Presentation: Do Alternative Food Networks Increase Access To Fresh Food?

This presentation sets out the
results of preliminary research on

the impacts of alternative food
networks access to fresh fruit and
vegetables.
It builds on earlier research on
access to healthy food through
traditional food retailers, such as
supermarkets and green grocers in
the City of Sydney local government
area .
Jenni Downes, Institute for Sustainable Futures

Impact of Alternative Food Networks on access to healthy food
Presentation at: Food Politics: From the Margins to the Mainstream
30 June - 1 July 2016, University of Tasmania
The Institute of Sustainable Futures

at the University of Technology
Sydney, is an applied,
transdiciplinary research
consultancy with approximately 50
researchers working across 10
research areas, including food.


The environmental and social

benefits of alternative food networks
(AFNs) frequently cited include:
Increased food security
Reduced food miles and
associated emissions
More sustainable agriculture
Improved health
Increased social connection
Reduced consumer food waste.
However, questions have been
raised about whether there is a
sufficient evidence base behind
these claims, and whether the
benefits of AFNs are available
evenly across society, or might be
restricted to a small group of highly
informed, affluent consumers.
A brief review of literature finds, for

example, a substantial corner of
policy research that questions
whether AFNs actually increase food
accessibility, a key component of
food security (eg. Broad, 2016;
USDA, 2010; Foodlinks, 2013;
CMAP, 2014).
Food security has a number of

components. This schema, based
on the definition of food security by
the Australian Institute of Family
Studies (2011), sets out three
components of food security. There
is certainly plenty of anecdotal
evidence to suggest that AFNs have
positive impacts on aspects like
sustainable production and variety
and quality of food.
However another key component of
food security is accessibility. This
includes both a person/communitys
ability to physically access food, but
also to afford it. This study explores
the impact of AFNs on these two
components, focusing specifically on
two elements: location of outlets and
cost of food.

This study considers 4 types of

AFNs:
Farmers markets
Food cooperatives
Food box schemes
Community gardens.
Another common type of AFN,

community supported agriculture, is
not included because the author is
not aware of any current schemes*
operating within the City of Sydney.
* FoodConnect was an example of

community supported agriculture,
but it shut down, and only its City
Cousin collection hubs were
adopted by Ooooby.

In terms of accessibility, the number

of farmers markets in Australia has
doubled between 2004 an 2011,
meaning that there are more farmers
markets around than ever.
In terms of affordability, US research
finds that farmers markets increase
the availability of low cost produce in
areas of low income/socio-economic
status. However anecdotal evidence
suggests that Australian farmers
markets may be more expensive
than the traditional commercialised
produce channels.
There are 5 farmers markets
in/around the City of Sydney:
1 local/producer market
3 organic markets
1 commercial/reseller.

In terms of accessibility, Food Coops will be the same as for

traditional store-based retailers:
dependent on location + public
transport access.
In terms of affordability, cooperatives are usually non-profit and
exist for the benefit of their
members, plus they often offer
discounts to members and
volunteers, meaning that food may
be more affordable.
There are 4 food Co-Ops in and
around the City of Sydney, however
only one actually sells fresh fruit and
veg in its store. The others only
stock dry goods in the shop, and
instead operate food box schemes.

Box schemes include both: box

collection and box delivery.
In terms of accessibility:
Collection schemes require people

to carry a whole weeks worth of
veggies. This may be difficult for
people reliant on active or public
transport. In addition, boxes only
available to collect one day a week,
which may hinder access if the set
day doesnt suit your travel
schedule.
Delivery schemes can overcome

accessibility issues if the delivery
schedule/process suits. A number of
delivery schemes have 2 delivery
days per week which can increase
access.
In terms of affordability, anecdotal

evidence revealed that ability to pay for
the either collection or delivery boxes
can be compromised if the payment
deduction schedule does not suit your
income schedule. Delivery can also
sometimes incurs additional fee on top
of box cost.
There are

14 box collection hubs in the City

of Sydney, operated by 5 different
organisations
10 box delivery organisations that

deliver in City of Sydney, including 3
organic schemes.
Accessibility can be an issue

because of limited membership.
Most gardens in the City of Sydney
have long waiting lists.
Community gardens can certainly
reduce the financial cost of fruit and
veg, but there is a substantial cost in
terms of time, effort and skills. It can
also be difficult to provide a full
weeks worth of fruit and veg
meaning that some purchases are
still required.
There are 29 community gardens in
the City of Sydney, each with a
between 15 to 55 members.
5 are located in the vicinity of
public housing area, which focus
on low income members and
have higher production.
Most other gardens in the area

are used more for the social
benefits of community
gardening.

