Urban food security, urban resilience and climate change - weADAPT

oth backyard gardeners like himself and commercial producers in and aroundMelbourne:The weather changes are a real concern, we’ve seen a progressive decline in theweather, and I’ve had to change my strategies about how I grow [my plants], howI prune [my trees] so they get more air circulation, putting them in warmer spotsso they dry more quickly… Now what we’re getting is much shorter summers andsudden fluctuations in spring [Backyard gardener and permaculturalist,Melbourne].This gardener also commented on the milder winters, which seem to many to beanother trend for Melbourne:It didn’t get cold enough for a lot of plants to die down, so that asparagus, whichshould die down in winter, and produce new spears in the spring, it didn’t do that,it was far too mild. We had some fruit trees flower for a second time, which theydon’t normally do, because it stayed warm into late autumn… [The mild wintersare] a real worry, [especially for commercial growers]. A lot of fruit requires acertain chill temperature, so they can produce in the spring. Because our wintersare getting milder, we might not get enough chill period for the apples to produceproperly. [Backyard gardener and permaculturalist, Melbourne].The disturbed water cycle was also a talking point on the Gold Coast, especially afterthe 2010/2011 floods. A well-established organic farming couple, with over 15 years’experience farming on Mount Tamborine, in the Gold Cost hinterland, explained howthe changes in rainfall patterns and volumes has affected them in the past few years:Talking about weather, you were talking about climate change and that, we’vehad two of the worst years in 16 years you know, last year it was the floodswhere whilst it didn’t flood on the mountain it was three months of persistent rainand no sun and we got to a stage where by March, for the first time, we didn’thave anything to pick, you know it was so waterlogged, and because there hadn’tbeen any sun, nothing was growing if you put a seed in, it wouldn’t grow[Farmers, Gold Coast].Another interviewee in Melbourne commented that water restrictions made backyardand community gardening difficult, especially for those who did not have rainwatercapture and storage tanks:In the drought, when we were on 3 and 3A water restrictions, there was noaccommodating people who wanted to grow their own food…You had to apply forexemptions. Some schools got exemptions, to keep watering their schoolgardens. But that wasn’t available to households [Academic researcher,Melbourne].Water security emerged from this research as a major consideration when thinking ofthe nexus between urban agriculture, urban food security, climate change and urbanresilience. However, as pointed out by one of the participants, there is a certain irony tothe prevailing system of water allocations and restrictions, and how this is perceived bythe wider community:Supposedly we’ve got a water shortage, and we’ve got people growing citrusorchards that are very unsustainable water-wise, and we’re doing it in semi-arid,Urban food security, urban resilience and climate change 129