Food Forever Murwillumbah

Building our local food movement

Join us at our 4th Food Forever gathering for local food enthusiasts who want to work together to:

• improve our access to local food and
• support local farmers.

Time: 2-4:30pm
When: Sat. 23 May 2026
Where: M|Arts Precinct, Wollumbin St, Murwillumbah
Entry: $5 (kids free)

Food Forever on 23 May will feature:

• Two short films by Local Futures
  - "Trade Gone Mad" and
  - "How we benefit from investing in Byron's Food Economy" a compilation of recorded interviews especially our region with tangible actions we can take as a community to shore up our local food system.
  Featuring: Michael Shuman, US lawyer, economist and localisation expert.
  NOTE: This recording will be an edited version of what was screened at our Byron Bay event event, plus some additional content.
• Toby from Green Bird Organics, will share an account of starting a farm on leased land, and the economic realities of growing food for income. This talk explores the on-the-ground challenges of food production in our region, including how scale and larger market pressures shape pricing, viability, and the choices growers are influenced to make.
• Solutions focused discussion groups, based on suggestions raised in our previous Food Forever events, which fall under the following broad headings:
  • Increasing growers' access to customers
  • Access to land (including housing options)
  • Public investment in the local food movement

  There's a role for all of us, growers and eaters alike!

Previous Food Forever events have been held at:

• Byron Bay on 9 February
• Mullumbimby on 25 March
• Byron Bay on 28 April

Michael Shuman was in Byron in May 2023 for Local Futures' sponsored Localisation Weekend where he inspired local residents about the immense potential of local investment. With his decades of experience working with communities around the world, Michael has informed motivated personal investors of how fiscally and socially rewarding a shift out of the volatile and increasingly vulnerable global financial markets into "Main Street" can be. You can watch an interview with Michael and follow his work from here.

With our food sources becoming increasingly globalised and centralised, we're losing access to healthy, fresh food that's grown locally. We're all too familiar with the impacts of bush fires, floods and the pandemic on accessing food that's from the local region. Once roads become blocked or borders closed, the impacts on the supply chains are visible within a couple of days on our supermarket shelves.

Empty shops are a strong indication that most of the food consumed here is trucked in from outside our region. We shouldn't be this vulnerable to economic, environmental or political challenges that will keep coming - especially as we live in such a fertile region.

We're eternally grateful to our farmers' markets that have been the one reliable source of food for our region, but they only supply a small fraction of our population.

Let's come together to explore the many options available to us to support the growth and production of food in this region. Together we can make our local food system resilient and abundant!