SecondBite | FareShare submission – Inquiry into food security in Victoria

SecondBite | FareShare had the honour of presenting to the Inquiry into Food Security in Victoria on Tuesday 20 August. They addressed the pressing issue of rising food insecurity alongside 175 other key stakeholders, including city councils, healthcare providers, food charities, food businesses, and individuals with lived experiences of food insecurity.

SecondBite | FareShare’s Director of Government Relations & Strategy, Solly Fahiz, and Grants Program Officer, Rachael Terry, began by explaining what SecondBite | FareShare does, our focus on supporting access to nutritious food and providing targeted, tailored solutions for our charity partners and communities to aid people in need of food relief.

They continued by outlining the landscape of food insecurity in Victoria, a landscape in which 36% of Victorian households have experienced some kind of food insecurity in the last 12 months.

They then stressed that, while others concentrate on solving the root causes of food insecurity, the food relief sector will remain crucial. As such, SecondBite | FareShare will continue to play a key role in the redistribution of surplus food, while providing targeted and tailored programs.

SecondBite | FareShare programs

The four exciting SecondBite | FareShare programs Solly and Rachael outlined were:

Farmgate collections

SecondBite has been delivering surplus food to people experiencing food insecurity in every state of Australia since 2005, rescuing 25 million kilograms of edible food in 2023-2024 alone. However, the surplus from markets, supermarkets, and other retail outlets only represents 3% of total food waste generated in Australia.

Using their existing retail food rescue model, Farmgate has commenced work with some of Australia’s largest growers, manufacturers and freight companies to provide a regular stream of fresh produce into the food relief supply chain.

Solly and Rachael implored the government to consider a food donation tax incentive for food businesses who donate their surplus food, instead of sending it to landfill. The tax incentive bill, which recently passed the Senate and is currently going through a Senate committee inquiry stage, could help Australia achieve its 50% target in food waste reduction and generate up to $2 billion per annum in social, economic and environmental benefits, according to KPMG’s estimates.

Meals for the Mob

Meals for the Mob was created to address the disproportionately higher incidence of food insecurity and subsequent higher incidences of long-term health impacts, in particular diet-sensitive chronic diseases, in First Nations communities.

Working with dieticians and First Nations community leaders, Meals for the Mob provides free, culturally appropriate, nutritious meals that focus on maximising the intake of protein and vegetables within food-insecure communities.

We have since cooked more than 200,000 Meals for the Mob, supporting First Nations families and individuals experiencing food insecurity. Meals for the Mob continues to gain momentum in our Brisbane (Meanjin) kitchen and is now being expanded to Melbourne (Naarm).

Medically tailored meals

Australia is facing a deepening crisis of chronic conditions caused and exacerbated by poor-quality diets. This not only costs healthcare systems billions each year, but it also disproportionately affects food-insecure people, whose diet quality is generally lower.

Traditional food relief does not often take the health condition of a recipient into account when providing support. That’s why, in 2023, FareShare partnered with The George Institute for Global Health to investigate trialling a Medically Tailored Meals program in Australia.

With this initiative, SecondBite | FareShare aims to revolutionise food assistance for individuals and families in Australia facing the challenges of both food insecurity and chronic illness by tailoring meals to the participant’s illness, starting with adults with type 2 diabetes living in Melbourne.

Shelf stable meals

A considerable challenge for the food relief sector is the provision of food for regional and remote areas, areas that are cut off due to seasonal weather events, and communities affected by natural disasters.

To tackle these challenges and greatly improve disaster preparedness and resilience, FareShare has been developing an innovative meal range, using the latest freeze-dry and thermal-processing technologies, to transform our meals so that they do not require refrigeration and have a greatly extended shelf life.

After a successful pilot in Queensland’s remote Gulf of Carpentaria, we are now in the early stages of a project with the Queensland Department of Agriculture and Fisheries, developing tasty, nutritionally balanced meals that recognise cultural and dietary preferences.

The Facts & The Future

With Victoria remaining the fastest-growing state in the country (the population is expected to reach 10.3 million by 2051) and the need for the SecondBite | FareShare services showing no signs of abating, it is clear that the Victorian food relief sector will need considerable resourcing and support for a long time to come.

Given this truth, these innovative SecondBite | FareShare programs put SecondBite | FareShare in a prime position to help improve the physical, mental and social wellbeing of people in Victoria experiencing food insecurity.

And with that, Solly and Rachael concluded by proclaiming that the time to transition to a fairer, more equitable food system for all Victorians is now!

A version of this article was originally published by SecondBite.