A brief overview of the method

follows. Further details can be
provided on request.

This study builds off previous

research in 2014/2015 on the
affordability and accessibility of
traditional food retailers in the City of
Sydney local government area.
Using the Victorian Healthy Food
Basket methodology and data
collection ap developed by Monash
university, that research explored
the location and cost of individual
outlets in relation to a wide variety of
factors such as household types,
level of income and socio-economic
status, and access to public and
private transport etc.

The Victorian Healthy Food Basket

includes a total of 44 items,
designed to meet the nutritional
needs of a household for a fortnight.
This study focuses on just the 10
fresh fruit and veg items of the
basket. It draws location and cost
data of traditional retailers from the
earlier research and supplements it
with new location and cost data of
alternative food networks.

In addition to the 4 Alternative Food

Networks set out earlier, traditional
food networks were represented by
Supermarkets and Green grocers.
Supermarkets were broken down
further into:
Chain stores
(like Woolies and Coles)
Franchise stores (like IGA)
Independent supermarkets
Discount supermarkets
(like Aldi).
Green grocers were broken down
further into:
Standard grocers
Asian grocers, including a
large-scale Asian market
Premium grocers.

The location of traditional food retailers

was provided by the City of Sydney based
on planning and development permissions.
The locations were geo-spatially mapped
using QGIS, using a buffer of 500m, the
upper limit specified as walkable by the
NSW Healthy Urban Development
Checklist (2009).
Our research team visited all stores in the
City and recorded prices for each of these
items in the Monash app, and then
calculated the cost based on the quantity
of each item that a single adult household
needed.
The location of alternative food networks in
the City of Sydney was compiled through
internet research and mapped on top of
traditional outlets to understand any
increase in accessibility.
The cost of alternative food networks was
determined through internet research and
emails. Farmers markets and Co-ops were
based on the same Healthy Food Basket
list, while food boxes were based on either
the smallest set box, or the Food Basket
list (if customisation was available),
whichever was the cheaper.

(This acknowledges that alternative is

trying to get away from habitual/
convenience buying into local/seasonal.
We assume that the box mix has enough
to meet nutritional needs this requires
further research to confirm.)
Data on community gardens was gathered
via 2 interviews with council /garden
coordinator + US research

The output of the original research was

a map of the location of traditional
outlets within and around the boundary
of the City of Sydney local government
area. Accessibility was indicated by
concentric circles indication distance
from an outlet.
Green dots represent all supermarkets
and green grocers.
Yellow shading indicate areas within
500m of an outlet representing the
upper limit of walkability.*
Orange and red shading indicate
areas outside walkable distance,
which we refer to as poorly serviced
areas.
Grey shading indicates large parkland,
devoid of residences.
The research identified a number of
areas of concerning access on the
fringes of the boundary and in the
south**, as well as an inner city area
that includes substantial public housing
and student populations.
* As per the NSW Healthy Urban
Development Checklist.
** The southern section of the city is more
suburban in nature, and has:

- a higher rate of private vehicle ownership,

allowing greater distance to outlets
- more frequent and larger backyard
allowing green thumbs to have their own
private gardens.
On top of this data for traditional

outlets, we map the location of the
three retail-based alternative food
networks:
The 5 farmers markets are
indicated with blue circles
The food co-op which directly
sells fruit and veg is indicated by
a blue star
The box collection hubs are
indicated by blue triangles.
Blue rings indicate the 500m
walkable radius around these
alternative food networks.
Encouragingly, we see that some
alternative food networks are
located in the poorly serviced areas
of Eveleigh and the Citys east.
However no alternative food
networks extend access to the
poorly serviced fringe areas or the
Citys South.

Next we map the location of

community gardens on top of our
traditional retailer outlets.
Again we see a similar trend:
community gardens are located in
the inner poorly serviced area,
however no community gardens are
located in current poorly serviced
areas of the Citys south or fringes.

Finally we combine retail-based

alternative food networks and
community gardens, to see the
overall impact of alternative food
networks on the location of fresh
fruit and veg within the City of
Sydney.
Aside from very small pockets with
maximum of 750m distance to
outlets, there are no poorly serviced
areas within the inner core of the
City of Sydney. However poorly
serviced areas still remain on the
western and northern fringes of the
City, as well as most of the Citys
south.


