Community Considerations
Rights Off the Table: Exploring Food Relief Governance in Australia through a Human Rights Lens
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Katherine Keane
The human right to adequate food imposes legal obligations on States to take necessary steps to ensure that everyone is free from hunger. These obligations include strengthening people’s access to resources and means to ensure food security, and providing for fulfilment of the right to food directly where they are unable to do so for themselves. In Australia, the charitable provision of food aid, known as ‘food relief’, has become the major national response to food insecurity at the individual and household levels. Reliance on food relief has increased dramatically across the country in recent years. Yet despite the essential role that food relief plays in the Australian food security landscape, there is very limited legal scholarship on governance of the sector. My research fills gaps in existing scholarship by evaluating food relief governance in Australia through a human-rights lens. My research shows that the current reliance on charitable food relief does not meaningfully provide for food security for Australians, nor is it an effective way to achieve the right to food. Food relief as it is currently governed may in fact be considered part of the food insecurity problem.
Localized Food Systems, Minimal Processing, and Edible Insects: The Potential of Asian Culinary Traditions in Formulating an Alternative Food Culture Strategy for Crickets
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Timothy Bernd Wallace Seekings
As the search for sustainable food systems intensifies, edible insects have garnered increasing scholarly attention in recent years, with crickets being among the most discussed species. While the industrial strategy for increasing the role of crickets in food systems primarily involves treating them as functional ingredients in processed food products, traditional approaches regard them as food ingredients in their own right. However, literature discussing the cultural and culinary details of crickets as food is scant. In Taiwan, crickets have been used as both processed and traditional foods, yet their usage remains marginal, and literature is currently lacking. This study employed participatory action research and mixed methods to explore the culinary potential of crickets along traditional and modern approaches and assess consumer preferences for whole versus hidden crickets. Through collaborative inquiry, we elicited suitable Vietnamese and Japanese food traditions that are amenable to culinary innovation. Contrary to findings from Western contexts, the eaters in this study exhibited a clear preference for whole rather than hidden crickets. Our findings contribute to the development of a food culture strategy for crickets in Taiwan within the broader framework of sustainable food systems, offering valuable insights applicable to other ingredients, food traditions, and cultural contexts.
Foraging and Biocultural Capital: Toward Nutritional and Intergenerational Resilience in Community Food Systems
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Anne C. Bellows
Extrapolating from Bourdieu’s theory of cultural capital, this paper presentation introduces biocultural capital as capacity and asset to steward land, food, and knowledge in public commons for present and future generations. At the nexus of nutrition, planetary health and cultural well-being, foraging can support community-based biocultural capital in developing local self-determination and dignity with regard to local food sovereignty and nutrition security. This case study in Syracuse, New York, USA investigates how community partners and interested residents identify strategies to build biocultural capital through community-based foraging knowledge, networks, and practice.
