Contents
[1] Challenge as opportunity: Urban population growth
[2] Protection for peri-urban agricultural lands - what’s already happening and what more can be done?
[3] Promotion of urban agriculture - USA and Canada
[4] Food Policy Councils - citizen engagement in shaping food policy
[5] Urban agriculture in Australia can be facilitated by improved planning laws
[6] Food security, food justice, food sovereignty - considerations for the new economy movement
[7] Conclusion
[1] Challenge as opportunity: Urban population growth
The rise of urban populations globally has led to a majority of humans now living in cities rather than rural areas. The concomitant ‘urban sprawl’ associated with this population growth places pressure on land previously reserved for traditionally non-urban land uses, such as agricultural production and environmental conservation. On the one hand, there are now more humans to feed than ever before and yet, on the other, there is a decreasing amount of productive land either within or near major cities that is dedicated to feeding these populations.
Australia is no outlier in relation to these global trends. For example, the population of Sydney has grown by approximately 25% to a current estimated population of almost five million people - and this is expected to rise by another million people by the middle of this century. Significant urban development across the Greater Sydney Region is already underway and more is planned, particularly across parts of the peri-urban agricultural fringe in Western Sydney, which has traditionally operated as a foodbowl for the city. Similarly, Melbourne’s peri-urban areas serve as vital food production zones, in need of protection from urban sprawl.
In addition to the obvious food security issues associated with these trends in an era of climate change, the environmental impacts - such as increased fossil fuel consumption for transporting food to major population centres and the continued clearing of land for agriculture - are also of concern. They are likely unacceptable given Australia’s international responsibilities under the Paris Climate Agreement.
In light of these challenges, the flourishing of small-scale and localised urban food-based economies is an important means by which population growth may be responsibly managed, in accordance with new economy principles such as ecological sustainability and place-based/local economies. Indeed, there are already potentially positive reforms taking place in parts of South Australia and Victoria, where state governments have moved to protect existing agricultural regions on the peri-urban fringes of Adelaide and Melbourne.
Such reforms (though only a starting point) should be extended to ensure the protection of established food growing regions in all states and territories. Additionally, planning reforms should be targeted to encourage the growth of food production within our cities (herein described as ‘urban agriculture’) and supplemented by related reforms that prioritise social justice, democratic & distributed governance, and respect for our First Nations peoples.
Cartoon by Harley Ng
[2] Protection for peri-urban agricultural lands - what’s already happening and what more can be done?
In 2017, the South Australian Government introduced some planning reforms to protect important food growing areas in close proximity to Adelaide. These so-called ‘Environment and Food Production Areas’ operate to limit rural sub-division and preserve the environmental and agricultural character of the Adelaide Hills. This compliments similar legislation passed in 2012 to protect the Barossa Valley and McLaren Vale regions.
The Victorian Government has implemented an urban growth boundary for Melbourne, which can only be amended by a majority vote in both houses of Parliament. The Victorian Government has also recently completed community consultation on reforms intended to protect strategic agricultural land in Melbourne’s ‘green wedge’ and peri-urban areas. New planning controls to this effect are expected to be implemented from next year.
For an overseas example, the City of Seattle in King County, Washington, USA, has developed an innovative market-based mechanism to enable the transfer of development rights from agricultural land owners to inner-city developers. To date, this approach has protected almost 150,000 acres of rural lands from subdivision and redevelopment.
Although these examples are not without their issues (the Melbourne Urban Growth Boundary, for example, has previously been extended to make way for development), they provide a basis for strengthening protection of our city foodbowls and create opportunities for the growth of localised food economies. In cities such as Sydney, peri-urban food growing areas remain under threat from urban development. For example, the recent introduction of the Greenfield Housing Code will likely serve to fast-track urban development in previous greenfield areas,which is in fact a stated intention of the Greater Sydney Commission in planning documents devised for the Greater Sydney Region.
All state and territory governments in Australia would therefore do well to follow the lead of South Australia and Victoria in protecting food production and reconsidering policies that support ongoing urban sprawl. Such measures are likely critical to the ecological sustainability and localisation of economies that is sought by the new economy movement in Australia.
[3] Promotion of urban agriculture - USA and Canada
Growing food within our cities - and not just near our cities - is another important aspect of localisation, enhancing the positive environmental impacts of urban communities living together in close proximity. Urban farming is a growing movement in Australia, inspired in part by the burgeoning urban farming movement in the USA and Canada. For examples, see the work of Curtis Stone, who runs an urban farming operation in Kelowna, British Columbia, or the work of the Michigan Urban Farming Initiative in Detroit, Michigan.
