Griffith University’s doctoral candidate Sheriden Keegan is working with local and state governments, community organisations and industries to strengthen food supply systems.
Her research looks at acute disaster response as well as longer term strategic planning for food supply resilience at regional levels.
She is working with leaders and experts from food systems in Northern Rivers New South Wales and the Cairns region to produce a roadmap that can be used by other regions to create resilience food systems.
Sheriden explores leadership and decision-making in food resilience in regional areas and how governance can help strengthen that resilience.
Her work in identifying the guiding principles for resilient food systems will help to ensure continuation of food supply in disasters and at other times.
The lessons learned during disasters with interruptions to food supplies also inform her research. She is interviewing stakeholders and experts within food systems to gain insights about the critical issues for resilience and what needs to be done to increase food availability during acute crises and disasters and long-term food resilience.
Sheriden is interested in developing a place-based approach to food security and food resilience.
“Every region will be different in terms of the sorts of impacts they have, the disaster impacts and the strength of the community that live there as well will also have a huge role to play in their resilience and their adaptive capacity,” she says.
“But what I’m looking at is providing an overarching framework by identifying the critical factors related to governance and regional food system resilience. It’s not going to be prescriptive, such as this is what you have to do, but in terms of its application within various different places with various different needs, these are some of the guiding principles.”
She wants to help re-localise food, reconnecting people with the places food it is grown, rather than see continued reliance on supermarkets. This includes exploring related issues such as food usage, the value of food, reducing food waste, and education about how to use raw products when supermarkets convenience is not available, for example during a disaster.
Communities can benefit enormously from increased self-reliance, with the development of circular economies in regions. Farmers also benefit by being paid a higher price for their produce, creating more viable businesses with access to stable markets,
“The farmers will thrive, but also the people will have more access to that healthy food. That is not the food that is processed and packaged and comes in your in the supermarket from overseas. It’s the food that is real food that’s going provide them the nutrients they need,” she said.
Disasters put strains on food systems and create significant challenges for the continuation of supply chains. Sheriden says a big problem for those involved in disasters is that food relief is generally often lacking fresh, healthy food options with a reliance on packaged and dry foods.
“While it is very important food, it would be great if there could be more of that really fresh healthy food available for people during disasters as well,” she says.
“In situations where roads get blocked or borders are closed due to pandemics, so that we’re not left stranded with very little food supply, we should really expand upon that local infrastructure and our local capacity.
“This will add that diversity of one more channel through which we can get our food. It’s like not putting all your eggs in one basket.
“It’s about building on local infrastructure and the reason I’m looking at it at that regional scale is because there is a limit to what local food producers can do with direct marketing. Rather than just selling produce to farmers markets or at the farm gate, there’s a real need to create more infrastructure and a better network for how to get that local food to consumers in a way that is a bit more scaled up, so we can get more local food being channelled through the consumers.
“Within that regional scale, it really encourages that more democratic decision making as well. There’s scope for increased discussions on what those environmental impacts could be or the land use planning issues and tensions. It can give voice to farmers and what their needs are as well.
“Food policy councils are one example of how that’s been enacted in various places around the world, there’s quite a few of those in America and Europe now and would be great to see more of those kinds of platforms happening in Australia too.”
Sheriden says there are good examples of food resilience such as aggregation of local food through food hubs, which are convenient for consumers with benefits for everyone involved and ecosystems as well.
“Anything that encourages more healthy food to be available is going to be helpful in terms of health and for the longevity of the land as well for people to be more connected and aware where their food comes from and the impacts that food production has on the land as well,” she says.
Sheriden’s research is driven by the increasing frequency of severe weather events and the need to learn how to be better equipped to feed people in the future.
“I’m just seeing this repeating pattern of disaster, empty shelves, people in isolated communities with no food source,” she says.
She wants to find solutions to the reliance, particularly within Australia, on industrial agriculture, long distance transport and a very monopolised retail market with large supermarket chains having the large role of governance in the food supply.
“I feel like there has to be a more viable alternative than being reliant on supermarkets and industrial agriculture for our food,” she says.
Her Ph.D was prompted by her experiences in the 2022 in the Northern Rivers (Lismore) of NSW when the small rural community she lives in was isolated by landslides extended power and communication cuts and limited food supplies.
That was followed by the absence of a supermarket in nearby Lismore for more than five months. It was the presence of the supply of local food that really got her thinking about long-term resilience of food supply and how local food growers could get their produce to those in need during disasters.
You can read more about Sheriden’s research through the links below
