Food Connect Foundation

When Robert lost his family’s fourth generation farm twenty years ago, he went into exile. The grief and shame led him on a journey to explore positive ways forward for farming in Australia, where eaters could re-establish a connection with those who grew and processed their food. Food is a human right, not a commodity, and Robert believed that the disconnection, inequity in distribution and market systems, and increasing impacts of climate change meant a solution was urgently needed. Farmers who grew nutritious food and looked after their soil, land and wildlife needed customers who were happy to share the risk, reconnect with their growers and pay the true cost of production. Enter Food Connect in 2005, a social enterprise that Robert, a few local farmers and a small group of motivated mums kick-started using the principles of Community Supported Agriculture. In 2009, Food Connect Foundation was established to open-source its lived experience to communities who wanted to start their own initiatives. Our vision is to create a world where everyone has access to healthy, fresh, ecologically-grown food that is fair to growers, eaters everyone in between. We want to transform the food system, and we believe the next step towards this vision is to regenerate our supply chains and value chains. We think we need to move the needle on food systems change and the finance system that funds it, so together with over 500 of our local community, customers, farmers and supporters, we raised over $2 million in an equity crowdfunding campaign in late 2018 to purchase the warehouse that we'd rented for over 12 years. We now have Australia's first community-owned local food hub, the Food Connect Shed, providing the infrastructure to provide a stable market for our farmers, completely divorced from market forces, and to create a home to many ethical food entrepreneurs and social enterprises.