reciprocity can build community infrastructure
As at 23 March 2024
FUNDS RAISED = $48,250 of $375,000 $150,000
FUNDS SPENT = $33,345
NB: We have edited the text below to reflect the change in our plans to build a more compact vehicle-based abattoir as the first stage of ensuring we do not lose access to slaughter in the near future, as smallholder access continues to diminish in Victoria. We can build this relatively quickly and on a much smaller budget.
We need to raise nearly $400,000 $150,000 to build a vehicle-based abattoir, and we are committed to feeding local communities rather than banks and shareholders.
In 2013, we raised $31,750 to build our on-farm butcher’s shop, and in 2014, $35,600 to build the commercial kitchen and curing room. We used Pozible for those campaigns, and rewards exchanged for pledges included meat and workshop attendance. This is a much more significant sum we need to raise, and as we have been a community-supported-agriculture (CSA) farm for a decade, all but about 5% of our meat is already spoken for. We are offering pre-purchases of Tammi’s cookbook - ‘Eat Like the Jonai’, and have just one Speckleline hide left for sale (as Hardwicks no longer allow us to retain hides from slaughter).
As people who have dedicated our lives to food sovereignty and agroecology (Tammi has been president of the Australian Food Sovereignty Alliance (AFSA) for nine years, a voluntary position), we share everything and practice radical transparency about both our successes and our failures (check out the farm blog for those stories). We have been sharing our documentation in ad hoc ways with other farmers for years, and now are collating them here for anyone to access.
The Meat Collective @ Jonai will serve not only us, but also several other local farms with whom we are in relations, and operate as a not-for-profit solidarity economy on degrowth principles. We are strongly guided by ethics of fairness – central to which is a notion of ‘enoughness’. We talk about each of us receiving and giving mutual aid ‘commensurate with need and capacity’. If sustainability is dealing justly with future generations, it must obviously start NOW with current generations in our dealings with the human and more-than-human world.
In practice, what that means for the abattoir is that fees will be democratically set by all farmer members of the collective to cover costs of operation (energy, compliance, consumables, etc) and ensure all meatsmith workers earn a decent livelihood. Critically, no surplus value will be extracted from the system - there are no ‘investors’ and no financial returns beyond the wages earned by those of us doing the labour. The returns are so much more than money, and include beneficial environmental custodianship, highest animal welfare outcomes, and farmer autonomy and well being.
You can find below our successful development applications for both the pig farm and the abattoir, with associated materials such as our environmental management plan (EMP). These documents took a lot of time and knowledge, and some call this Intellectual Property (IP) - but we think protecting that from others’ use or charging a fortune for it is a major barrier to democratic participation and equitable distribution of resources, except in the case of Indigenous Peoples protecting their traditional and cultural knowledge and genetic resources from exploitation by colonial capitalist powers.
Providing financial support for us to build the micro-abattoir will further enable our efforts to radically transform the food system from the ground up.
Imagine if our communities all around Australia and the world pooled our resources in this way to reclaim control of the means of production, and the means of communication, energy, transport – the sky’s the limit!
our offerings - jonai documentation
Pig farm development application
Up until 2015 in Victoria, pastured pig farms were generally not required to obtain a permit to operate. You can read the story about how that changed due to a precedent set at VCAT that defined pastured pig farms as ‘intensive animal husbandry’, and the work the Australian Food Sovereignty Alliance (AFSA) did to achieve what are called the Low Density Mobile Outdoor Pig and Poultry Guidelines (LDMO) here. We won this recognition of the much lower risk pastured pigs and poultry present to environment and amenity in 2018, and Jonai Farms & Meatsmiths obtained our permit in 2021.
You can access the DA here, and use it as a template for both agroecological farming with pigs and to obtain a permit for your farm. (NB In 2022, New South Wales passed legislation subsequent to AFSA’s lobbying that exempts pig farms with less than 20 sows or poultry farms with less than 1000 birds. Check with AFSA for requirements in your state.)
abattoir development application
After years of research and working our way through the requirements of the planning scheme for an abattoir (which in Victoria is a Section 2 use in the Farming Zone under Rural Industry requiring a permit), in July 2023 Hepburn Shire Council gave notice of intent to grant a permit (read the ABC story on the decision and our plans here). There were no objections from the CMA, EPA or Goulburn Murray Water.
While there were 30 objections (and 27 letters of support), the planners recommended (and commended) the project for its sustainability and ethical values. Read our responses to the objections here.
You can access it here, and the floor plan and elevations here. The project is now with the engineers to do the detailed drawings, at which point we can apply for the building permit.
environmental management plan (EMP)
As part of the DA for the abattoir, we were required to submit an EMP. We took a strong circular economy approach, outlining our plans to utilise everything from each carcass (offal & blood for edible products, intestines for sausage casings, and hides to be sent off for tanning in Ballarat), and incorporated on-farm management of surplus nutrient using Audrey - the rotating composting drum Stuart built in 2021.
You can access the EMP here.
