EMMA-KATE ROSE
FOOD CONNECTOR
BRISBANE, QLD
Re-establishing the connection between eaters and growers and making sure everyone gets a fair go.
Emma-Kate Rose is a go-between and advocate for farmers and fairer food systems. She is executive director of Food Connect, which was started in 2005 in Brisbane by her now-husband Robert Pekin. A former fourth-generation dairy farmer, Pekin became homeless after drought and the de-regulation of the Australian dairy industry led to him losing his land. He started Food Connect to create a system in which the public could source their food ethically and directly from family-owned farms, using principles of risk sharing.
“We operate on four main principles: to address the issues of climate change, a declining workforce of talented growers (now only 84,000), the disconnection between eaters and growers, and the concentration of power and money in just a few corporations,” says Rose.
Food Connect sources its produce directly from farms within a 400km radius of Brisbane – “although the average food miles are usually less than 140km” – that operate on regenerative farming principles.
With no middlemen, price squeezing or insistence on perfectlooking produce, the farmers are paid ‘proper’ prices for their produce. It’s harvested to order and delivered to Food Connect’s community-owned warehouse, where it’s sorted, packed and delivered to ‘city cousins’ who act as micro-distribution hubs.
A typical day for Rose can mean a 4am start to meet farmers bringing in their produce, ensuring the warehouse team are fulfilling orders and talking to customers about the logistics of delivery and customer service.
“We are currently working with our shareholders to design the warehouse retrofit and engaging sustainability researchers at Griffith University to benchmark building performance, because we want to create Australia’s first community food hub that is net-positive in sustainability,” Rose says.
They’re also working to replicate the Food Connect Shed model in other regions around Australia. “We want to be able to share the concept to secure Australia’s food future.”