Claire Chandler (Tasmania, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Foreign Affairs) Share this | Hansard source

Today, 16 October, is World Food Day, a day to raise awareness of ongoing efforts to ensure food security across the globe. I wanted to take this opportunity to share with the Senate the work of a Tasmanian NGO Food Plant Solutions, which today has joined World Vision's international expert panel in their symposium at the Micronutrient Forum 6th Global Conference.

Food Plant Solutions is a Tasmanian initiative, established in Devonport in 2007, and is supported very fulsomely by the local Rotary Club. This group creates educational materials about edible plants and their nutritional values. The group has a growing database of 30,000 edible plants from all around the world.

Well-known Tasmanian agronomist Bruce French, who has spent time in Papua New Guinea working with malnourished communities, was one of the movement's founding members. At that time there was little information about local food sources, so Bruce took it upon himself to start building a database of those food sources and sharing best practices. Today, Food Plant Solutions works with local partners in more than 50 different countries to implement their programs and create resources to encourage these communities to eat food consisting of Indigenous plants in their area. Incidentally, the majority of these resources are written in local tongues, so the translation of these educational materials is a huge piece of work and an ongoing endeavour of Food Plant Solutions.

On this World Food Day, I applaud Food Plant Solutions for making such a positive contribution to the fight against hunger and malnutrition and for promoting food security for all people worldwide, all from our own little home state of Tasmania.