World licking lips over bush tucker
Andrew Fielke with assorted indigenous food at the Good Food & Wine shoe, Darling Harbour. Australia is in danger of having our unique indigenous food such as alpine pepper, lemon myrtle and kakadu plum mass-produced overseas.
While so-called bush tucker is an emerging industry here, its production may well go the same way as the macadamia nut, an indigenous product stolen by the Americans half a century ago and only recently built into an industry in Australia.
State and federal legislation and the establishment of intellectual property rights over traditional produce need to be put in place to stop the theft of native foods, say growers and sellers.
Ian "Herbie" Hemphill, owner of Herbie's Spices, said China was already cultivating lemon myrtle for the world market.
"We also need to see it as an everyday ingredient," he said.
Until then native produce will remain a novelty in Australia.
"These foods are becoming far more widely accepted," Mr Hemphill said. "But nobody is going to grow hundreds of tonnes of this stuff if there is no market for it."
Australian Native Food Industry deputy chair Andrew Fielke said wattleseed was being grown in Africa and there were unsuccessful attempts to grow kakadu plum overseas.
"It has happened before with some species and that's a huge risk, I feel," he said.
The NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service has just put 13 students through the inaugural Aboriginal Bush Tucker Knowledge Sustainability and Development Program in Tumut, but it is a long way from establishing a sustainable industry.
NPWS tourism and visitor services manager Mark Lees and Temora confectioner and food technologist Coralie McKenzie developed the program.
"I saw beautiful native ingredients that I had never seen before," Ms McKenzie said.
"I'd like to see it as region-by-region (cuisine) and the indigenous people as the educators."
She showed students the versatility of native ingredients, such as using raw wattleseed and wattleseed-infused syrup in a cake. She said identifying areas abundant in ingredients would support tourism and the growth of native culinary ingredients.
"What would be possible is to be able to cultivate an area in a 50km radius and in there have a market garden and the opportunity to collect native ingredients," she said.
But Mr Fielke said "the horse has bolted in some cases".
"Moving forward, I'd like to see some relationships with indigenous communities to grow their native foods," he said.
Source: The Daily Telegraph, 6 August 2012
