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Urban food security, urban resilience and climate change - weADAPT

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oth backyard gardeners like himself <strong>and</strong> commercial producers in <strong>and</strong> aroundMelbourne:The weather <strong>change</strong>s are a real concern, we’ve seen a progressive decline in theweather, <strong>and</strong> I’ve had to <strong>change</strong> 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 <strong>and</strong>sudden fluctuations in spring [Backyard gardener <strong>and</strong> 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, <strong>and</strong> 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 <strong>and</strong> 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 hinterl<strong>and</strong>, explained howthe <strong>change</strong>s in rainfall patterns <strong>and</strong> volumes has affected them in the past few years:Talking about weather, you were talking about <strong>climate</strong> <strong>change</strong> <strong>and</strong> 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 rain<strong>and</strong> no sun <strong>and</strong> we got to a stage where by March, for the first time, we didn’thave anything to pick, you know it was so waterlogged, <strong>and</strong> 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 backyard<strong>and</strong> community gardening difficult, especially for those who did not have rainwatercapture <strong>and</strong> storage tanks:In the drought, when we were on 3 <strong>and</strong> 3A water restrictions, there was noaccommodating people who wanted to grow their own <strong>food</strong>…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 <strong>security</strong> emerged from this research as a major consideration when thinking ofthe nexus between <strong>urban</strong> agriculture, <strong>urban</strong> <strong>food</strong> <strong>security</strong>, <strong>climate</strong> <strong>change</strong> <strong>and</strong> <strong>urban</strong><strong>resilience</strong>. However, as pointed out by one of the participants, there is a certain irony tothe prevailing system of water allocations <strong>and</strong> restrictions, <strong>and</strong> how this is perceived bythe wider community:Supposedly we’ve got a water shortage, <strong>and</strong> we’ve got people growing citrusorchards that are very unsustainable water-wise, <strong>and</strong> we’re doing it in semi-arid,<strong>Urban</strong> <strong>food</strong> <strong>security</strong>, <strong>urban</strong> <strong>resilience</strong> <strong>and</strong> <strong>climate</strong> <strong>change</strong> 129

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