Planning for Regional Food Security: A case-study of the Australian Capital Territory (original) (raw)
Related papers
TURNER, PEARSON AND DYBALL—PLANNING FOR REGIONAL FOOD SECURITY PLANNING FOR REGIONAL FOOD SECURITY
The development of strong local food networks could play a key role in the creation of socially just, environmentally sustainable and resilient food systems in the future. In order for the potential of these networks to be assessed, we need adequate local data on the four key food system components: food production, processing and transportation, consumer access and utilisation, and waste, re-use and post-use management. However, in many locales there is insufficient information gathered and analysed in relation to regional production and consumption of food. This inhibits the implementation of best land use planning and, potentially, compromises future food security. This paper presents a case study of the food system in the Australian Capital Territory (ACT), and demonstrates how knowledge gaps restrict the capacity to adequately plan for the Territory's food future. In doing so, the paper TURNER, PEARSON AND DYBALL—PLANNING FOR REGIONAL FOOD SECURITY Locale: The Australasian-...
The Food Security of the Australian Capital Region
Food security is becoming one of the most significant political, economic and environmental challenges faced by governments around the world. Despite Australia's wealth and abundant agricultural resources, this issue affects Australian cities. In order to develop effective strategies to decrease the vulnerability of Australian cities to food supply disturbances, the nature of food flows between cities and the agro-ecosystems upon which they depend must first be understood. Australia's urban populations tend to be affluent and have specific expectations regarding the types of food they believe should be available to them all year round. The corporations that supply these consumers draw on food sourced from remote agro-ecosystems with little regard for local or seasonal produce. The vulnerability of a city's food supply therefore no longer depends on local constraints affecting its immediate hinterlands, but on ecological and socio-political factors affecting the remote regions from which its food is sourced. Therefore, urban food security is largely contingent on the specific interrelationships, dependencies and constraints that have developed within the national and international food production system.
University of Sydney, 2019
WE ACKNOWLEDGE the Traditional Custodians of the lands that we stood upon when undertaking this research. We pay respects to Elders past, present and emerging, and give thanks to the land and to the peoples and culture who stewarded, respected and honoured this beautiful country for tens of thousands of years before us. We acknowledge your enduring knowledge of the interconnectedness of landscapes, plants, creatures, seasons, people and culture. WE ACKNOWLEDGE that sovereignty over these lands was never ceded, and the devastating impact of colonisation. We commit to walking a path of care, respect, healing, justice and regeneration.
2021
Today, the need to consider food and nutrition as fundamental elements of the planning process is becoming increasingly central to the political and scientific debate. In this regard, a proper integration between spatial planning and food planning allows us to address the current unsustainability of food systems, thus facilitating the development of transition processes towards more sustainable paradigms. This thesis wants to offer a complete picture of how over the years, food systems planning has become an indispensable component of spatial planning. In this regard, States around the world consider Food System Planning as a discipline capable of resolving the current levels of un-sustainability affecting, on the one hand, our societies and, on the other, our food systems. Starting with the role that food plays in our lives and the consequences that urbanization and globalization have on our societies and food systems, the attention shifts to the food planning process in order to investigate the concepts, methods and main tools involved in it. For this reason, several European projects and four case studies will be taken into consideration with the aim of understanding how different realities from all over the world relate together the development of urban areas and the sustainable development of food systems. The result is an analysis that shows how food and nutrition have gone from an initial concept of "commodity" to occupy a fundamental role in the development of a city or a territory. For this reason, local governments are realizing that food systems planning has become an indispensable element of a city's urban development policies and strategies.
Food Security in a Regional Area of Australia: A Socio-economic Perspective
Universal Journal of Food and Nutrition Science, 2014
While Australia is considered to be a highly food-secure nation, some populations are more vulnerable to food insecurity than others and this applies to Tasmania, an island state of Australia. The aim of this study was to highlight food security issues in the two local government areas of Dorset and Clarence in Tasmania, Australia. This paper reports on the key quantitative findings of the project with a focus on food access and food utilisation, and their association with socio-economic factors. Quantitative data were collected from a total of 835 survey participants using a questionnaire developed in close consultation with service provider organizations as well as public health and nutrition experts. The study revealed 53 (6.6%) residents were at the low food security and 18 (2.1%) who literally went without food. The significant correlations between low food security and socio-economic factors evidenced in the study further suggested that the low-food security residents were more likely to come from the more vulnerable groups of low income families (χ2= 42.528, df = 6, p < 0.05), the younger and older population groups (χ2= 12.361, df = 5, p < 0.05) or those living in socio-economically disadvantaged rural areas (χ2= 165.9, df =7, p < 0.05). A link between physical and financial access was clearly indicated due to high fuel cost (44.4%) which was the most common barrier reported among those who used personal vehicles for travelling to and from food shops. The study findings help to direct strategic policies to food security for the future of Tasmanians such as the "Food for all Tasmanians" strategy by the Tasmanian Food Security Council which focuses on ensuring social food equity for all Tasmanians. These strategies include promoting publicly funded community cars, promoting local produce and food access initiatives such as increased farm gate sales, farmer markets, food cooperatives, community gardens and growing and swapping produce within communities.
