an ethnographic study of community gardeners in the Australian Capital Territory, this article argues that fostering an embodied form of sustainability, which accounts for individual embodied engagement in these collective spaces, may play a critical role in achieving these outcomes.

Community gardens: sustainability, health and inclusion in the city

Food-producing community gardens have taken various forms over the past two centuries and have fulfilled a variety of roles. As we grapple with issues of food security, the use of biotechnology and artificial chemicals in agriculture, rising food prices and the environmental costs of growing and distributing food, the different functions of community gardens are coming under increasing attention. This issue of Local Environment is based on papers first delivered at a National Community Garden Conference in Canberra, Australia. The range of papers explores the key themes that emerged from the conference and deepens our knowledge of community gardens in both theory and practice. In particular, conference participants addressed various aspects of community gardening that centred on issues of sustainability, health and inclusion for urban dwellers.

Ecological Connections: Reimagining the Role of Farmers' Markets

Abstract Fears raised about future food security have increasingly politicised the food system, challenged traditional notions of an urban/rural divide and highlighted the growing disconnection between people and their food. In Canberra, the issue of food has spawned both national policy responses as well as new personal engagements most overtly expressed in a ‘turn to the local’ through growing one’s own food, purchasing it at farmers’ retail outlets and, perhaps most significantly, shopping at farmers’ markets. In all of these practices, we can glimpse new articulations of human/nature relationships grounded in notions of well-being. Through a focus on the farmers’ markets this research draws on analysis of ethnographic and organisational data to examine the multiple ways in which the staging of this food-based exchange can construct and facilitate more productive engagement with practices of ecological well-being which move beyond notions of caring for the environment. Through the Capital Region Farmers Market, we explore the potential for embodied engagement in the food system to actively (re)connect people to the communities, land and the environment which yields their food. In so doing, we investigate the potential of these sites to promote more ethical ecological understandings and practices.

“I can’t get past the fact that it is printed”: consumer attitudes to 3D printed food

Abstract In recent years, 3D printing technologies have been developed to process a range of food products. Thus far, no academic research has attempted to gauge what people make of the different types of 3D printed food products and how receptive they may be to using a 3D food printer and consuming the food it makes. To address these questions, a qualitative study was conducted with Australians, using the method of an online discussion forum in which they were asked to respond to images of 3D printed food products. It found that the key attributes influencing participants’ responses to each food item were: the content of the food; its appearance; the assumed sensory qualities of the food; to what extent it was assessed to be “real” or “food-like”; and considerations of how much processing the food had gone through. The findings suggest that those entrepreneurs or organizations which wish to promote 3D food printing technologies need to consider these attributes in their efforts to encourage people to accept the technologies and their products.

Playing with food waste: Experimenting with ethical entanglements in the Anthropocene

Anthropocentric thinking produces fractured ecological perspectives that perpetuate destructive, wasteful behaviours. Recognition of the relational entanglements of humans and more-than-humans, particularly through our everyday visceral encounters with food, may be able to encourage ethical ecological thinking and practices that lay the foundations for more sustainable lifestyles. This paper explores possible ways embodied, convivial and experimental interactions with food waste and its avoidance – along with the various assemblages through which it both acts and is enacted – can support recognition of the entangled relations in which humans and more-than-humans co-become. Excess food, its prevention, reuse and disposal, requires management through intimate human bodily engagements where the very vitality of food is inescapable. The affective force of these necessarily multispecies interactions –which can prompt desires for both attachment and detachment and manifest in a myriad of forms of togetherness – exposes mutual vulnerabilities in living together. Through analysis of ethnographic data gathered from 38 food-producing gardeners and Alternative Food Networks (AFNs) participants in the Australian Capital Territory, this paper maps out how experimental, playful interactions with leftover, surplus or wasted food could contribute to the development of the skills and competencies necessary for adapting to our contingent futures. Encounters with excess food are shown to be capable of assisting in training sensitivities to become attuned and responsive to our more-than-human entanglements and mutual vulnerabilities. This responsive attunement can induce and support ethico-political beliefs and practices that have the potential to disrupt anthropocentric thinking.

Tinkering at the Limits: agricultural shows, small-scale producers and ecological connections

ABSTRACT Agricultural shows in Australia are typically depicted as celebrations of colonisation and scientific and technical modernisation in food production. The historical focus of shows is on competition to maximise perceived quality and yield of goods, from wheat to cattle. Through these frameworks, shows are often understood as supporting industrial-scale agricultural practices that promote an ecologically-blind approach to food production. However, we suggest that competitions in contemporary agricultural shows play a role in contesting the limits of such anthropocentric thinking. We focus on a hitherto unexplored aspect of agricultural shows: small-scale growers who exhibit produce in their annual local show competitions. Through a case study drawing on interviews with exhibitors and judges, combined with participant observation at the 2012 Royal Canberra Show, we highlight the complex relationships between people, place and more-than-humans in this unique cultural site. In so doing, we suggest that exhibiting in the show can intensify urban and peri-urban small-scale producer engagement in practices of ‘tinkering’. This facilitates embodied encounters with the limits of both human mastery and those of the materiality of non-humans involved in food production. Through the ongoing, adaptive processes of tinkering encouraged by such competitions, we suggest that exhibiting in agricultural shows can support the growth of ecologically informed, place-based understandings of the food system and challenge binaries of the rural/city divide.

Agricultural Show Awards: A Brief Exploration of Their Role Marketing Food Products

ABSTRACT Drawing on interviews with 12 agriculture show winners across a range of different food industries, this report provides a preliminary analysis of the role that agricultural show awards play in branding and marketing food products for commercial sale. In keeping with findings from previous studies, show awards were found to be regarded by producers as prestigious, signifying product excellence. Further, the assessment of the quality of products, the opportunity to receive expert feedback on new products, and a comparative, competitive effect of the show system was found to provide a mechanism to improve quality, helping to support industry standards and foster a culture of innovation. Show awards were identified as especially important in supporting small-scale entrepreneurial endeavors that depend on niche marketing strategies. However, winning awards was shown to contribute more to perceived brand equity of products rather than actual economic gain. To strengthen the impact of show success, participants indicated the need for increased consumer awareness of the meaning of the awards. The authors identify key future directions research could take to maximize the impact of agricultural award systems on the businesses of competitors.

The battle to open Australia's airwaves: the Whitlam government and youth station 2JJ

Australias public youth radio station, Triple J, turns forty in 2015. The station was one of the few achievements to arise from the Whitlam governments intended bold, wide-sweeping media reforms. Radio was seen as a vehicle for strengthening the nations democracy through improving citizen access to, and participation in, national political and cultural debate. Expansion of the media industry was also viewed by the Whitlam government as key to increasing employment opportunities. However, the challenging political environment, debates about the technical capacity for media expansion, and an economic recession reduced the grand plan for broadcast reform to something much more cautious, including 2JJ, a rock-style station. Since then, 2JJ has undergone multiple transformations in response to changing technologies, political agendas and audience tastes. In 1980, Double Jay moved to the FM band and became known as Triple J. By the late 1980s, Triple J was broadcasting beyond Sydney to capital cities and then, throughout the 1990s, rolled out to regional Australia to realise the National Youth Network. This paper considers the rather fraught campaign by the Whitlam government to open Australias airwaves, which eventually led to the birth of Australias first youth radio station.