Speaker Profile

Sam Oakden is the Head of the Australian Food Pact at Stop Food Waste Australia, leading the team delivering the Australian Food Pact. The Pact brings together organisations in pre-competitive collaboration to make Australia’s food system more sustainable, resilient, and circular. It’s a multi-year commitment by the businesses who grow, make and sell our food to develop solutions and implement change at scale.
Sam has an agricultural science background and has designed and managed land health, sustainability and climate change research and extension projects in New Zealand and Australia before working on the implementation of the Australian National Food Waste Strategy since early 2018. In 2022 he was awarded the inaugural emerging circular economy leader award in the Planet Ark Australian Circular Economy Hub awards. He is passionate about maximising the value of the 7.6 million tonnes of food lost and wasted in Australia each year, using collaboration to drive a more sustainable, and more profitable food system.

Stop Food Waste Australia is a powerful partnership of Federal, State and Local Governments, peak industry bodies, NGOs, International experts, and the Fight Food Waste Cooperative Research Centre who have come together to reduce Australia’s food waste by half by 2030.