Urban food security, urban resilience and climate change - weADAPT

A community which is informed about the food value chain and makingappropriate food choices will exert a positive influence on food innovation.(PMSEIC, 2010: 60)The consequences of Australian urbanisation are also noted:Australia has become a highly urbanised community with connections toagriculture being eroded and fewer people having direct connections to farming.From this perspective, this would appear to have resulted in a loss of respect forfood with resultant waste, declining support for rural communities and lowerintakes in agricultural and food technology training programs. The recentdroughts and water restrictions in major cities have, however, reignited rural linksand presented an opportunity for increasing interest and awareness ofagricultural production. (PMSEIC, 2010: 60)The report notes an apparent waning of interest in agriculture and food production anda rural/urban divide, but fails to recognise at all any interest in the production of foodwithin urban areas, either at a small scale for personal use, via community gardens orat the small to medium commercial scale within or on the fringes of cities. It is not clearfrom the report whether this urban dimension was ignored from the outset orconsidered and then dismissed as insignificant or irrelevant, but it would appear to besomething of a lacuna in its perspective on the future of Australian food security.In summary, over the last forty years the concept of food security has informed policydebate at the international, national and local levels. The concept has, however,undergone a number of changes and challenges although as Maxwell (1996:155)noted some time ago, ‘food security had become, it seems, a cornucopia of ideas’ witha plethora of definitions. Indeed twenty years ago, Smith et al, (1993) found close totwo hundred different definitions of the term. Nevertheless, it is possible to identifysome broad categories and periods in this definitional development: from the global tothe national to the household in focus; from a food supply to household and individuallivelihood perspective; and from objective indicators to subjective perceptions (Maxwell,1996:156). But in all of these changes we see little attention being paid to the urbandimension of the issue, except in recognising that food security and poverty areconnected and that the poor are increasingly found in cities.We return to this gap below when considering in more detail the role and potential ofurban agriculture in building greater urban food security.4.1.2 How is food security likely to be impacted by climate change?The effects of climate change are likely to exacerbate a range of existing problems withfood supply, including the problem of food security and food colonisation. Morgan &Sonnino (2010) have coined the phrase ‘the new food equation’ to describe theconstellation of complex new developments that have obliged politicians and plannersto treat food policy more seriously. This constellation includes the food price surge of2007/08, which led to a sharp rise in global food insecurity. This contributed to thecurrent framing of food security as a matter of national security and may be leading tonew forms of ‘food colonialism’ (Morgan & Sonnino, 2009:210) whereby cash rich butfood poor countries systematically buy up the productive capacity of poorer countries.Rapid urbanisation in many countries is also raising concerns about the resilience ofUrban food security, urban resilience and climate change 17