ON CHRISTMAS ISLAND THIS YEAR, the price of a single imported lettuce hit $20, but there’s no catastrophic floods or sudden inflationary pressures driving the eye-watering cost. “Lettuce has been $12 to $15 for the past decade or more,” says regenerative farmer, Mark Bennett. He’s sitting across from me in the dark, as fairy lights strung in banana palms cast a warm glow over his first long-table dinner. On the inaugural Indian Ocean Fest menu are snake beans, sweet potato leaves and passionfruit, all sourced from his organic Hidden Garden Sustainable Farm. At first glance, it might not seem like a big deal, but for the remote Australian Territory, where up to 98 per cent of the food is imported, supplying home-grown produce is a seismic shift from the norm.
“Food security has always been an issue here,” says Mark, who moved to the volcanic dot with his parents when he was two years old. Supplies arrive fortnightly via freight plane and six-weekly ship drops, the latter at the whim of storms and swell. The unsustainable food miles, fraught accessibility and high produce prices have
