About Manawatū Food Action Network :: Environment Network Manawatū

Community Food Sovereignty

Community food sovereignty is about ensuring that communities have the right to healthy, culturally appropriate food that is grown locally and sustainably. The Manawatū Food Action Network (MFAN) is a collective of social service and environmental organisations working together to help communities grow their own food, make healthy food more accessible, reduce food waste, and provide free or affordable food to people. Our goal is to ensure everyone has access to healthy food that is grown in sustainable ways.

Our shared vision with our network groups:

As people of the Manawatū River catchment, we will receive our food in ways that enhance ecosystem functioning and the environment while also supporting human health and well-being.

What we do

Our activities include advocacy and education for food resiliency, food localisation, community-food initiatives, skills transfer and waste minimisation in the Manawatū.

Our scope of interest includes (but is not limited to) food security, food sovereignty, food banks and sharing sites, food waste capture, harvest capture, food resiliency, localising food, community gardens, community food education, crop swaps, seed banks, composting and more.

We work together to help close gaps, encourage better collaboration and awareness of services and activities of the members to the benefit of the local community.

We seek to foster and assist food resilience projects which are successful in increasing the mana and sovereignty of food-insecure communities.