By Oxfam Australia intern, Jarrod Strauch
More and more people are becoming concerned with the origin of their food – and understandably so, when so much of what’s available is bought by a middle man and presented to you in bulk.
It’s easy for a supermarket to say your vegetables are fresh and never frozen, but where would you rather shop: the vegetable aisle of a supermarket, weeding out the withered capsicums and wilted lettuce, or at an open-air market face-to-face with the men and women who grew your food?
Established in 2002, the community-owned Collingwood Children’s Farmers’ Market features more than 50 Victorian producers with a wide range of products, including fresh fruit and vegetables, free-range meat and poultry, and hand-made dairy products. Market-goers can buy produce directly from the supplier and get all the information they need, whether it’s about the best variety of cheese for their purpose or what’s been used to grow the vegetables in front of them. The market is open from 8am – 1pm on the second Saturday of every month.
As part of the Challenging the Hunger Myths: Land is Life speakers’ tour, Oxfam will be presenting the Land is Life photographic exhibition with guest speakers Collette Solomon, Gertruida Baartman and Roseline Presence from the Women on Farms Project in South Africa at the market this Saturday 9 June at 11am.
The Land is Life exhibition features photos from renowned photographer Matthew Willman and documents the work of the WFP, an Oxfam partner which aims to help women small-scale producers in South Africa through providing tools and financial support.
In some communities, women make up 60% of small-scale farmers, despite having less access to credit, markets, and important agricultural tools. By improving their access to these resources, we could reduce the number of people who go to bed hungry each night by 100-150 million, more than 10% of the one billion people in the world who currently go to bed hungry each night.
Collingwood Children’s Farmers’ Market is located on St Helies St, Abbotsford. For more information, visit their website.
