Urban food security, urban resilience and climate change - weADAPT

a more prominent role in enhancing urban food security:Feeding city populations equitably cannot be left to market forces alone, butrequires government and civil society-auspiced intersectoral approachesinvolving agriculture, urban planning, small business, and health sectors. Suchapproaches must acknowledge complex webs of causation between global andnational policies favouring industrialisation and private equity, the elimination offood-producing habitats, transformations in food retail, consumer poverty,ignorance, and anxiety (Dixon et al., 2007, p. 126).This theme is developed by Edwards (2011a & b) in arguing that while relatively smallscale and modest in comparison with major food producers, processors and suppliers,small local enterprises have the potential to grow and to prefigure the possibilities ofalternative forms of production, processing and supply:..as a reaction to the vulnerabilities of the dominant neoliberal food system basedon industrialisation, privatisation, deregulation, standardisation andcommodification, there are a growing number of informal, localised andcommunity-based social practices based around food appearing in Australiancities. (p. 115)They also suggest that further research is necessary to determine the long termbenefits of these local initiatives.5. What is the extent of urban agriculture in Australian cities?As stated earlier in this review, there has been no comprehensive survey of the fullrange of urban agricultural activities taking place in Australian cities, but many smallerscale and more modest studies exist of some of these practices in particular cities. Thissection reports on the extent of urban agriculture from both the academic and ‘grey’literature and pays particular attention to urban agriculture projects. There is little in theliterature that has attempted to quantify the extent of urban agriculture in privatebackyards or of informal economies around growing and exchange amongst particularsocial groups. However, it is believed, that many such gardens and social networks doexist in Australian cities as well as in smaller towns and rural areas.There is some quantifiable information relating to some aspects of urban agriculture,but given the informal and dispersed nature of urban food growing, it is difficult to knowthe volume of food being grown in Australian urban areas, or indeed, the area of landdedicated to various forms of urban agriculture. For instance, the Stephanie AlexanderKitchen Garden project report having 265 kitchen gardens in schools across Australia(see www.kitchengardenfoundation.org). Other urban agriculture related data isavailable from the food rescue organisation, Second Bite. Their website reports on theorganisation providing 6.8 million meals across 350 community organisations, or nearly3.5 million kilograms of food. Whilst this falls into the distribution rather production endof urban agriculture, it highlights the abundance of food being diverted from waste byjust one organisation in Australia. Indeed, there are a number of organisations inAustralia engaged in food rescue – and in doing so, alleviating food insecurity for asector of the population whilst also preventing the waste of edible food.The Australian City Farms and Community gardens network is currently conducting asurvey to map community gardens in Australia. Whilst data on the number ofcommunity gardens is not yet available, attempts are being made to capture the extentof some of these activities. This coincides with urban food growers’ greater use of theinternet and other social media such as Twitter, blogging and Facebook, to connect,plan, distribute and share. A prime example of the creative use of social media tonetwork urban growers and foragers can be seen on the ‘Sharing Abundance’ websiteUrban food security, urban resilience and climate change 89