Bonus: Amy Carrad — Changing the System: People, Power, Policy

We couldn't fit all of Amy Carrad's insights into our Local Environment Heroes conversation, so we're sharing her full Impact Hour talk as bonus content.

In this April 2026 Impact Hour session, a collaboration between SEE Change, the Conservation Council of the ACT Region & Canberra Environment Centre, Dr Amy Carrad explores how people, power and policy can work together to change the systems that shape our everyday lives — with a particular focus on food, communities and the policies that influence how we produce, access and consume food.

Amy shares insights from her research and work on food systems, governance and community-led change with ANU's Planetary Health Equity Hothouse & the School of Regulation and Global Governance, and she explores how we can move from simply understanding problems to changing the systems that create them.

Recorded at Dissent Cafe & Bar, Canberra, in April 2026.

'Pub language warning' for parents who may be listening alongside little ears. 

Local Environment Heroes is a Canberra Environment Centre podcast celebrating the people working to create a healthier, more sustainable and connected community.

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Thanks for listening; environmental change starts with people. 🌱

Transcript

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SPEAKER_00 0:00

Good evening, everyone, and welcome to the very first Impact Hour, a collaboration between SeaChange, Canberra Environment Centre, and the Conservation Council of the ACT region. It's so wonderful to see so many of you here tonight who care deeply about social and environmental change and who are willing to give up an hour of your precious time to think, question, and to connect. Because if there's one thing we know, it's that change doesn't just happen out there somewhere. It happens through people, through conversations like the one that we'll have tonight, through communities, and through the ways that we understand power policy and our own role in shaping them. Tonight is really about opening up that conversation. How does change actually happen? Who gets to shape it? And what does it look like to move from good intentions to real impact? To help us explore that, I'm really pleased to introduce our speaker for tonight, Amy Carrard. Amy's a research officer with the ANU's School of Regulation and Global Governance, and she works with the Australian Research Centre for Health Equity and the Planetary Health Equity Hot House. The Hot House. Her research focuses on how power and privilege shape public policy and health outcomes, particularly in areas like food systems, sustainability, and equity. What's especially powerful about Amy's work is that it sits right at the intersection of research and real-world change. She's worked on how local governments and civil society shape food systems. She's contributed to major policy research for organizations like the WHO, and she's actively involved in grassroots and community-led initiatives here in Canberra, and many of you might know that she's on the board of SeaChange, for example, and it's wonderful to see many Sea Change faces in the crowd tonight. Amy brings not just theory but a deep understanding of how systems actually work and how they can be shifted. Please join me in welcoming Amy Carrad.

