First Nations Foods database helps supply chain grow

When thinking about Australian Indigenous culture and the Olympics, it’s natural to envision Cathy Freeman’s iconic 400-metre sprint at the Sydney 2000 games.

With planning for Brisbane 2032 underway, Indigenous food businesses have called for greater collaboration around the production and supply of native bushfood ingredients, so that the world’s longest continuing culture can shine on the global stage once more. 

Lara Wilde of QLD Food Incubator heeded this call, successfully applying for a Queensland Fruit & Vegetable Growers ‘Grow Your Field’ seed funding grant as part of the Queensland horticulture decade-long Future Fields strategy, supported by the Queensland Department of Agriculture and Fisheries (DAF).

Lara has spearheaded the development of what she calls “an online open-source ecosystem,” a database that maps the Indigenous native bushfoods and supply chain.

This is not simply a case of saying Davidson Plum grows here and Lemon Aspen grows there. This project sought to map Indigenous native foods throughout the supply chain, and the researchers and advocacy organisations that support exploration of native foods and Indigenous businesses.

Development of the database answers many key questions food manufacturers in the native bushfoods space have along every step of the growing, sourcing, and manufacturing process.

“The database will tell you what Indigenous farms are out there, and which non-Indigenous farmers are growing native ingredients. It will also tell you about where the research organisations are, whether they’re government, non-government, or university and so on,” Lara said.

Lara added she would also like to map the support networks around Indigenous food such as the First Nations Bushfood & Botanical Alliance Australia (FNBAA), Australian Native Food and Botanicals, Bushtukka and Botanicals Indigenous Enterprise Cooperative (BBIEC), and the Food & Beverage Institute, among others.

According to Lara, the Future Fields funding has been instrumental in getting the online ecosystem off the ground.

“To further build the data set, we’ve recently received an Agribusiness Digital Solutions Grant from DAF,” she said.

“This will help us engage with industry stakeholders nationally, in turn helping to continually populate the database.”

Connecting the dots in this way will bring efficiencies to the Indigenous foods sector, creating an environment that will enable it to significantly ramp up production in the lead up to the 2032 Olympics – the ultimate occasion to showcase everything ‘Australia’ to the world.