Urban food security, urban resilience and climate change - weADAPT

community gardens webpage on the Council website; using its small grants program tosupport the development of community gardens for particular cultural groups (throughthe their local church or support agency); resourcing garden development in low costhousing sites; supporting existing communal gardens in low income areas.Brimbank City Council: has supported an annual Tomato Project since 2008. Thisproject involves the provision of thousands of tomato seedlings to residents as well asa series of workshops in neighbourhood houses on how to grow tomatoes (planting,staking, fertilising, harvesting) and how to cook using tomatoes, a series of gardenopen days, tomato related art projects and even the crowning of a King and Queen ofTomato Growing in Brimbank. Community volunteers are involved as tomato growinggurus and Iramoo, a local sustainable community garden centre in St Albans supportedby Victoria University, plays a key role in supplying seedlings and providing advice andtraining.Byron and Tweed Shire Councils: are delivering the 'Sustainable Streets' programthat aims to foster community-inspired sustainable behaviour change at a street-bystreetlevel. The program consists of regular neighbourhood gatherings andsustainability education workshops on topics, including:local food production;bush-friendly gardening;rainwater harvesting;solar power and energy efficiency;ethical shopping; and,green cleaning.Montague (2011:2426) also reports on the following initiatives:Food Connect: a Brisbane based organisation operating on Community SupportedAgriculture principles in Adelaide, Sydney and Brisbane. Food Connect sourcesseasonal food from local farmers (also home & community gardens, school farmersand gleaners people who harvest fruit growing in public space like street or park fruittrees). This is delivered to the Food Connect Homestead each week by the farmersand small freight companies. It is packed into various sizes of fruit and veggie boxes.The boxes are delivered to a network of City Cousins (families, schools or communitycentres) and subscribers collect their boxes from their local City Cousin and get thechance to meet like-minded neighbours for a chat. Food Connect also organisesregular farm tours to connect city folk with growers.Robinvale Community Growers’ Market: as part of the VicHealth Food for AllProgram, Swan Hill Rural City Council worked to establish a monthly growers market inRobinvale a community with a significant proportion of low income residents in insecurehousing. Many of the local growers were also struggling financially at the time due todrought conditions and stringent contractual conditions with the big buyers. It tookseveral years of consistent financial and practical work to build the market into an ongoingbusiness that benefitted both growers and local residents.Outer Suburban/Interface Services and Development Committee 2010: an inquiryinto sustainable development of agribusiness in outer suburban Melbourne 2010 givesdetailed discussion of agribusiness and green wedge issues affecting interface councilsseveral of which are in the NWMR (Hume, Wyndham, Melton, Nillumbik andWhittlesea.).Urban food security, urban resilience and climate change 91