SPEAKER_01 2:03

Thanks, Jen, for the intro. I'm actually just gonna shuffle a bit closer to here. Great. Thank you all for coming. People have been like, how are you feeling? I'm like, oh man, I love you all for coming, but I kinda hate you because this is so much harder to talk to a room full of people that I know, or some thank you for people that I didn't know and you've come too, than a room full of strangers. So thank you, but man, this is really hard. Yeah, so I want to start with an acknowledgement. So I just want to thank the traditional custodians of the country we're on today, which is unseated, nunnawal, and nambry country, and also all the places where I've lived on this wonderful continent, particularly in the context of food systems, their custodianship of country, of waterways, and of all living things is really important and integral to where we are today and what that means for us going forwards. So I used to say this, and it felt fitting. I used to say, like, as a relatively young person, but I'm not sure that I'm like that young anymore. But there's still just one thing that kind of causes this overwhelming feeling of jelliness inside me, um, and that's thinking about the future of our food and water. I'm terrified about the future of our food system, not only for me or for those of us in the room, but for the children that my friends are having at the moment. Um, so this is my confession, and there's gonna be some audience participation, so you're about to confess something to me, so I can get a sense of who's in the room. Hopefully this worked properly. Okay. We're gonna do some some show of hands. So hands up if you've ever grown a fruit or vegetable. Yes, most people. Excellent. Okay. Stage two is if you've ever found yourself with a glut of zucchinis, so you're like creeping under cover of darkness to your neighbours and leaving them bags and bags of zucchinis. Anyone gluts? No, no, yeah, glutts. Okay, a few gluts. Okay, come on. And then the the last one, who's ever engaged in in policy and governance? Have you like done a government's mission? You've given evidence okay, this is kind of what I expected for Canberra. So I gave a version of this talk in Wagga Wagga about a month ago. Um, that was at the Riverina Harvest Festival. So I was thinking strong on the first two, maybe less so on the third one. Here I thought maybe flip that, but you're also strong on the growing. So maybe I don't have anything to tell you tonight. But the main message that I have is that these things, so both growing your own food, growing food, giving it away, the zuhini gluts, but also governance are important, and both of these are important. So I'm gonna just do a little like minor detour here. Really podium. But I just wanted to also kind of background with part of my story and like why this space matters to me. Sorry, matters to me. So I started my childhood, very outdoorsy upbringing in the Blue Mountains on Darug Country, and then I was doing public health um in my university studies on Darrow Country, which is in Wollongong. And I did my PhD, not necessarily in this space, but I spent a lot of time volunteering in community organizations around food, nutrition, um, community-based healthy eating programs. And then at some stage I found Social Enterprise Green Connect, which is their farm up here on the slide. Um, and they're a market garden on like the least flat land known to humankind at the back of Warrowong High School. And they do great things, they grow food, they give jobs to former refugees and young people. Um, and with that ethos of social enterprise, it's just such a good model for doing good things for people on planet. And then I came here to Canberra in mid-2020 to I love it here. You guys are great. There's all my factions of Canberra here, like gym people and work people and sea change people and environment people and people I haven't properly met yet, but will be friends by the end of tonight, and that's exciting. So I'm a researcher, as Jen introduced me, among many other things. But I am also on the board of Sea Change, and that yeah, I love that balance between doing like research stuff by myself in my office, but then also getting out and doing things in community. And in my research, the space that fascinates me is how people and we as citizens engage with policy and the opportunities that are there for that. And of course, particularly in relation to food systems. This is about as technical as I'm gonna get tonight. So I'm gonna be talking about food systems a lot, and we might think about food systems as kind of stages that are up here in the little graphic on the slide. But that's quite neat and doesn't really cover the complexity of food systems, which can be a bit more crazy like this. But systems just mean that we're not talking about those silos, we're not talking just about distribution, production, retail, consumption. Um, but it's really that holistic perspective that includes also the people, the actors, and the processes and interactions that are involved in those stages, as well as the broader social, cultural, environmental, and economic context that shape food systems. And then the other thing we're talking about is governance. But you guys all said that you knew what governance was, you'd engaged in it. But we're talking about like formal but also informal rules, norms, and processes that shape policies and decisions that affect food systems. And just important to keep in mind that governance is not only governments. So governments are not the only ones that govern. Um we, civil society, and of course also the private sector have their fingers in the governance pot. So why does this matter? Why does food systems governance matter? You're probably aware, generally, food systems aren't really doing so well at the moment. On the broad scale, they're not healthy, they're not sustainable, and they're not equitable for us or for the planet and ecosystems on which we depend. Within Australia and across the globe, there are a large number of problems. And my supervisor, Sharon Field up here, doesn't like dwelling on the problems, so we're going to skip over this really quickly and then get to the fun of bits. But some issues. There are high rates of food insecurity. So that's people not having sufficient access to nutritious