Urban food security, urban resilience and climate change - weADAPT

Our research was also interested in better understanding what factors, if any, werelikely to be driving food insecurity in Australia. Similar to the varying views on how foodsecurity is characterized, the perceived drivers of food insecurity were many and fromdifferent stances - environmental, social, economic and built form. We attempted tocapture different perspectives on Australian food insecurity as food insecurity inAustralia has traditionally been understood and researched only in economic terms, i.e.by reference to the ‘single question’ asked in population health surveys - ‘Have you inthe past 12 months run out of money and been unable to purchase food?’. This ‘singlequestion’ method, however, provides only a partial understanding of food insecurity,both in terms of the nature of the phenomenon and its extent. Thus, consistent with thebroader conceptualisation of food security presented earlier, interviewees wereencouraged articulate their views on food insecurity from perspectives beyond simplythe economic.Factors associated with climate change such as increased temperatures and drought,or floods and fire events, were constantly mentioned, although climate change per sewas not often raised as an encompassing phenomenon. This was mainly in the contextof supply chains disruptions and/or their impacts on food prices and food availability.This concern was fuelled by the impacts of the 2011 South-East Queensland floodsthat temporarily, but severely, disrupted the food supply chain to Brisbane andsurroundings, and tropical cyclones in North Queensland that devastated bananaplantations driving up prices for almost one year after the event.Other environmental factors pointed out by participants were the emerging constraintsposed by diminishing resources that formed the basis of essential agricultural inputs –especially oil and fossil-fuel derived inputs as well as phosphorous-based products.Soil loss through erosion, soil contamination by industry and agro-chemicals and thelack of water resources were also described.Social factors refer to human capacities and resources that either enhance foodsecurity or constitute drivers of food insecurity. In terms of existing levels of foodinsecurity, interviewees mentioned the following factors:lack of skills, knowledge and experience – individuals not knowing how to grow,store, prepare and cook good quality food;language barriers, for newly arrived refugees and immigrants, includinginternational students;social isolation – individuals not having the opportunity to acquire necessaryskills and knowledge to grow and cook food, and eat well;lack of time – individuals not having the time to acquire the necessary skills andexperience; and,food waste – where surplus or unused food is thrown away rather than beingused to feed people in need.Lack of skills and knowledge surrounding food is widespread, and many adults andchildren, have little understanding or appreciation of what constitutes a healthy diet.Some interviewees talked about a lack of basic ‘food literacy’, which included bothbasic nutritional and biological knowledge and wider questions of the political-economyof the food system. One commented:There’s a real need for food literacy – we need a population that can be so muchbetter educated about where food comes from, how it’s grown, food chains andUrban food security, urban resilience and climate change 114