Unsurprisingly, some jurisdictions in the USA and Canada are also leading the way in reforming their planning system to enable the promotion of urban agriculture. In Vancouver, British Columbia, the City of Vancouver has worked in partnership with a municipal advisory body - the Vancouver Food Policy Council - to develop and implement a comprehensive urban food strategy. The Vancouver Food Strategy focuses on increasing supportive regulatory measures in favour of, not only production, but also processing and distribution; consumer access and food waste. In terms of supporting increased agricultural production, the City of Vancouver has introduced a range of measures that promote intra-urban agricultural activities, including the development of guidelines for urban beekeeping, keeping backyard hens, and the design of urban agriculture for either private or commercial purposes.
Regarding commercial land uses, dedicated Urban Farm Guidelines (‘UFG’) were introduced in March 2016 and work in combination with a scaled business licensing regime to provide a permissive planning framework for urban farms that operate within both residential zonings (Class A farms) and industrial, commercial or historic area zonings (Class B farms). The UFG sets out a range of operating requirements concerning hours of operation, on-site sales, pesticide use, planting area limitations, soil testing, food safety, waste management, use of mechanical and on-site processing equipment – all of which are intended to limit the scope and impact of urban farming operations in residential zones. Additionally the City of Vancouver collects a range of data, which contributes to the Vancouver Urban Farming Census and provides a mechanism for the identification of ongoing barriers to urban agriculture and thus the continual improvement of the regulatory framework.
From even a purely risk management perspective, well-designed regulation of urban agriculture supports the growth of new economies in urban areas whilst also managing potential human health impacts, amenity concerns and enforcement costs. Adopting a similar approach to Vancouver, some Californian cities have revised local zoning laws to recognise and permit urban agriculture in residential and other land use zones. These initiatives are enhanced by a supportive legislative framework at state level. For example, the California legislature has recently passed the Urban Agriculture Incentive Zones Act of 2013, which enables both city and county governments to create urban agriculture incentive zones that allow urban landowners to receive tax incentives if they dedicate land to agricultural uses for at least five years.
Furthermore, in 2015, California introduced the Small Farm Food Guidelines (‘SFFG’) which apply to “community food producers” in urban areas, including those operating in non-agricultural land zones. The SFFG require small farmers to obtain permits for pesticide use and implement a range of handling and labelling requirements designed to minimise food safety risks and protect the integrity of urban agricultural industries. California has since also introduced the Seed Exchange Democracy Act of 2016 to exempt small-scale farmers from costly regulations, and the Farmer Equity Act of 2017, which requires the development of favourable policy frameworks to support farmers of colour, Native American farmers and urban farmers. These examples demonstrate some of the additional layers of beneficial social, environmental and economic regulation that can support urban agricultural activities, when already permissible through the planning framework - and are worthy of consideration by the new economy movement in Australia.
Building on this last point, there are many noteworthy examples from the USA and Canada that demonstrate the value of an integrated approach whereby innovative planning reforms are nurtured by a wider policy framework that is supportive of urban agriculture. Most notably in the USA, the extensive promotion of urban agriculture has been critical in the revival of the city of Detroit, Michigan which has suffered considerably from long-term trends of economic and demographic decline. In order to support this work, the City of Detroit has proposed zoning ordinances that permit the keeping of farm animals and has also introduced zoning ordinances that enable the growing of crops in urban areas, which establish standards to minimise negative impacts on other forms of land use. These standards apply to urban farms in residential, business and industrial land-use zones, and cover matters such as setbacks and height requirements, property maintenance, use of motorised equipment and the prevention of general nuisance due to noise, smoke, fumes, vibrations or odours.
In tandem with these positive developments, Detroit has seen considerable investment in a range of projects on vacant public lands to strengthen various industries across the urban food sector including farms, food-processing businesses, restaurants and cafes. One example is the Michigan Urban Farming Initiative’s Community Resource Centre, a social enterprise designed to generate local food projects and provide affordable produce to low-income households. These types of project highlight the value in governments working collaboratively with community organisations, to increase the uptake of opportunities present within the planning framework.
