Zoë Wundenberg | Food security needs to a bigger priority

We would go to a supermarket, grab what we needed, and go home: worry about the availability of pantry staples never even regularly entered our minds.

But one of the many important lessons that COVID brought with it, was we are one disaster away from having to get creative with personal hygiene in the bathroom.

One health crisis away from pasta being rationed and a bread purchase being less about a favourite brand and more about what was on the shelf, if anything. Appreciation for food sources and availability was something that definitely entered my sphere of awareness during this time.

While definitely not new in various formats, the concept of "food security" as it's understood now, came after the 1970s' food crisis.

The World Food Summit in 1996 defined food security as being when "all people, at all times, have physical and economic access to sufficient safe and nutritious food that meets their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life."

Deficits in any of these areas can result in significant impact to our food security and consequently, our health and wellbeing both on individual and community levels.

COVID impacted physical and economic accessibility, affordability (due to job loss and drops in income), and stability of provisions in particular, and shone a spotlight on the origins of our food supply: what were we importing? What were we exporting? How can we make the sources of food we have here work for us?

It was a policy nightmare, not just because it impacted trade agreements and the mish-mesh of public/private market influence, but also because it had to be addressed quickly. We all know how well that usually goes in government.

Being the general nerd that I am, this became an area of genuine interest for me. I felt a little embarrassed that it hadn't really been something that I'd thought much about before, and I felt my privilege keenly that it hadn't been an issue I'd had to grapple with much personally (beyond the fact that the price of food was skyrocketing and I couldn't afford the "good stuff," that is).

The answer to "where does food come from" was answered by a trip to the shops, even though academically I knew it wasn't that simple (d'oh). It just wasn't really something I'd invested time in understanding.

Over the last few years, I've had the privilege of working with clients who work in this space and it has been a truly eye-opening experience for me. The connection between health/wellbeing and food was always there in the back recesses of my brain, but when you look at the issue from a public policy perspective, the significant impact of food security on the wellbeing of the community is palpable.

But it's not just about the wellbeing of the people through healthy eating and the promotion of "good" choices regarding lifestyle such as exercise, nutrition, etc.

Our food system is a core contributor to regional economy, natural environment, liveability and even identity. It shapes our relationship with enterprise and manufacturing, small and big business, concepts of community resilience and commercial viability, together with waste management responsibilities.

Food is a key element of our culture - an important part of our identity - and it brings people together, not just at the dinner table, but across sectors, to secure our food systems into the future.

The relationships fostered in cross-sector efforts, like that achieved by the North East Local Food Strategy Working Group, have seen incredible collaborative work done to identify priority areas for action, and provide a resource and strategic framework that aids funding applications and influences council policy, all underpinned by a coordinated systems-level approach to strengthening our regional food system.

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Food security is complicated, and multi-faceted, but vital to our regional and national communities.

And we are lucky here. Lucky that we have working groups and policies and strategies to protect these vital resources for us.

Nearly 800 million people do not get enough to eat according to the UN's World Food Programme.

I'll be thinking about that the next time I start to complain that my preferred brand is out of stock.