We start first by looking at the cost

of the various types of alternative
food networks.
From cheapest to most expensive,
these are:
1.
co-op food box schemes (these

are volunteer run and put no mark-up
on the wholesale cost of their box. In
return, both had a small membership
fee and required volunteer hours
from members)
2.
other food box collection

schemes
(two providers have 5 hubs each,
similarly priced to each other, there is
also a boutique scheme which
focuses very specifically on local,
sourcing from Sydney food bowl
growers treated as outliers in the
data)

3.
farmers markets
4.
food co-op store
5.
standard box delivery schemes
6.
organic box delivery schemes.
22
This cost data is now shown as a

stylised boxplot of the data.
Note that these are based on
extremely small sample sizes and
are therefore for indicative purposes
only, to enable a comparison of the
midpoint and spread, compared to
traditional food retailers.

23
Next we look at the cost of

In terms of supermarkets, we can
see the discount supermarket is
noticeably cheaper while the others
have the same median cost.
In terms of green grocers, the
cheapest is the large-scale Asian
market. Asian grocers and standard
green grocers are a similar median
price to the main supermarkets,
while premium grocers are, not
surprisingly the most expensive
(including one particularly expensive
certified, organic grocer).

24
Considering traditional and

alternative outlets side by side, the
first finding is that the costs of the
alternative food networks vary over
a much greater range than do the
traditional networks.

25
The two Uni Co-Ops with their own

food box schemes are on par with
the cheap options identified amongst
traditional retailers: the discount
supermarket and the large-scale
Asian market.
All other alternative food networks
are generally more expensive than
This is not unexpected, nor a basis
for criticism of alternative food
networks. These alternatives often
operate in direct opposition to the
traditional, large-scale industrialised
agriculture. They are smaller-scale,
more environmentally and socially
sustainable and are much more
about love of food than efficiency of
production.
However, affordability of food is a
key component of food security, and
this finding does suggest that
alternative food networks are
currently less affordable.

26
The final analysis in the study

considers the components of
physical access and affordability
together, for an overall picture of the
impact on accessibility of fresh
produce in the City of Sydney.
This section presents the
intersection of location and cost. In
the original research of traditional
food retailers, we considered
affordable food retailer outlets to be
the cheaper outlets, specifically
those below the median healthy food
basket cost the bottom half of
outlets. We again use the median
(this time of the fresh fruit and veg
component of the basket only) to
determine the cheap outlets to be
mapped.

This map of cheap traditional retail

outlets shows much greater areas of
the City outside walkable distance.
Indeed outside of: a ring along
George St/Broadway/Glebe Point
Rd, and clusters in Ultimo,
Newtown, Surry Hills and
Darlinghurst, most of the city falls
into orange and red shading, or
areas with poor walkability to
traditional outlets of cheap fresh
produce.

If we then map only those of the

alternative food networks which fall
below the median of the traditional
food networks (the two Co-Ops who
operate their own box collection
scheme), we see that the impact on
walkability to cheap fresh produce
is not huge.

Following are the tentative

conclusions we can draw from this
preliminary research.
In presenting these conclusions, it is
important to note that this research
focuses on one single inner city area
and is preliminary in nature only.
Further research is required to
determine if a similar pattern exists
generally across metropolitan/urban
areas of Sydney and indeed
Australia.
Also important is further
investigation into the existence of
current or emerging alternative food
networks that specifically aim to
address issues of affordability (like
the 5 Waterloo community gardens
focusing on public housing
residents).

Alternative food networks appear to cost

more, and have only minimal impact on
increasing physical access to fresh
produce.
Earlier we alluded to reasons why
alternative food networks may be more
expensive than traditional food retailers
(which are often highly commercialised
and reliant on intensely, industrialised
agricultural production).
It is also important to note that cost of
food is just one component of food
security. While it is a particularly
significant factor for individual/household
food security, questions of broader food
security must take into consideration
broader conceptions of cost, in terms of
environmental and social costs, and the
potential for future consequences on
prices.
Both industrialised agriculture and the
practices of the major supermarkets,
particularly with respect to suppliers,
have been called into questioned
regarding their possible long term
detrimental impact on food security. A
focus on cost in isolation to these other
factors, could cause bigger issues.

Despite this, the current study suggests

that alternative food networks may
currently not provide their celebrated
benefits to those households for whom
food security is currently a very real
concern.
Thanks to Ben Madden for

producing the accessibility maps,
and to Matt Daly for desktop
research on alternative food
networks within the City of Sydney.
Thanks also to the original research
team on traditional food retailers:
Emma Partridge, Jason Prior, Peter
Rickwood and Ben Madden, and to
the City of Sydney who
commissioned the original research.

