115 Small, Slow and Shared: Emerging Social Innovations in Urban Australian Foodscapes Ferne Edwards Bring your surplus home grown fruit, vegies, herbs, food/plant seeds, seedlings, eggs, honey, jams and preserves and swap your produce with other local home producers! (‘Bacchus’) Grab your spades and gloves, get sweaty, have fun, learn lots and feel all warm and fuzzy afterwards! … (‘Events’) The quotes above, drawn from alternative food networks that are based in major Australian cities, optimistically call for participation in produce and growing ‘swaps’. They do so in the belief that such exchanges will promote greater food security, sustainability and community resilience in cities. Other enticements include: ‘We are diferent—in a good way! Great tasting local produce, as fresh as can be, we play fair with our farmers, we use way less packaging…’ (Foodconnect). These more urban-based, fresh food initiatives represent an emerging alternative to ‘You don’t have to go to a supermarket—woo hoo!’ (Foodconnect). 1 New social practices based around food are emerging as a response to many uncertainties and contradictions evident within the current industrial food system. Critical changes in economic, political and environmental conditions over the last few years have challenged the sustainability and security of the world’s food supplies. Australia is not insulated from the impacts of these global changes, sufering from climate change and increased agricultural costs, contributing in part to health impacts such as obesity and food poverty (Edwards, Larsen and Ryan). Economic and social inequalities present within the global food chain are further expressed in Australia due to the concentration of power held by the national supermarket duopoly. As a reaction to the vulnerabilities of the dominant neoliberal food system based on industrialisation, privatisation, deregulation, standardisation and commodiication, there are a growing number of informal, localised and community-based social practices based around food appearing in Australian cities. These new producer-consumers go beyond green consumerist, 1 <http://brisbane.foodconnect.com.au>. Accessed 26 October 2011.