Urban food security, urban resilience and climate change - weADAPT

stakeholder consultations, the report suggested that a local Food Hub should havethree core objectives:Policy initiativesbetter marketing outlet and fair prices for producers;healthy eating for residents – more fruit and vegetables;skill development, community connection and job creation through new localenterprises.The VicHealth Food for All project had the objective of raising the prominence andpriority of food and food security in council policy documents and significant policychange is now taking place within a number of Melbourne councils.One outcome from the Food for All project is that a number of local governments havetaken policy initiatives to support the development of urban agriculture, and integratefood security issues into their planning frameworks. The city of Yarra passed its UrbanAgriculture guidelines in June 2011.These are tools which say there’s a process that you follow, here’s an officer inCouncil that you can contact, to help you navigate the process… Places likeMaribyrnong, they have a ‘Growing Food, Growing Maribyrnong’ projectcoordinator who is redeveloping all their community gardens. They’re trying toreclaim all that contaminated land, those brownfields, and develop it intocommunity gardens, targeting the desertification issue…the City of Melbournehas put out urban agriculture guidelines for street gardens…they’ll probablycreate a position to look after it. That’s a big cultural watershed, when the City ofMelbourne is doing that [Local government employee, Melbourne].The next step is to link these various initiatives together in order to facilitate sharing ofbest practice and mutual learning. While this is already beginning to happen with somelocal councils, there is a significant opportunity for a Melbourne-wide initiative to form atlocal government level.5 The impact of climate change on food security and urban agricultureThe effects of climate change are likely to exacerbate a range of existing problems withfood supply, including the problems of food security and food colonisation. Morgan &Sonnino (2010) use the phrase ‘the new food equation’ to describe the constellation ofcomplex new developments that have obliged politicians and planners to treat foodpolicy more seriously. This constellation includes the food price surge of 2007/08 whichled to a sharp rise in global food insecurity. This contributed to the current position offood security as a matter of national security in the UK and may be leading to newforms of ‘food colonialism’ (Morgan & Sonnino, 2009:210) whereby cash rich but foodpoor countries systematically buy up the productive capacity of poorer countries. Rapidurbanisation in many countries is also raising concerns about the resilience of urbanfood supply chains. While the effects of more variable rainfall patterns, more very hotdays, more severe storms and changing patterns of vector borne diseases are likely tohave profound effects on traditional agricultural practices, they will also affect urbanagriculture.Urban food security, urban resilience and climate change 126