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Urban food security, urban resilience and climate change - weADAPT

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the <strong>food</strong> <strong>security</strong> of cities, but not to describe more detailed studies of local impacts inspecific places. These studies are beginning to emerge <strong>and</strong> to contribute to theaccumulation of valuable knowledge that is both general <strong>and</strong> specific, but there is roomfor further research.It is likely that without a concerted effort to collate these local studies <strong>and</strong> to learnlessons of research design <strong>and</strong> effective methods, the field will continue to becharacterised by an unhelpful degree of ignorance <strong>and</strong> fragmentation. We should notexpect a high degree of uniformity in research design <strong>and</strong> approach as few fields areable in practice to impose a strong set of paradigmatic assumptions on individualresearchers, but there is scope for overcome fragmentation through collation <strong>and</strong>synthesis.3. What do we mean by <strong>urban</strong> agriculture?Historically, <strong>urban</strong> agriculture has made a significant contribution towards feedingAustralia’s growing city populations. Especially during wartime, <strong>urban</strong> <strong>and</strong> backyard<strong>food</strong> production was encouraged as a way of supporting the war effort (Gaynor, 2006).In contemporary times, <strong>urban</strong> <strong>food</strong> production takes multiple forms, <strong>and</strong> while figuresare difficult to accurately gauge, (rates of reporting are likely to be under-estimates<strong>and</strong>/or out of date – see Yeatman, 2008), there are some indicative indicators of itsgrowth. Firstly, data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics collected in 1992 (the mostrecent survey of home <strong>food</strong> production) found that over a third of the populationproduced <strong>food</strong> in domestic spaces. More recently, in 2010, the Australian City Farms<strong>and</strong> Community Gardens Network listed at least 212 community gardens, while theAustralian Farmers Market Association provided a list of 149 farmers markets (thoughnot all are located in <strong>urban</strong> locations). There are also numerous community supportedagriculture (CSA) <strong>and</strong> <strong>food</strong> swap schemes, as well as hundreds of edible schoolgardens, including the well-renowned ‘Stephanie Alex<strong>and</strong>er Kitchen School Garden’,founded in 2001. There are also active ‘permablitz’ communities in the capital of everystate <strong>and</strong> territory in Australia. Permablitzing – a hybridization of permaculture <strong>and</strong> the‘Backyard Blitz’ phenomenon – involves communities coming together to transformbackyards, ab<strong>and</strong>oned blocks <strong>and</strong> other spaces into edible l<strong>and</strong>scapes, or as onepermablitz activist described it: ‘eating the suburbs, one backyard at a time’. ‘Guerrillagardening’ is also gaining increasing national attention, including its increasedpopularisation via a commercial television program where the stars ‘fight the filth withforks <strong>and</strong> flowers’. The arsenal of guerrilla gardeners includes ‘weapons of mass revegetation’;referring to seed guns or seed bombs made of clay, organic compost, localnative seeds <strong>and</strong> water, that are then tossed into neglected spaces to germinate.Despite the continued existence <strong>and</strong> indeed expansion of a wide range of <strong>food</strong>production activities in cities, as Pires (2011) notes, the very notion of <strong>urban</strong> agricultureis seen by some as a contradiction in terms – agriculture being something that happensbeyond cities in rural areas. Bartling (2012) traces the ways in which developing postwar<strong>urban</strong> culture (especially in the USA) celebrated the proliferation of consumptionover production <strong>and</strong> presented a set of practices <strong>and</strong> behaviours that were‘appropriate’ for <strong>urban</strong> <strong>and</strong> sub<strong>urban</strong> life. Increasingly this defined <strong>urban</strong> animalhusb<strong>and</strong>ry <strong>and</strong> <strong>food</strong> production as ‘inappropriate’ <strong>and</strong> although there is now clearevidence of a large <strong>and</strong> growing counter-cultural response to this, the relationshipsbetween ‘natural’ <strong>and</strong> built environments <strong>and</strong> between humans <strong>and</strong> nature continue toinfluence contemporary <strong>urban</strong> policy debates, albeit often in subtle ways (Turner,Nakamura & Dinetti, 2004; Register, 2006).Most definitions of <strong>urban</strong> agriculture include a variety of activities carried out at manydifferent scales, from the domestic to the city-wide. Although definitions vary to some<strong>Urban</strong> <strong>food</strong> <strong>security</strong>, <strong>urban</strong> <strong>resilience</strong> <strong>and</strong> <strong>climate</strong> <strong>change</strong> 83

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