Urban food security, urban resilience and climate change - weADAPT

United States, he offered the following view on what urban agriculture is, highlightingthe historical continuities between what is happening now in terms of food production incities, and earlier practices:[Urban agriculture] is opening up the spaces ‘in-between’...there’s quite a bit ofland that can be accessed in the urban setting, and could be developed intosomething productive. It will take some alternative methods of cultivation, somevery resilient farmers that are able to adapt and move between those strips ofland. But in my mind that’s what it’s all about – opening up what has previouslybeen considered to be collateral damage of urban development. That’s roof-topspaces, that’s nature strips, that’s edges of parklands – places that can beproductively farmed, and have immediate access to the market, while providingjob training and employment opportunities for people in the inner city. And I thinkreally restoring that – every city has a history of urban agriculture whereglasshouses or greenhouses existed, or bio-intensive production happened,animals were kept. It’s not something new, though we treat as though it is… It’sjust that we’ve forgotten the power of those in-between spaces to produce quite abit of food [Local government employee, Melbourne].This concept of the ‘spaces in between’ is useful in terms of thinking about the potentialfor urban agriculture to expand in Australian cities and urban centres. The work ofPermaculture Gold Coast on a small private site in Southport is one example of whatcan be achieved by creative individuals and community groups working in partnershipwith their local councils.Interestingly, another academic researcher, who had conducted a number of forumswith farmers and market gardeners on Melbourne’s peri-urban zones, commented ontheir somewhat disparaging perceptions of activities typically regarded in Australia asurban agriculture, such as community gardening:[Some] farmers think it’s naïve, one comment after a forum was, ‘They think wecan all grow tomatoes in pots on the balcony, and that there’ll be enough food’.So there’s a perception [amongst farmers] that urban agriculture is just smallscalefood growing in the city, that’s it not commercial, that’s it not going to makeany contribution to food supply. I think we should be seeing [urban agriculture]more broadly, that we should include what’s on the fringe as well...agriculture thattakes place on the urban boundary. That would include areas of quite significantfood production; and the same would apply to the fringe areas of satellite cities.[for Melbourne] I’d include Casey-Cardinia, and Werribee, Bacchus Marsh, YarraValley. If we’re talking about agriculture, it’s more than pottering around incommunity gardens. So we have to include peri-urban agriculture – whereagriculture meets the city, and all those issues on the fringe of the city, thosetensions [Academic Researcher, Melbourne].It was suggested that the terminology of ‘urban agriculture’ might not be appropriate todescribe non-commercial activities such as backyard and community gardening; andwhether instead the term ‘urban gardening’ might be a better description of suchactivities. While there are few signs of this distinction entering the policy literature, itdoes not of course prevent councils and policy-makers being cognisant of the differentfunctions and roles of non-commercial community gardening, and commercial-scaleurban food production in a city or peri-urban market garden.Urban food security, urban resilience and climate change 118