Urban food security, urban resilience and climate change - weADAPT

50% of humanity’s total eco-footprint. It leads to soil degradation and erosion, itpollutes waterways, it creates dead zones in the oceans, and it is highly energyintensive … A resilient food system [on the other hand] means being able to keepgoing when the lights go off, being able to deal with radically less energy[Community food activist].and;The Garnaut report said that by 2100, 90% of irrigation agriculture in Australia willbecome unviable. Are people not thinking about what that means? To reallyunderstand this is a massive change. We’re running out of cheap oil, and wehave climate change, it seems crazy that we would [just] rely on [large-scalesystems that seem likely to break down] – [Backyard gardener andpermaculturalist].and;With Peak Oil, the viability of transporting large amounts of food long distancesdiminishes. With climate change, it looks like farmers are struggling already, andtheir production methods are unsustainable. They’ve got two things workingagainst them: the climate’s getting less supportive of their activities, and theiractivities are unsustainable to begin with … especially in terms of watershortages. It’s all looking rather shaky. In fact, it’s looking like we can’t depend onour rural sector to provide us with all our food … We’re pretty well gearing up forthe worst in the climate; and the worst-case scenario in the rural sector. Andfrankly – I hate to say this – the food that’s coming out of there is crap anyway,because of all the commercial pressures from the supermarkets on them to keepdropping their prices. So they have to use as many short-cuts as they can to stayafloat … I did some research and found out that, compared to 20 years ago, anapple today has only 25% of the nutrient value it did back then, because it’spicked unripe, stored in a fridge for months, then chemically ripened. That’sreally, really scary … So [those are the reasons] why we’re looking to [urban]public land as the [future] basis of resilient food sources [Permaculturalist andfood forest advocate].A resilient food system, on the other hand, will, according to most interviewees, have anumber of features that will enable it to cope with a variety of external and systemicshocks (including climate change and Peak Oil); and also be capable of deliveringfairness and social justice, for farmers and consumers. Terms such as ‘wasteminimisation’, ‘import-dependence minimisation’, greater levels of ‘food self-relianceand self-sufficiency’, eradicating the need for emergency food relief, and creatinglocalised and sustainable supply systems were all mentioned on a number ofoccasions:A resilient food system would work from food production, to consumption, retailand waste, and how we deal with that. A functioning, coherent system, thatprovides well for everybody in the population [Manager, non-governmentorganisation].Urban food security, urban resilience and climate change 44