Urban food security, urban resilience and climate change - weADAPT

should teach gardening to parents, never mind the kids. Parents need tolearn…Hospitals, universities you know [Farmer, Gold Coast].Part of this learning process is to educate our political leaders about the need for betterintegrated policies. That is, urban agriculture and the food system are not only aboutfood production, or food retailing, but are concerned with the myriad of activities atdifferent scales that contribute to a healthy urban agriculture network. A commonsuggestion is the creation of Food Policy Councils, which are being established in anumber of North American cities. Food Policy Councils, bring stakeholders fromdifferent food sectors together to examine how the food system operates and how itcan be improved. Food Policy Councils also educate public officials and the public,draft food policies and coordinate between local and often disparate food programs.VicHealth is currently supporting the establishment of ‘Local Food Policy Coalitions’that will bring together over a dozen local councils in Melbourne and some regionalareas and will include a range of community-based stakeholders. The opportunityexists for these Coalitions in turn to be connected through formal coordinationmechanisms. This can feed into the existing policy and community work alreadyunderway in a number of local governments, and facilitate exchanges between innerurban and peri-urban councils:Everyone’s doing a little bit at this point, and I think eventually it’s going to hit thatwatershed point, where a peak body will form, and there will be some verysignificant movements, if the political will stays. Because that’s what’s driving it. Apeak body will be a formal inter-council coordination mechanism. It existsinformally at the moment with all the officers who have responsibilities related tourban agriculture getting together [Local government employee, Melbourne].Drawing on his experience in the United States, one local government officer inMelbourne also highlighted the dynamic synergies that can occur between localgovernment and community organisations and how together they can strengthen theshift towards a more sustainable and secure food system:There’s great work being done in the States by an organisation called the AgInnovations Network, based in San Francisco. They’re taking it county by county,a multi-stakeholder approach, getting some key things locked in, aroundsustainable agriculture, water protection, all these different things. Working withfarmers, producers – they’re building a network, county-by-county-by-county, andeventually, you pull the strings, and the whole State is seized up in that process.And you’ve shifted the paradigm.So for me, the local council is the driving [force], but it has to have strongparticipation from that non-government side of things. As the risk-taker, as thefacilitator, as the experimenter – that’s the power of the non-profit, they can give ita go, and they can crash and burn, and their accountability is much less severethan it is at council level, which has to answer to ratepayers, the media, and soon. That partnership, that edge between the two, is a very dynamic edge that Ithink needs to be strategically, and significantly developed [Local governmentemployee, Melbourne].Urban food security, urban resilience and climate change 143