A day in the life as a Food Hub Coordinator…
Written by Amy Tacey, Food Hub Coordinator at Common Ground Project 2023/2024
As I near the end of my role as a Food Hub Coordinator at Common Ground Project, to be succeeded by new roles in our Education and Farm team, (the timing of this blog post is remarkable! See the job ads here), I wanted to take you all through a day in the life of a Food Hub Coordinator in a place based, small regenerative farm and social enterprise.
What a fabulous journey, and opportunity I have been on these past two years, at the near start of my career. From the moment I desperately packed up my house in Fitzroy North, finishing small projects and finding somewhere to live on the Coast, I knew this role would be a wild and interesting ride, diving in (to the ocean and) the ecosystem of food and farming actors in the Greater Geelong region, meeting new people, learning their unique positioning in the web, and inserting myself into some of those to build relationships and understand how we can collectively improve the food system for this vast region.
So have you ever wondered what a Food Hub Coordinator might have done yesterday? last week? It’s a question you get asked at a dinner party.
I arrived at Werribee Park Community Farm, invited by Glenn from the Hope Community Garden at Cultura and the Karen/Karenni women he drove up there in a little mini bus. We were greeted by Pi Pi, the volunteer garden manager of the little plot inside Werribee Park Mansion, neighboured by Damien who we were soon to meet, a volunteer manager of an adjacent garden that works with NDIS participants to grow veggies also. Pi Pi trades the veggies, beans, water spinach, melons, coriander, chillies, with her Karen/Karenni acquaintances from down the road in North Geelong through cash transactions and bouts of laughter. They speak in their language and make the transactions, filling bags and talking about their growing, what’s working and what's not working. I hang back waiting for all the women to finish their transactions with Pi Pi, acquiring the veggies they're used to cooking with, and that which will feed their families for the next week or so. When they’re done, Pi Pi offers the rest to me, whatever is left over, to buy for Common Ground Project’s Produce Market at Cultura. I purchase leftover chilies, coriander, a big melon and water spinach, with cash, and with no receipt.
Women purchasing veggies grown at Werribee Park Community Farm
These exchanges are funny moments to capture when talking about the transforming of systems, but they’re also funny to capture financially, with the accounting side of it never quite an efficient system, exchanging cash between a volunteer grower and a charity organisation. These informal parts of the economy exist everywhere, but also aren't as common in Australian ‘alternative food networks’ such as those that are housed by organisations, led by local council or a partnership of stakeholders. After all, as not for profits we do want and need the clearest display and record of exchanges to show information for funding applications, funding acquittals and organisational storytelling. They don’t fit the mould, they’re messy and not something meant for rigidity or structure. At this point, ideas and thoughts are flying about in my mind about ways to assist this process over time, once relationships are established and a routine of purchasing is there. Perhaps a session with Pi Pi and Hsar, the young Karenni Park Ranger that is often at the garden translating for Pi Pi, where I can provide an invoice template for her to use, and we can discuss if there is a bank account that is an appropriate place to transfer to.
Pi Pi finishes our transaction with a comment (through Hsar), that this cash I have provided will support the little farm to buy seeds and compost to keep producing vegetables for her community. We are almost ready to head home, with Glenn planning a picnic lunch with his mini bus crew at another shaded spot near the Community Farm, when I ask about purple beans, abundantly hanging along the edge of the circular farm, over the entrance and creaking through the fence to the outside. Pi Pi replies that she’d love to sell them to me, but they never have enough people power to harvest them. Glenn mobilises the Karen/Karenni women to all pick together for 10 minutes before we leave, everyone hurriedly bringing handfuls and tubs to me to put on Pi Pi’s scales. We buy and take home 2 kilos of purple beans to sell in punnets at the Market, and at other outlets like the onsite Market inside in the then Cafe, and in Veggie Boxes. With any chance we get we talk to customers about these small, local and important community spaces that this produce was grown in, 65kms from our regenerative farm in Freshwater Creek, and 40kms from where it will be sold the next day at the low cost Market at Cultura, for the same price we bought it for.
It humbles and jerks me into the mnemonic reminder that the community sector is a industry or a sector going toward the community, trying to meet them where they’re at and fitting their sector activities, initiatives, systems and operations into the existence of regular daily lives of a diverse range of people.
I head back to the farm with an abundance of produce that we don’t grow, knowing that for this market, in this moment, between what we’ve grown and packed on our regenerative farm for the Market the following day and what we’ve purchased here, we’ve covered a range of small interactions and systems that are pushing against those that harm our region in economic, cultural, social, environmental, and human ways. They, for just a moment, oppose the world in seven cheap things (see; Raj Patel and Jason Moore, cheap nature, money, work, care, food, energy and lives). Yet, they are not perfect, they rely on cheap labour: volunteer farmers at Werribee Park Community Farm. But we can imagine an economic food system that actually benefits farmers and opposes the ism that actually “has in fact been catastrophically expensive” (O’Connell, 2018).
Common Ground Project continues to expand on its ability to hold and empower young food and farming system leaders, and I am proud that we have more of those opportunities to come in 2025. It’s rare to find entry level roles and rarer to find work in the ‘food system sector’.
There’s a real youthful, dynamic passion that comes from the team and from those who have moved on from CGP, people who are still connected and contributing (hello Cassie and Clarrie!), and I know that this will be me, Madeline and Hannah as we move on into the world bursting with ideas and a stubborn desire for transformative change.
See you around at a Market or event, or perhaps the Seeds of Strength Community Dinner on February 25th with Geelong Sustainability!
End of the visit with bags of produce grown by Pi Pi at Werribee Park Community Farm.
Common Ground Project X Cultura Market stall April 2024 of some of the veg; purple beans, bok choy, okra, green tomatoes and apples.
