Urban food security, urban resilience and climate change - weADAPT

year of aquatic weed they tip into landfill and so we've taken about 500 cubicmetres of that stuff so far; which is a significant amount and we compost it, aswell as using it in our garden beds. So it's diversion of waste streams to showpeople that what you can do here is that you can garden using stuff that's justhanging around and going into the tip [Micro Farmer, Gold Coast].The micro-business side of the venture involves the sale of vegetables grown on site,as well as compost and honey. They describe their approach as follows:We just try to grow what's in season. We stick to basically salad greens and stuffthat you can pile into the garden and make really productive and that's our majorstuff that we sell to the public, kale, lettuce, silverbeet, Chinese cabbage, rocket,mizuna; things like that. We've got beetroot now as well. We don't grow manycarrots. Carrots are too slow. Tomatoes we don't grow. The tomatoes are tooslow. Beans are too much trouble, so we grow beans for ourselves. We groweggplants, eggplants is good for the public because we've got some reallyproductive egg plants. But yeah, stuff that's quick and easy and yeah profitable[Micro farmer, Gold Coast].One of the most significant achievements of Gold Coast Permaculture is that all theirproduction happens on a site which they do not own. They approached a developerwhose land was unused by occupied by squatters, and negotiated a deal in which theypay rent and use the land for as long as it was not needed by the developer. When thedeveloper is ready to build on it, Gold Coast Permaculture will relocate at four months’notice allowing them to harvest the current crop and relocate their garden beds.In addition to this micro-enterprise, Gold Coast Permaculture offers a number of gardenbeds for the community to use as their own community garden, and on weekends theyoffer courses, workshops and community activities.The arc of suburbs within the local government areas of the cities of Yarra and Darebinwere described as ‘hot-beds’ of urban agriculture activity and local food production.The cities of Maribyrnong and Port Phillip also have considerable levels of activity, withthe former focusing on food security and the latter on community food growing.Non-commercial urban agriculture is often understood solely in terms of communitygardens, but as the literature review and the case studies have revealed, it is farbroader than that. A notable practice to emerge in Melbourne and, to a lesser extent,the Gold Coast in the past few years is the permablitzing movement; permablitz beinga combination of ‘permaculture’ and ‘backyard blitz’. This is usually an informalgathering over the course of a day in which a group of people come together to: createor add to edible gardens where someone lives; share skills related to permaculture andsustainable living; build community networks; and have fun.Over 100 permablitzes have now been held in Melbourne, and the movement hasspread interstate and overseas. On the Gold Coast, the permablitz movement isstarting to gain momentum, but it still lacks the numbers that Melbourne enjoys, withless than 10 permablitzes taking place to date.Urban food security, urban resilience and climate change 123