The Michigan Urban Farming Initiative
[4] Food Policy Councils - citizen engagement in shaping food policy
As a final example, the City of Toronto in Canada established the Toronto Food Policy Council (‘TFPC’) in 1991 to advise the city government on matters of food policy. The Food Policy Council model has become increasingly popular in other parts of the world and enables a coordinated and strategic approach to planning for food, including urban agriculture. Through its government sanctioned focus on issues of food policy, the TFPC has been influential in designing ongoing reforms supportive of urban agriculture. This includes enactment of an innovative by-law introduced through the Toronto Municipal Code 2000 in 2009, which sets out construction standards and provides for the permissible development of “green roofs” throughout the city, the first of its kind in North America.
The TFPC has also been instrumental in the development of the GrowTO: An Urban Agriculture Action Plan for Toronto, which was unanimously endorsed by the Toronto City Council in 2012 and provides a platform for developing ongoing regulatory reform. Indeed, through its work the TFPC observes that significant barriers to its development remain, not least unequal access to land and capital, which is generally necessary to establish urban farming enterprises. For this reason integrated approaches to food policy more generally, such as through the establishment of statutory citizen advisory bodies, are preferable to the introduction of isolated planning reforms.
[5] Urban agriculture in Australia can be facilitated by improved planning laws
Given the diversity of regulatory mechanisms employed in other jurisdictions to promote urban agriculture, there is much to draw inspiration from when considering possibilities for reform of Australia’s state and territory-based planning laws. At present, it is far from clear as to whether urban agricultural activities (particularly those at a small-scale) are generally permissible in non-rural land use zones, including residential land-use zones. That being said, there are numerous examples of urban agriculture ventures and city farms in capital cities across Australia - such as the Pocket City Farms and Yerrabingin Indigenous rooftop farm in Sydney. To incentivise the continued uptake of urban agriculture across Australia, planning laws should explicitly permit forms of urban agriculture within a range of urban land use zones. Development codes that establish standards around issues such as height and setback requirements (e.g. for greenhouses and other structures), noise and on-site traffic, chemical use and soil testing (to name but a few) might also serve to minimise potential health, safety, nuisance and animal welfare concerns of farming projects in mixed-use areas.
In developing any such reforms, decision-making must be participatory, inclusive and transparent - and this means that the community - including experienced urban farmers and food policy organisations - must be involved in their design to ensure that regulatory measures are facilitative rather prohibitive to the flourishing of small-scale and localised urban food-based economies. Furthermore, these types of reforms should be supported by the appointment of dedicated staff within government to ensure the proper implementation of new planning measures and identify potential areas for improvement. As with the implementation of the UFG in Vancouver, an initial trial period with pilot projects may also be necessary to identify issues and refine relevant development standards. Lastly, these reforms should be accompanied by appropriate community education initiatives to ensure both uptake by urban farmers and the ability to respond to any community concerns that might arise.
Design by Cari Gray, Paperplane Collective
[6] Food security, food justice, food sovereignty - considerations for the new economy movement
Of course, the mere existence of a permissive planning framework for the promotion of urban agriculture (and, indeed, the protection of existing peri-urban agricultural lands) is not sufficient to ensure a robust urban agricultural movement. Moreover, as a new economy movement, we must be conscious of the need for any such reforms to align with the principles of ecological sustainability, social justice, democratic and distributed governance, and place-based economies. This means ensuring that reforms serve a range of interests and that urban agriculture opportunities are not only available for uptake by those with immediate access to land and capital.
Complementary policy measures should provide incentives and support for those on low incomes, for example, to participate in local food economies. Importantly, reforms must also contemplate the matter of Indigenous food sovereignty (as this recent article highlights) and ensure the rightful involvement and leadership of Indigenous Australians in the food system. As Eric Holt-Gimenez has observed, support for food enterprises and food security alone may simply perpetuate a corporate food regime that is incompatible with new economy principles. Instead, we must ensure that planning and associated reforms also serve the broader social and ecological aims of the food justice and food sovereignty movements. The work of the Australian Food Sovereignty Alliance in supporting the interests of small-scale food producers, serves as an important guiding light in this regard.
[7] Conclusion
With the renewed interest in urban food production, it is an exciting time for the new economy movement to engage in the development of small-scale and localised urban food-based economies both close to and within our cities. One way that the New Economy Network Australia can do this is through collaborative law reform work, with a range of geographic and sectoral hubs working with other NENA members (organisations and individuals alike), to develop innovative ways to bring new economy principles to the forefront of various aspects of law and policy, including our planning frameworks. In doing this, Australia can draw inspiration from similar movements taking place in other parts of the world so that we can create new, home-grown opportunities for feeding our cities.
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