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Urban solutions to drought-induced food price increase

By Russ Grayson - posted Thursday, 3 May 2007


Faced with drought and the likelihood of higher food prices, it is time for state and local government to protect the urban fringe farms that supply our cities and towns with fresh produce and to recognise the value of food production in urban gardens.

Food crises are something we think of happening in developing countries. Suddenly, it seems, Australia is looking at its very own food crisis.

Politicking around the Murray-Darling water crisis suddenly became national news in mid-April with Canberra’s announcement that water allocations to farmers could be cut if no substantial rains fall soon in the catchment.

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A further tactic in Canberra’s attempt to wrest control of water from the states, the prospect of higher prices for fruit and vegetables as production falls, in a region that produces something like a third of the country’s food, became national news.

The news should not have seemed so sudden. Jim Salinger, lead author of the Australian section of the recent report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), said that Australia is a drying country and large areas of the south and south-east could face continued drying. Now, with 78 per cent of New South Wales in drought, Salinger’s prediction of a reduction in cropping area in the water-stressed Murray-Darling is coming true.

Up goes the carbon

To cope with the projected production shortfall in fruit and vegetables, the federal government claims that Australia may have to import food, a move that would increase agriculture’s contribution to global warming - its “food miles”. This an estimate of the energy embodied in food - known as “embodied energy” - that is based on the oil used to make agricultural chemical inputs combined with the greenhouse gas emissions from fuel oils consumed during the production and transportation of foods.

Given the prominence of global warming as a political issue, the potential for food imports to compensate for a drought-induced fruit and vegetable shortfall to become permanent, rather than stop gap, would be a questionable outcome.

The value of local

The drought and the possibility of higher food prices highlights the value of urban fringe agriculture to the food security of our cities.

If the drying trend continues, those city fringe market gardens, orchards and poultry farms are going to become even more important, making it imperative that state and local governments act now to ensure their survival against the pressures of urbanisation and to introduce policy that sustains their continued economic viability. For Australia, this is a strategic issue because it has the potential to influence public health and livelihoods.

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Sydney is fortunate in that it sources much of its fresh vegetable supply from urban fringe market gardens. Even though this still-viable farming industry might cushion drought-induced vegetable price rises, prices are still likely to increase as demand exceeds supply nationally.

According to the advocacy and educational organisation, the Sydney Food Fairness Alliance, on only 2.5 per cent of the state’s land surface, the Sydney Basin produces 90 per cent of the city’s perishable vegetables, 80 per cent of its mushroom supply and 33 per cent of its poultry on farms that are mostly family owned and operated and average only 40 hectares in size.

On this $1 billion a year agricultural base rests a food marketing, processing and distribution industry that employs about12,000 and is worth about $4.5 billion a year.

According to the Alliance, if drought pushes up urban food prices significantly it will be financially vulnerable families that suffer, people who already find difficulty in buying a sufficient quantity of nutritious foods - people who constitute the “hidden hunger” that exists in Australia’s suburbs.

As well as benefits to regional economy and nutritional health, the other reason why a regional supply of food is important is because transport from grower to eater is less than foods trucked in from further afield - fewer food miles or embodied energy - and there is lower emission of greenhouse gases.

It is the value of urban fringe farming to the food security of our cities that necessitates state government action to ensure the future viability of the industry. Now, more than ever, urban food production is a strategic planning issue of the utmost importance, but are state parliaments listening and are they capable of reading the signs?

Growing in the city

Urban fringe farming is not the only type of agriculture increasing the food security of our cities. Home vegetable, fruit and poultry production remain a diminished but still popular suburban activity, as television gardening programs and a substantial nursery, publishing and education industry that has grown around it indicate. Considering its importance to household nutrition, home growing of food might best be regarded as “garden agriculture”.

Government agriculture departments do not collect statistics or research home garden productivity on a sustained basis because production is for the consumption of growers and their families. Government fails to recognise home food production as an economic activity, regarding it as a hobby. It is better regarded as part of the household economy rather than either a hobby or a commercial activity.

Despite government disregard, home food production remains an economic activity of considerable scale. We know this from a 1992 report by the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) which disclosed that home fruit production in Australia totalled 110,000 tonnes, vegetable production was 153,000 tonnes, nut production 1,541 tonnes, domestic meat poultry totalled 2,000 tonnes, egg production 26.1 million and the volume of beer brewed, 39.8 million litres. The survey found that recreational fishing, a wild harvest that can contribute to household food security, amounted to 31,000 tonnes.

Unfortunately, there appears to be no more recent research although Andrea Gaynor reported on home production in her book, Harvesting the Suburbs (2006; University of Western Australia Press, Crawley WA).

Over the past 30 years, especially since the mid-1990s, food production on public open space in community food gardens has offered urban dwellers without a home garden the opportunity to become producers rather than just consumers of part of their food supply.

The productivity of community gardens varies tremendously, with perhaps the most productive found on housing estates in Carlton, Flemington and Fitzroy in Melbourne, all projects supported by Cultivating Community, a community-based organisation providing assistance in the form of community garden development and food co-operatives to Department of Human Services estate residents.

Like home gardening, there is little research available on the production of food in community gardens, in part, again, because the activity is regarded as a hobby rather than a productive undertaking that contributes to household economies.

This is to make the error of equating food production with the unproductive gardening of ornamental plants - it is the end use of gardening activities that differentiate them and distinguish their relevance and utility in a country gripped by drought and consequent food price increases.

In addition, any evaluation of community gardens would have to take into take into account their role in the development of the social capital of neighbourhoods.

Water and energy efficient

To a water-stressed country now faced with the prospect of substantial price rises for fruit and vegetables, home and community food gardening offers benefit in terms of water and energy conservation and nutrition.

Agriculture in Australia accounts for up to 70 per cent of national water consumption. In contrast - due to water conservation and horticultural practices - area for area, home and community food production has a much lower embodied water and energy content than commercial farming.

It is because of this that landuse designer, educator and author, David Holmgren told a recent food security conference in Melbourne, that “the conclusion is that we should use water at home to produce food. Don’t let anyone, including the authorities, tell you that [it] is environmentally irresponsible.”

He argues that state governments should provide urban garden agriculturists a larger water allocation than that given to growers of ornamental and native landscapes.

Perhaps, in view of the impending drought-induced decline in farm productivity and food price rises, it is time to take a serious look at these unorthodox ideas to make out cities and towns more food secure.

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About the Author

Russ Grayson has a background in journalism and in aid work in the South Pacific. He has been editor of an environmental industry journal, a freelance writer and photographer for magazines and a writer and editor of training manuals for field staff involved in aid and development work with villagers in the Solomon Islands.

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