Exclusive Release for Tasmanian Times – Grow Small Feed All Campaign, 23 February 2026
Local Duck Endorses 600 Million Dollar Food Policy. Treasury Still Considering the Data.
Across Australia and within Tasmania, food resilience has become a popular phrase accompanied by strategies, discussion papers, roundtables, advisory boards and well formatted reports that circulate between departments, consultants and funding bodies, often with sincere intention yet limited material impact in the paddocks, kitchens and small businesses that constitute a living food system. Millions of dollars have supported planning processes, mapping exercises and future scenarios, while many small farmers continue to close their gates, young growers struggle to access land, and public institutions purchase food from distant supply chains despite our capacity to grow it here.
Grow Small Feed All proposes a structural change rather than another document. “Food is foundational infrastructure,” said Dr Emily Samuels Ballantyne. “If Canberra can launch 600 million dollar schemes, it can ensure those funds reach paddocks and processing sheds rather than expanding a consultancy economy around resilience and climate. Farmers are not asking for theory, they are asking for structural fairness.”
The campaign calls for a $600 million redirection toward local procurement, cooperative processing infrastructure, farm gate activation, regional distribution, and institutional food programs anchored in Tasmanian soil. This proposal has not emerged from abstraction. It has formed over seven years through a mycelium network of Tasmanian farmers, designers, educators and community organisers working within the lived constraints of the current system and asking a simple question: what would happen if we redirected existing expenditure into local circulation rather than continued import dependency.
The movement is expanding because the arithmetic is clear and the appetite for change is practical.
At a recent photographic gathering at Magical Farm, families, growers and volunteers assembled behind the campaign banner. During the process, Simon the resident farm duck stepped onto the Grow Small Feed All sign and remained there, still, for over twenty minutes, as if guarding the proposition. With no training or prompting, he insisted on perching on top of the banner above the word “Grow”! He simply had a grounded presence that seemed to grasp the seriousness of the moment.
The symbolism is light-hearted. The policy is not. Tasmania has the capacity to redesign its food economy from the ground up. The question is whether we continue to fund abstraction or choose to circulate value locally with intention and courage.
To contribute or participate, contact the campaign team at Regen Era Design Studio at [email protected].
Full campaign and policy details are available at the deisgn studios website.
