Urban food security, urban resilience and climate change - weADAPT

This logistics system is dominated by road transport, with almost 95% of all food forhuman and animal consumption (by total volume) using this mode and accounting for22% of the total tonne-kilometres travelled as Australian road freight. Clearly, anydisruption to this network of roads is likely to have a significant negative impact on themovement of food around the country and ultimately on its cost.Thus, while the long term impacts of climate change on Australian agriculture and itscapacity to provide food for both domestic consumption and international export areprofound, in the shorter term the impact is more likely to be seen in disruptions tosupply lines as roads are damaged as well as to more localised crop failures dueextreme weather events. Edwards et al., notes also that the distribution of fertilisersand petroleum products on which Australian agriculture has become increasinglydependent are also exposed to these potential disruptions to the national and regionalroad network.In their consideration of possible responses by components of Australian food systemsto a changing climate, Edwards et al., identify changes in the location of production andprocessing sites; changes in shopping behaviour (including even more consumption ofunhealthy processed foods which cost less than healthier fresh foods); and communityresponses in urban areas such as new forms of production and distribution. Here thequestion of scale and significance is important and they note:Although seemingly meagre set against the sheer scale of the formal economy,these pockets of change reveal patterns of community understanding andconcern, ideas and innovation that have the potential to grow. (p. 24)Furthermore, and as part of broader programs to build urban resilience, greater urbanfood growing and processing can make a valuable contribution:The urban relocation of food growing, if well managed, could boost certain freshfood supplies while complementing rural crops, in addition to encouraging newurban food related services, introducing urban food models and change in rolesfrom consumer to producer for citizens. Urban agriculture could also reducevulnerability to food supply disruptions or extended emergency supply situationsby providing diverse sources of perishable food supply. (p. 24)We return to these issues later when considering in more detail the role of urbanagriculture.Overall, there is a tendency in some of the literature to rely on general models of thelikely impacts of climate change on food security and also on the food security of cities,but not to describe more detailed studies of local impacts in specific places. We can,nevertheless, expect these general models not only to improve over time but perhapsmore importantly to allow the generation of more localised models of impact throughprocesses of downscaling. However, it is likely that without a concerted effort to drawalso on a variety of local studies, the field will continue to be characterised by anunhelpful degree of ignorance and fragmentation. While it is unlikely that any oneparadigm of research design will prevail, the challenge of producing coherentsyntheses of methodologically diverse local studies will remain.4.1.3 What do we mean by urban agriculture?Urban food security, urban resilience and climate change 20