food and also culturally appropriate food. There's proliferation of ultra-processed foods that are detrimental to human health, so they contribute to things such as diabetes and cardiovascular disease. Many practices in industrial food systems are damaging the natural environment, including a heavy reliance on fossil fuels that's contributing to climate change, but also, of course, the way that climate change is making it harder to produce and transport food, like we see in the news with floods and droughts. There are social and economic injustices related to livelihoods, equity, corporate concentration, and how corporate power then translates into their economic power, which also then translates into political power and reinforces their profit interests. And also really problematic are narratives that frame food as a commodity rather than a fundamental human right. But these aren't problems that were heated up quickly by zapping them for 10 seconds in a microwave. They've been slow cooking for longer than your grand's best lamb shanks. The problems are embedded in our political, legal, and regulatory systems, and they've been coming to increasingly favor big, powerful corporations and their financial interests over the well-being of the environment and our health. So, because of this, these are not problems you or I are going to solve as individuals, and tackling them requires long-term vision that incorporates the entire food system and brings a diverse range of stakeholders together, generating genuine collaboration and spanning sectoral silos. The goal here to be putting public interest outcomes ahead of corporate profits. And this requires different tactics at different levels. I was in a workshop last year with Sharon, and one of the speakers is this guy, Grant Ennis, and he in his talk he said, ha, there's no underage people here. He's like, fuck recycling. I was like, um ban. But I love recycling at an appropriate stage of something's life cycle. I was like, you guys people that know me, like every weekend I'm like knee deep in the skip bins of my apartment block, like sorting out, no, that should be in that bin, that should be in that bin. Including the fact that I got this jacket from the bin in my apartment complex. Like, how cool is that? It's perfect, and someone throwing it away. Anyway, it's one of my favourite jackets. But yeah, it's clear, clearly all my neighbours aren't on board with this recycling thing. Because I thought that was a great way to have a weekend. Anyway, so Graham gave me something to think about. I was like, oh, but I love recycling. So his argument is that we should be holding and you know, many other people argue that we should be holding corporations to account for the damage that they're causing to our environment and the health. And we should, but if I asked you to do that tomorrow, like you might not really know what to go out and do. So whereas it was like, oh, okay, so we shouldn't fuck recycling. Because being passionate about recycling and the perfect bin or whatever your idea of a good time is important. Because if being through interested and active in something that we find other people who are similarly interested and passionate, who share our values, our concerns for the present and the future, our commitment to doing what we can to improve this situation. Being passionate means you find yourself among a community of people. You're no longer one individual acting alone. You connect like you will tonight, you have conversations, you work together, you organize. You might sign a petition or participate in a protest. And working together in these ways gets us much closer to having capacity for the sorts of strategies that are required to hold corporations to account and to demand of our governments that they act in the public interest. So growing food in your yard or a community garden matters, and sharing and celebrating food in community matters. But we also need to have strong policies that promote health, sustainability, and social outcomes. And these policies need to be developed through processes that value and create space for diverse public interests' voices. This vision for a better future for food systems and actions to get us there occur at various levels. It is in your backyard, it is in your community, it's occurring within local governments. And in some more recent years, there's been movement at state level and also national. And these are the things I'm going to turn to next to say like what are these opportunities for change? I think I skipped a slide. We're meant to be here now. So at the local government level, this is research I was involved in from 2019 to 2022, where we were looking at all of the local governments in New South Wales and Victoria to see what policies they had around various food system issues. You don't need to understand the graph, but if you want to read more, you can go to the QR code here and look at reports and an image that you can actually read. But it's really pretty. And so we were we were looking at all these local governments, and there were lots of governments that had kind of discrete policies maybe around mobile food vending or food safety. And while that was great, and we actually learnt a lot about what local governments were doing that was well beyond roads, rates, and rubbish, which is the mantra for what local governments are meant to do. But they're actually doing quite a lot of work there. And what we found was also a lot of of sorry, not a lot, some of the local governments, and particularly in Victoria, had food system policies. So they had one policy document that was cross-cutting a lot of sections of the food system and really bringing that work together in a more integrated way. And some even had designated food system officer positions that were doing that bridging between departments and breaking down those silos. So these are just a couple of examples on the slide that were actually more recent than that research. But you can just kind of see how different, how different this approach is to just saying we're going to work on food safety separately. This vision tells a really different story for what local governments were interested in doing. And then at the state level, in the past five years, um, New South Wales and Victoria have had some inquiries