Tasmania’s salmon debate has become an expensive, polarised spectacle that generates plenty of documents and conflict but too little practical change. The article proposes “Scenario 2”: a clear transition that reduces ecological pressure through published water thresholds and pre-agreed actions, while building a diversified, localised food and protein economy. Using Tasmania’s Agri Food ScoreCard, it highlights a core paradox: despite producing around 11 times more food than residents consume, Tasmania still sources about $1.97b (36.5%) of its food spend from outside the state. Capturing $1b/year of that leakage through hubs, cold chain, processing, cooperative logistics and public procurement could support roughly 5,000–7,100 jobs, matching salmon’s employment footprint with a more resilient model.

Grow Small Feed All has released an exclusive statement to Tasmanian Times calling for a 600 million dollar redirection toward local food procurement, regional processing infrastructure and small scale farm activation across Tasmania. The proposal responds to years of food resilience strategies that have generated reports and discussion without substantial on ground economic shift. Developed over seven years through a mycelium network of Tasmanian farmers, designers and community organisers, the campaign argues that existing expenditure can be redirected into local circulation rather than import dependency. A recent gathering at Magical Farm symbolically marked the moment, affirming that food policy is practical economic design rooted in soil and community.

Tasmania’s food future will not be secured by more strategy documents, but by direct, practical investment in the people and infrastructure that grow and distribute food locally. This article argues for “meaty” policy that pays small and medium farmers to feed their regions, mandates local procurement for public institutions, funds shared regional infrastructure, unlocks access to land, and provides patient community finance. By treating local food production as essential economic infrastructure, Tasmania can rebuild soil, strengthen regional economies and create a resilient food system grounded in place rather than paper.

Synopsis: Open and Woven: Reweaving Local Life for a Living Future
Dr Emily Samuels-Ballantyne / Dr Demeter | Regen Era Design Studio

This article traces how SLOC: Small, Local, Open and Connected design scenario by Ezio Manzini names a long-standing pattern of resilience found in healthy villages and neighbourhoods, and why it remains vital for Tasmania, Australia, and the communities Emily now re-enters in Europe. Drawing on Creative Communities research, Illich’s conviviality, and social permaculture, she argues that everyday life is a design field where soil, society, and spirit meet.

“Small” becomes intimacy and accountability, “local” a lived belonging, “open” the capacity to learn without losing boundaries, and “connected” (or woven) the mycelial intelligence that allows communities to exchange strength without being swallowed by larger systems. Emily diagnoses the cultural thinness produced by centralised food systems and shows how local growers, village rhythms, and seasonal literacy are eroded when food is abstracted from land and relationship.

From this lineage she introduces Con Viv, her living-systems design approach, and the Grow Small Feed All campaign, which aims to support micro farms and neighbourhood food networks through policy, micro-finance, and civic imagination. She emphasises that openness must be paired with equity to avoid gentrification and displacement, and that convivial systems strengthen dignity rather than extract value.

Holding an anthroposophic sense of society as a living organism, she invites designers, policymakers, activists, growers, and neighbours to treat daily life as a legitimate site of design, and to cultivate a woven future, grounded, porous, equitable: where community life becomes strong enough to hold us all.