Organic food is enjoying increased mainstream acceptance, and the market growth that comes with that, but as a consequence has been subject to scrutiny over its ability to deliver the environmental and social benefits it is sometimes seen to embody. This article responds to the limited space thus far afforded to farmers’ voices in the literature on this topic. Using an innovative case study approach and focusing on four farms in the Northern Rivers of New South Wales, each with their own experiences of organics, we explore how farmers understand both the growth and nature of organic farming systems. We discuss organics as ‘generative metaphor’ in these farmers’ narratives, operating at the intersections between farmer agency, local places, culture, and forms of social organisation, and global discourses of alterity, ecology, and sustainability. While their stories describe a considerable opening of organic farming in recent years, contrasting this with earlier defenses of the classification standard in the face of cultural and economic marginalisation, providing an alternative to conventional food remains central to farmers’ descriptions of their place in the food system.

This paper examines recent efforts to promote fruit and vegetable consumption within a provincial Philippine city. In August 2009, the municipal government of Urdaneta launched a comprehensive backyard/community gardening program to address ongoing problems related to community health and household self-sufficiency. Paying particular attention to the sometimes complex interplay between the political objectives of municipal government officials and the subsistence and economic needs of everyday citizens, this work adds ethnographic depth to current understanding about (1) how issues of hunger, food insecurity, and inadequate diet are addressed in developing urban areas, and (2) how these responses variously figure into matters of household self-sufficiency and well-being. Such analysis not only provides new insights into problems now increasingly encountered in cities across the Global South, it also elucidates the efficacy of those strategies that encourage grassroots participation in getting local urbanites to produce and eat more fruits and vegetables.

The article explores destination image brand building and maintenance processes in a case study of Bangalow village. It describes Bangalow’s transformation from a shabby highway drive-through to a successful heritage tourism destination and desirable residential village through a long term Mainstreet project led by Professor Henry Sanoff supported by dedicated local organisations. The resultant evolution of the village to heritage status with a global reputation for high quality food produce is related to its destination image creation. The case study examines how an unusual link between art and a Farmers’ Market enhanced the image of both the food producers and the village for the visitor demographic sought by the village’s retailers and producers.

Since the 1960s the Heliocidaris erythrogramma (purple sea urchin), which has been observed to be endemic to the Tasmanian coastline since the earliest stages of European visitation and settlement, has been joined by a second species, the long-spined sea urchin (Centrostephanus rodgersii). The new, invasive species has been significantly disruptive of Tasmanian marine environments and has been the subject of numerous research projects and, more recently, ventures aimed to limit its spread. This article addresses the role of the sea urchin in 20th-21st Century cuisine, fisheries and aquaculture in Tasmania and the manner in which consumption of the invasive sea urchin has been promoted as a strategy to control its spread in coastal waters. The article discusses some of the complexities of such eco-culinary activism with particular regard to the Tasmanian Museum of Old and New Art’s ‘Eat The Problem’ event in Summer 2012–13 and, in parallel, evaluates the extent to which sea urchin consumption might be developed as a facet of culinary tourism in the state.

The rise of interest in local food has led to the proliferation of a range of food distribution alternatives including farmers’ markets within which ‘local’ is often embedded in market governance and practice. A review of the literature demonstrates that local is a highly contested and nuanced concept through which multiple economic, social, environmental, political and psychological criteria intersect (La Trobe, 2001). Farmers’ market managers juggle these many and, at times competing criteria. This paper explores the link between the governance of the Capital Region Farmers’ Market (CRFM) and the way in which the management committee enact the local through operational practices. The CRFM, located in Canberra in the Australian Capital Territory (ACT), is the largest farmers’ market in Australia, generating AU $20 million per annum for the local economy as well as a range of direct and indirect benefits for producers, consumers and the ACT community. The results indicate that the CRFM management committee understood the value of local as a point of differentiation from competitors and ensured that local was embedded in market governance and practice. However, the manifold criteria of local also provided the committee with the flexibility to meet competing needs of all three guiding ‘pillars’ of the CRFM: farmers, consumers and community.

Food waste has become a major issue, adding to environmental degradation, economic impoverishment and social tensions around the world. This article examines what is currently known in the literature about why food waste occurs at the household level. After reviewing what is known about the relevant demographic characteristics and broad behavioural drivers, these findings are applied to examine the potential causes of, and solutions to, household food waste in Australia. This research suggests that high levels of food waste may emerge from the interaction of activities associated with planning, shopping, storage, preparation and consumption of food. The literature also indicates the significance of behavioural drivers such as: lack of awareness; lack of negative economic impact; high quality standards; insufficient purchase planning; over-purchasing and cooking; lack of kitchen skills; high sensitivity to food safety; and changing meal plans. Although many of the findings presented have emerged from studies across numerous cultural and economic contexts, and are therefore necessarily general, they provide a valuable indication of some common drivers of household food waste. As such, this article provides a basis for the development of other more context specific investigations and interventions into the prevention of household food waste.

Bibere vinum suae regionis, to drink wine from one’s own region, attempts to match the neologism ‘locavore’, local eater, with one for wine. We compare drinking in two regions: the surrounds of Adelaide, South Australia, an area of international repute for wine-making, and the subtropical Northern Rivers, on the far north coast of New South Wales—not a diverse wine-growing area because of high rainfall and humidity that produce grape-destroying mildew/fungus, but bordering a number of ‘new’ wine areas. Issues under consideration include distribution and access, choice and cost. We also survey the reasons for consuming wine in particular, and consuming it locally, including sustaining economies, environments, societies, cultures and identities, and investigate the idea of the local per se.