into food systems-related things and the roles of state governments. Who here has participated in an inquiry process? Okay, it's like most people are kind of familiar. I'm not going to spend too much time on like what that involves now, but I will highly recommend the Australia Institute has a policy school and Bill Brown ran a webinar about what inquiries are and was excellent. So do go back and listen to that if you're interested in kind of understanding that process. But that is to say inquiries are something that we can all participate in. So if you have an opinion about something, you can participate in an inquiry by doing a written submission. And so in New South Wales, the inquiry into food production and supply, they have terms of reference, and then you're kind of responding to those terms of reference, and then there's a report produced based on all the things that they've heard. And there were some really positive recommendations that came out of that, which included things around governance, so that New South Wales should form a food system plan and that that should be overseen by a food system and security council, consisting of representation from diverse areas. Unfortunately, the government changed and so nothing happened to New South Wales with that inquiry. But just to say that, as I said, you can all participate in these things, and it doesn't have to be research evidence like me and my colleagues conduct at a university. If you have an experience you can, or an opinion you can write into these things. So the other ones up on there are Victoria's had a couple in the past kind of 12 months, 12 and 18 months. Um and I don't know too much about where they're up to now, so I'm gonna just move on. So the last one up there is the ACT government. So we actually have a local food strategy in the ACT, which kind of makes it a bit of a leader in this space in terms of the states, because they have the document, but of course, having a document is different to the implementation and getting funding for the implementation. If there's any government folks in the room, you'll know that. So they're doing what they can within quite limited resources in terms of funding allocations at this point in time. And so then we're going to turn up to the federal level. So at the federal level, this kind of gives us a really good example of typical approaches to food systems governance, which is that there's no whole of government coordinated approach. So this is research from people at Sydney Uni that they did quite a few years ago, but it just shows there are 11 separate federal departments that have some stake in food systems issues. But this is where I get really excited because at the at the national level, there's something happening at the moment. There's another inquiry. So there's been in 2022 this inquiry commenced the food security in Australia. This is being overseen by the Standing Committee on Agriculture. So it and the terms of reference had a very agricultural production and supply chain flavour to it. And when we're talking about food security, the Food and Agriculture Organization and the most widely accepted definition is much broader than just how much food you produce and how you get it from A to B. But those were kind of the terms of reference were quite narrow. Okay, so they they ran the process around around the inquiry, so people wrote in submissions, they asked people to come to hearings and give evidence in person or verbally, and they got 188 submissions. And then following that, they released the report. And then compared to the terms of reference, it was really encouraging because it was much broader. It wasn't just about how we're producing this and getting it from A to B. But again, it had some really wide-ranging recommendations, including in relation to the government's governance. And that was to develop a comprehensive national food plan providing for the food security, including the institutional security of the nation and its people, that the Australian government appoint a minister for food, and that the Australian government appoint a National Food Council to advise the Minister for Food. Then there was a bit of a pause. Like two years later, the Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry released a discussion paper in relation to the development of a national food security strategy. And being run by DAF, it's still quite agricultural in its focus. But again, the discussion paper has some good points. It did use that food and agriculture definition of food security, so that much broader one around accessibility and cultural appropriateness. Yeah. And then so that received a lot of submissions. It was like going from 188 in the inquiry process to 408 submissions received on the discussion paper. And that it involved many not-for-profit organizations, research and academics, pig body, state or local governments, farmers, producers, and members of the public. So at the same time as the submissions on the discussion paper, the government was taking expressions of interest for a National Food Council with the purpose of advising on the development of the strategy. They received over 200 applications and they appointed 11 people. Unfortunately, the voices around the table disproportionately represent agribusiness economic interests, so like corporations, not public health, nutrition, environmental sustainability, or equity. Because of this concern regarding those interests, a group of people and organizations, including myself, created an open letter to the minister. So the key concerns were around that representation on the council and the role of commercial influence and conflicts of interest. So this led to a meeting with the chief, sorry, the minister's people, not the minister herself, to make those asks known that we wanted greater public interest perspectives on the council. But of course, they're not gonna ditch the council and start afresh, and that's what we've seen. At the same time, now the department's been coordinating co-design workshops in various locations around the country. And so following this, there'll be a drafting of the strategy later in the year and then a bit of a release. But I'm not clear if there's more opportunities to engage in this process, but if there are, I'll let you know and you can get