It all sounds logical and reasonable - until the second-last para where "re-educating Australian consumers about value" gives way to creating "a purely domestic system that is protected from globalised economics". That sounds like locking out imports and forcing domestic consumers to buy only local produce that will be expensive without competition. Some of us remember that we got rid of such domestic consumption schemes in the 1980s and do not want it back. Intellectually bankrupt wishing for protectionism will get us nowhere. Development and promotion of native Australian foods is our unique avenue to high-value production that also will have to rely mainly on export markets. The bad example is how macadamias became Hawaii nuts in the hands of smarter marketers. Opportunities are still there such as the nascent riberry industry.

Mat, before you start setting national agricultural and food policy, please realize that your thinking so far is aloof and elitist, rooted in affluence. For a substantial part of the Australian community, the minimum price of food is the primary consideration. Some of this is due to ignorance, but some reflects their lower income than ours. Thus, the model of producing cheap stuff for the world and ourselves eating home-grown truffles does not work. Neither does our current economic model account only for one benefit: organic food is widely available to those who demand it. I would applaud a French-style food culture in Australia, but it cannot be imposed through regulation.

As a beekeeper on Kangaroo Island, I have a vested interest in boutique food marketing. Kangaroo Island beekeepers cannot meet the demand for our varietal honeys and co-operation rather than competition within our community is taken for granted. I market interstate and overseas without compromising on price. I do not expect protectionism but I am driven to fury by government regulations designed for large scale business. Market forces can ensure quality control - but bureaucrats cannot resist writing regulations that they cannot enforce but which ties up administrative time to justify their salaries.

Matt, the grumpy but wise old man of conservative letters, Roger Scruton, puts a compelling argument about 'value' in his book about wine, 'I drink therefore I am'. In a commentary about the 'small' and 'local' nature of French wine-making, he writes about Chinon vigneron Charles Jorguet who is challenged on the unexpected death of his father by his inheritance of a vineyard producing a 'commodity' grape variety in the Val de Loire. 'Jorguet applied himself,' Scruton writes, 'to the deep question of why cabernet franc has never been valued at its worth. The error, he concluded, has been the failure to localise. A product can have a price however freely it roams; but it can have a value only when attached to somewhere definite.' There are many examples of where a growing number of Australian producers' identification of 'place' delivers 'value' for the 'local' food which they produce - value that accrues not only to the farmer but to the often-small places in which they live, invigorating a local commmunity, creating jobs. The argument that you put is an important one. Australian farm policy for too long has had only an export orientation, driven by 'commodity', not 'place'.

Supermarkets are driven by profit not price. Price is determined by location & the relative affluence of local consumers & what they can bear, as can be attested by anyone who has had cause to visit two different supermarkets in the same day in different areas

Have you ever seen a supermarket aisle that was reserved for locally grown and prepared produce?

Such consumer choice is not encouraged by big food business because you would find retail price would not be too dissimilar to the imported product, but store profit would take a big hit.

The answer is to take advantage of alternate food distribution and marketing that is available now through the internet and forming alliances with companies specializing in direct delivery of groceries to households.

Grow not just alternative farming but alternative marketing in tandem.

At the Slow Food meeting, Italian economist Claudio Malagoli argued that food must be cherished and priced by its real value to our society. If we don't hear and act, we may consign future Australians to food scarcity, malnourishment and sickness. Food is a basic human right and starvation is not acceptable, anywhere.

Maragoli showed most farmers are everywhere marginalised and dispossessed by globalised trade that sets one price for traded commodities. Producing where the direct and costs are lowest means everyone mines their land and water for the lowest value biomass to feed huge transnational industries which reap most rewards. This ecological war ignores the social, environmental and health impacts of factory farming, the needs of people for local, fresh and nutritious foods, and the lost opportunities when food is treated only as factory fodder.

Free trade foolishness has seen the number of hungry people world-wide climb to 1.2 billion - 20% of the human family. Yet hundreds of millions of ex-farmers globally are bankrupt, landless and in despair, eking out desperate lives in city slums.

Our deluded governments back the 20% of industrial farmers who produce mostly commodities for export. They largely ignore the producers of real food - fresh, clean, green and GM-free. Officials have relentlessly pursued the myths of global free trade and bargain basement prices for decades, also driving many Australian farmers off their land and delivering ownership of our productive assets to foreign corporations or tax-funded speculators.

Governments must now admit their global free trade policies fail to meet our community's real food needs, with the nation ever more dependent on others to feed us, as the Food and Grocery Council reported last week.

As oil and phosphates run out, the climate changes and our suburbs consume our food bowls, the globalised industrial agribusiness model must be declared obsolete. It cannot be transformed as its inputs dry up.

Now is the moment for rural and urban Australian citizens to direct our governments to join us in creating affordable, safe, secure and sovereign food supply systems for this and future generations. If they will not lead they must follow us!

I provide Certified Organic food to my customers and will not stock or provide GM products to my customers.

Until there are sufficient scientific studies undertaken and the results widely published as being safe if that be the case I will not support GM food for stock or human consumption.

Robin Brown

We need many more healthy regional communities to sustain local niche industries. With small towns out here 100klms apart there isn't much scope for small boutique products.

Enough! We are flat out complying with the regulations set by a succession of self-interested beaurocratic politicians; balancing budgets if possible, working all hours to grow our crops and not having enough money to employ extra staff to assist with any of these tasks.

We do a pretty damn fine job of growing beef & grains - striving to achieve the economy of scale so espoused by the "experts".

Now - it is all about "boutique". Answer me this:Given the world is enduring a 'GFC' (in spite of Wayne Swan's delusions), how will the world's population afford "boutique" foods?