Environmental and Ethical Implications of Food Consumption Affecting Distant Countries: How Aware Canberra and Tokyo Community Gardeners of These Issues

Global food system has developed with the increased power of agri-food corperations. Under the current structure, wealthy people tend to over-consume food, while poorer people are experiencing social inequality and degradation of their environment. Recent studies around ‘alternative’ food systems have highlighted grass roots movements, especially in industrialized countries, for democratic and environmentally sustainable food systems, which often focus on local food production. However, it is still necessary to discuss environmental and ethical soundness of global food production and consumption, because it is unrealistic to expect that local food systems can immediately become the dominant structure of the society. To begin to transform the current dominant system, it is important to explore whether people who are engaged in ‘alternative’ food systems understand and care about the ethical and environmental issues around global food systems, from consumer point of view. Consumption attitude of imported food is a key, as citizens in wealthy countries are the major actors of global food consumption, who has some power to choose what to buy, and in that way create demand, even though this power is restricted.This study may then point to the possibility of these people engaging in ‘alternative’ food system becoming agents for global change.

This study examines whether community gardeners in industrialized countries have an understanding of, and interest in, the ethical and environmental implications of the current global food supply chain. This study compares Canberra (Australia) and Tokyo (Japan) as case studies. Initial analysis of interview data suggests that participants from Australia expressed a stronger understanding and awareness of ethical and environmental issues occurring outside the country than Japanese participants. The cultural, political and economic differences, including different position in the global food system (Australia as a net-exporter and Japan as a net-importer), underlying these results will be considered.