The following pages present some

additional details with regards to
methodology and the findings from
the previous study on traditional
food retailers.

The Healthy Food Basket used in

the original research contained 10
items of fresh fruit and vegetable
items which formed the basis of the
current study.
As part of the full basket of 44 items,
these 10 fruit and vegetables
provided the full nutritional needs of
the specified households.
ISF acknowledges that definitions of
healthy are many and varied, and
that this list of fruit and vegetables
may not conform to everyones
definition of a healthy mix of fresh
fruit and vegetables, nor may it be
culturally appropriate for all
households within the City of
Sydney or more broadly.
Finally, with the push for health to
include consideration of
environmental sustainability, the
selection may not always be
regionally and seasonally
appropriate.

34
Cost data on fresh fruit and veg in

traditional food retailers was
collected in August 2014. Cost data
on alternative food networks was
collected in June 2016. Consumer
Price Index data on the cost of fruit
and vegetables in Sydney indicates
that prices have remained relatively
stable with some seasonal variation.
Both data collection phases were
conducted in winter, and therefore
no adjustment was made to the
2014 prices.

35
The original research found that

fresh and fruit and veg was the
largest component of the Healthy
Food Basket in terms of cost, and
experienced the most variation in
price across the stores analysed.

36
Not surprisingly the original research

found that the cost of a healthy food
basket increased relative to the size
of the household, as did the range of
basket costs. Given that most
analysis is based on the Single adult
household, findings of cost and
spread are likely to be even greater
for the bigger households.

37
The results from the previous slide

are graphed here. For most
households on minimum
Government assistance, a median
healthy food basket cost between a
quarter and a third of fortnightly
income. For a couple with two
children on minimum Government
assistance, the median basket cost
reached a level labelled in the
literature as food stress.

38
This map shows the original cost

data mapped across the City of
Sydney. It demonstrates that the
majority of cheap (ie. below
median) food baskets are found in a
central core in the inner and upper
eastern parts of the City.

39

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This presentation sets out the

results of preliminary research on

Jenni Downes, Institute for Sustainable Futures

The Institute of Sustainable Futures

Jenni Downes, Institute for Sustainable Futures

Jenni Downes, Institute for Sustainable Futures

The environmental and social

A brief review of literature finds, for

Food security has a number of

Jenni Downes, Institute for Sustainable Futures

This study considers 4 types of

Another common type of AFN,

* FoodConnect was an example of

Jenni Downes, Institute for Sustainable Futures

In terms of accessibility, the number

Jenni Downes, Institute for Sustainable Futures

In terms of accessibility, Food Coops will be the same as for

Jenni Downes, Institute for Sustainable Futures

Box schemes include both: box

Collection schemes require people

Delivery schemes can overcome

In terms of affordability, anecdotal

Jenni Downes, Institute for Sustainable Futures

14 box collection hubs in the City

10 box delivery organisations that

Accessibility can be an issue

Most other gardens in the area

Jenni Downes, Institute for Sustainable Futures

A brief overview of the method

Jenni Downes, Institute for Sustainable Futures

This study builds off previous

Jenni Downes, Institute for Sustainable Futures

The Victorian Healthy Food Basket

Jenni Downes, Institute for Sustainable Futures

In addition to the 4 Alternative Food

Jenni Downes, Institute for Sustainable Futures

The location of traditional food retailers

Jenni Downes, Institute for Sustainable Futures

(This acknowledges that alternative is

Jenni Downes, Institute for Sustainable Futures

The output of the original research was

Jenni Downes, Institute for Sustainable Futures

- a higher rate of private vehicle ownership,

On top of this data for traditional

Jenni Downes, Institute for Sustainable Futures

Next we map the location of

Jenni Downes, Institute for Sustainable Futures

Finally we combine retail-based

Jenni Downes, Institute for Sustainable Futures

Jenni Downes, Institute for Sustainable Futures

We start first by looking at the cost

co-op food box schemes (these

other food box collection

Jenni Downes, Institute for Sustainable Futures

food co-op store

standard box delivery schemes

organic box delivery schemes.

This cost data is now shown as a

Jenni Downes, Institute for Sustainable Futures

Next we look at the cost of

Jenni Downes, Institute for Sustainable Futures

Considering traditional and

Jenni Downes, Institute for Sustainable Futures