involved. So I said earlier that governance is not only about government, and then I've only spoken about government. So we're going to talk about something different. So an example of how civil society and different groups are coming together is in what's called food policy councils or coalitions or networks. Um they're not quite so common in Australia, but countries like the US and Canada and many of the um many areas in the UK have them. So much like this lovely wreath of bread, they kind of weave together stakeholders from different sectors, but it's deemed by those sectors that are deemed relevant by locals for their local region. It might be representatives from agriculture, social services, economic development, public health, hunger relief organizations, government, and other advocacy groups. And generally speaking, these organ um groups aim to improve the local and regional food systems through identifying issues that are relevant at their level, um, and then also facilitating effective solutions. I should have printed single sided to save myself this hassle. They're sometimes initiated by local governments of the area, but they're also often community initiated. So people coming together and saying, we have a problem here and we want to solve this. They might aim to impact policy, conduct advocacy activities, facilitate networks, partnerships, and information sharing, or do direct program delivery. So things like school meal programs and local food procurement. I'm just going to read out some of the vision statements and values for a few of these because I think I find them really inspiring for the sort of food future that we could have. So just a few plucked from around the world. The Arizona Food Systems Network wants a vibrant, sustainable, and equitable community food system. In Ireland, Cork Food Policies Councils Values are health and well-being for all, a thriving local economy, resilient, food-friendly communities, lifelong learning and skills, and a reduced environmental footprint. Good Food Dunedin wants to create a resilient, equitable, sustainable, and innovative local food system that nurtures the Maori, the life force of both people and land. What I love about these is the focus on creating something that is good for everyone. These aren't systems that will allow a few people or corporations to benefit economically from the extraction of the work of other people and the planet. They're not about growth or productivity. They're about ensuring that you, your neighbors, and the people who haven't been born yet have food systems that can allow them to flourish. If food policy councils are something you want to learn more about, what are the chances that there's a webinar on tomorrow morning at 9 a.m. on that very topic from the Agricology and Food Sovereignty Alliance QR code up there? If you miss the QR code, I have a print-off copy of it here for you later. And of course, tonight, the organizations that have brought us here tonight are these civil society organizations. And I know that the people that I know in the room, I know that you're involved in different ones in your own ways. So this is the other way you can get involved. You can write to inquiries. Please write to inquiries when you have an opinion, but also just being involved in the civil society organizations that are doing the on-the-ground work. So these ones on the slide are very much like the more food and environmental ones. But I know that there's some voices of Canberra people in the house tonight, hey Peter. So political organizations as well. And some of the other ones up in there actually are not entirely food and farming. So it's places like Nina, the New Economy Network of Australia. They're out there sharing stories and knowledge about different ways to do our economy so that we might have an ecologically healthy and socially just society. And First Nations Futures is working on redistributing wealth, which really ties in well to my current research, to First Nations community organizations. And another quick plug is for Young Farmers Connect, they're having a Canberra Field Day just north of Canberra at the end of May. And I've got some information on that if you're interested in going to a field day. So part of the reason for getting involved in these organizations is that then they start working together. They form alliances that amplifies messages and visions for the sort of future that we want. And that's where I stop being one chick rummaging around in a skip bin and start being part of something bigger and more powerful. The Western science has been telling us for decades that we're messing up the planet and that people are going hungry. Indigenous wisdom has known for much longer how to live sustainably so that people and planet can thrive. This is not the time to kick the can further down the road. This is not the time for Australia to develop a strategy, food strategy, that is meant to address food security, but merely continues to say we're a food secure nation because we export 70% of what we produce, while two million Australian households can't put food on the table. This is the time for a bold vision and determined actions. It is a time for systems-based policy that puts human rights and equity at the center, not private profits. There are ways that we as citizens can work towards that. Whether that be engaging in an inquiry process or a formal governance process, and whether that be advocating at the C ACT government level to do something more for food systems in our community. Come to events like this, talk to people, meet people, talk to people you haven't already met before. I'm almost done. But you're going to do one more show of hands. This might not be quite so convincing as it was compared to the Walger event, but so I'm just going to see if anything I said tonight has converted to you. Who's going to go away and grow more fruits and vegetables? Fewer people. This might be good for me. So who's going to go away and engage in policy processes and governance? Fewer people as well. Jim people, we're going to have a chat tomorrow. Anyway, leave here today knowing that you need to make some noise tomorrow, not only for those of us in the room, but for the great, great, great grandchildren of those kids my friends are having at the moment. Thank you.