Ashleigh Holmes – a champion of local food in the Illawarra – is currently involved with rolling out the very exciting ‘Love Local’ campaign.

The ‘Love Local’ campaign was born from the advocacy masterclass; it identified how consumers can advocate to make changes to improve their local food system and a brainstorming session highlighted the need for easy identification of local products in stores to further support a local food system.

Ashleigh Holmes

Tell us about your background, eg start of your passion re food and sustainability.

My love for food started from a young age, I’ve always loved cooking and started working in hospitality as soon as I could. In 2016 was fortunate enough to secure an internship and subsequent role with food rescue organisation Ozharvest, which was an incredible introduction into food sustainability. Since then I have volunteered with local organisations Hidden Harvest and most recently, Food Fairness Illawarra (FFI).

How did you become involved with Food Fairness Illawarra?

I started volunteering with Hidden Harvest in 2015 and have been working on and off with them for a number of years. In mid 2020 I was offered the opportunity to work with Berbel at FFI to help run a ‘Food Advocacy Masterclass’ where advocacy legend Katinka Day from WWF Australia was a guest speaker. After the masterclass, I was again offered the opportunity to work with FFI to launch their new website.

Tell us a bit about the Love local campaign.

The ‘Love Local’ campaign was born from the advocacy masterclass; it identified how consumers can advocate to make changes to improve their local food system and a brainstorming session highlighted the need for easy identification of local products in stores to further support a local food system. Myself and FFI intern Sarah Purdy have been working towards the launch of the Love Local campaign for a number of weeks and we are excited to roll out this campaign across the region.

How it works:

• Food Fairness Illawarra will provide collateral and labelling cards to local retailers
• Working with store managers, Food Fairness staff will assist in labelling all food items that have been grown or produced in the Illawarra region, this is inclusive of Wingecaribee, Shoalhaven, Wollongong, Shellharbour and Kiama Council areas.
• Consumers can look for the ‘Love Local’ cards in stores to easily locate local foods to purchase

Tell us a bit about why local food is important.

Local food does a number of things for the local community. It supports the local economy through keeping funds and jobs localised, it decreases food miles which is great for the planet, locally grown food is often much fresher, in season, less processed and made with less preservatives. The goal is to increase demand for local products in local food retailers to strengthen our local food system.

Local food does a number of things for the local community. It supports the local economy through keeping funds and jobs localised, it decreases food miles which is great for the planet, locally grown food is often much fresher, in season, less processed and made with less preservatives.

Ashleigh Holmes

What does a local feast entail for you?

Breakfast is definitely my favourite meal so a local feast would almost always include locally baked sourdough, cheese from Kiama Pines, Kangaroo Valley eggs, spinach from my garden, Hidden Harvest chutney and locally roasted coffee.