Urban food security, urban resilience and climate change - weADAPT

The milder winters are becoming an issue, in terms of certain species andvarieties that require a certain chill temperature. I’ve planted three apples,because I like them, but most of the other plants don’t depend on that chill factor.We’ll see what happens over time, and whether we need to replace them withsomething that’s more appropriate for a Mediterranean climate, if that’s whatwe’re going into [Permaculturalist and backyard gardener].One of the emerging features of community-level urban agriculture in recent years hasbeen food swaps which can build strong community relationships and networks andplay an important role in creating a resilient food system:These are key in terms of increasing the variety of local food you can access,especially if you’re renting, and you can grow short-term crops and swap them forlonger-term crops that you can’t grow. The food swaps fill a really critical niche, interms of a resilient local food system. They are a great social network … Wehave fantastic social networks in our community, constantly swapping and giftingproduce, I know I can harvest rocket from my friend’s house, for example[Permaculturalist and backyard gardener].The potential for ‘food forests’ to form a key building block of resilient food systems wasalso mentioned especially in terms of their climate-ready design:Food Forests let you do a waterwise garden design. Everything’s not exposed tothe sun and the wind, you get micro-climates, you get natural mulching with theleaf layer, plus we grow cover plants, and mulch plants that die down, it’s asheet-composting system, which traps all the moisture. So we’re doing very well,and our plants are much hardier. I’ve had berries which aren’t meant to face fullsun, survive 45 degree weather. Whereas in the hydroponic system, which I’vegot running alongside as an experiment, last year the corn got torched, it couldn’tdraw water fast enough, it was far too exposed [Permaculturalist and Food Forestadvocate].At the commercial scale, it was noted above that a number of growers are investing inpoly-tunnels and ‘igloos’ in order to control the external environment and increase theirproductivity by reducing or eliminating their exposure to diseases, pests and extremeweather events. Hydroponics is at the cutting edge of these modern horticulturaltechnologies, and it appears to offer many benefits over conventional methods ofproduction:The biggest thing for us is our hydroponic production – we produce four-to-fivetimes what we would get if we did the traditional method of ploughing the landand planting in the ground. That’s why our business has been able to grow sorapidly, because even though it’s on a small block, we’ve been able to produce afairly large volume of herbs [Young hydroponic grower, Casey-Cardinia region]On the other hand an experienced organic producer from the Gold Coast hinterlandwas sceptical of hydroponic approaches:... we don’t like hydroponics, the food is cancerous. It’s meant to be grown in thesoil [but] this is all grown with chemicals. Aquaponics is much better [localorganic producer].Urban food security, urban resilience and climate change 46