Land Use Policy, 2020
Urban agriculture (UA) can be highly productive in terms of yield per unit area, however productivity is limited by available land and high input requirements. We determined how much of the food supply of Sydney, Australia, could be produced through UA by synthesising yield data from 13 UA gardens with information on labour and key material inputs and using spatial analyses to assess available land area. We modelled three scenarios with varying proportions of available land used for food production; 25 %, 50 % or 75 % of domestic yard space along with street verges and unused land (e.g. vacant lots). Around 15 % of Sydney's total food supply, or its entire vegetable supply, could be produced through UA under the low range scenario, increasing to 34 % under the highest land use scenario. Under the low range scenario, all necessary irrigation water and organic soil amendments could be obtained from local waste streams, though these sources were insufficient to meet the needs of higher range scenarios. Available labour was a limiting factor in all scenarios, with the entire population being insufficient to meet labour needs required to maintain food production under efficiency and labour investment regimes typical of amateur urban gardeners. Establishing a professionalised UA workforce with greater labour efficiency would be required for managing the available land, however this scenario would likely require changes in public attitudes towards use of private land. These social issues, rather than physical limitations, may be the biggest factors preventing cities like Sydney from obtaining a non-trivial proportion of their food supply from UA.
Peoples Food Plan for Australia - Policy Directions
BETWEEN SEPTEMBER AND NOVEMBER 2012, over 600 people took part in 40 public forums organised by the Australian Food Sovereignty Alliance across Australia. Our aim: to discuss a vision for a common-sense, fair, resilient and sustainable Peoples’ Food Plan for Australia. These were democratic conversations — everyone had speaking rights and everyone’s opinion and experience was valued. Out of this came a Working Paper for a People’s Food Plan that reflected the conversations around a fair food system for all. This was intended as a preliminary document, a work in progress. We launched the People’s Food Plan process in September 2012 because we believed that the federal government’s proposed National Food Plan marginalises the many thousands who make up an emergent, fair food movement in Australia. As the AFSA forums have shown, there is a strong desire for a fair and diverse food system, one that deals effectively and democratically with the serious problems this country is facing, problems that range from soil erosion to the obesity crisis, foreign control of our seeds and farmlands to people not getting a regular supply of nourishing food for their families. The ideas and views that were shared in the public forums both confirmed the existence of a large and growing constituency for change in food and farming in Australia and laid the foundations of a vision of transformation and pathways to achieve it.
Local food system planning was identifi ed in the late 1990s as an emerging and important urban planning object. Since then, little attention has been placed on identifying a robust and comprehensive understanding of the roles and tools local government can use in addressing their local food systems. Th e emerging literature identifi es problems with the dominant productionist agricultural system, addresses conceptual issues and often advances normative arguments in support of developing and supporting local food systems, but attention to the practical actions needed to address this issue on the ground have been limited. Th is paper provides an overview of the reported risks (such as water shortages, climate change, peak oil) associated with our dominant food systems, addresses the lack of attention to the importance of sub-scales within 'local' and defi nition of 'local food,' and it identifi es the main reasons for considering local food systems as part of addressi...
Journal of Agriculture, Food Systems, and Community Development
A new rural development paradigm has emerged over the last decade. It is multifaceted by nature, connecting practices of landscape management, agritourism, organic and sustainable farming, and value-chain analysis and management. Increased food production in peri-urban areas in the developed world is typical of this new paradigm. Peri-urban areas are the transitional zones between rural and urban landscapes that experience constant population change and disturbance of traditional social, environmental, and economic characteristics. Sustainable community development initiatives are complicated in these fragmented and often contested landscapes. A case study on Australia's Sunshine Coast analyzes the challenges and opportunities of reconfiguring agrifood production systems to achieve the type of multifunctional landscape preferred by the community and primary producers alike. Scenario analysis, interviews, and surveys of traditional midscale farmers with more recent micro-to small primary producers and food artisans provide insight into the challenges faced at a grassroots level. The role of government in facilitating supportive policy and planning and connecting and building the capacity of key actors involved in local