Increasing water access, protecting farmland and supporting the viability of farming are the main ingredients needed to strengthen food production at Werribee South’s market gardens and the wider Melbourne foodbowl, a new report has recommended.
The report, written by the University of Melbourne for the Foodprint Melbourne group, calls on the state government to adopt and tighten policy to secure the future of farming on Melbourne’s fringe.
It noted that in Werribee South alone, plans to build a youth detention centre and to construct a new container port – neither of which have come to fruition – threatened the future of farming in the area.
“Multiple expansions of the city’s urban growth boundary since its introduction have led to significant losses of farmland, and the weakening of green wedge regulations has allowed a wider range of land uses in the green wedges, increased land fragmentation and made it more difficult to farm in the region,” the report states.
“This has undermined stakeholder confidence and certainty in the future of Melbourne’s green wedges and peri-urban areas, limiting investment by farmers and government in the region.
“Concerns about water availability and pressures on farm viability add to the challenges for farmers on Melbourne’s fringe.”
However, the report also found that growing consumer interest in sourcing locally grown fresh produce and increasing demand for ethical and sustainably produced food from smaller-scale producers on Melbourne’s fringe has provided new opportunities.
It stated the success of these opportunities relies on new state government policy, including:
•Protecting important agricultural areas such as Werribee South;
•Greater state investment in recycled water infrastructure for agriculture in Melbourne’s foodbowl to increase the resilience of the city’s food supply to climate risks; and
•An increased policy focus on Melbourne’s foodbowl, including agribusiness support.
Foodprint Melbourne will host a series of workshops between now and February 2019, where stakeholders can work on strategies to strengthen Melbourne’s foodbowl. These strategies will be detailed in a second report to be released in March 2019.
