Welcome to Food Next Door Co-op

Food Next Door matches under-utilised farmland with landless farmers to support small-scale regenerative farming, growing diverse crops & engaging people from diverse backgrounds to supply food to local households.

Co-operatives are organisations owned by members for the benefit of members. They are different from other organisations because their priority is to have social and economic impact. Food Next Door also aims to have an environmental impact.

The primary object of Food Next Door is to relieve the suffering or distress suffered by newly arrived migrants and refugee groups, particularly those without access to land and living in rural and regional areas, by supporting these groups to re-engage in farming and grow food, including their traditional foods.

This will be achieved by, amongst other things:

• Sourcing and negotiating access to land for the groups to use for farming
• Providing ongoing assistance and support to the groups to farm the land.
• Creating new distribution channels for the groups to sell their produce.

Our secondary objects are to:

· Strengthen overall community cohesion in the long term.
· Build our soils and encourage regenerative farming practices.
· Increase the number of small-scale farms to provide high quality produce to local markets, and
· Strengthen local food economies through diversification of produce.

Food Next Door’s vision is for under-utilised and vacant farmland to be transformed into productive foodscapes using regenerative farming practices.

We are establishing a community demonstration farm based in Mildura, north-west Victoria, to progress this vision.