“The fertile fringe”, The Age, 26/5. Melbourne’s future food security was the focus of this in-depth article on the weekend. The inexorable spread of population-growth-spurred housing developments are consuming the fertile farmlands around Melbourne like fast-growing cancers. It shows an utter lack of foresight and planning from State governments, who seem only concerned with shoehorning in as many people as possible rather than trying to stabilize population growth, and the influence of greedy developers who are only concerned about making profits. Another growing threat is coal-seam gas and other mineral mining developments.
Australia initially seems to be a big continent with lots of space, but – as has to be pointed out again and again – much of it is desert with little fertile land, as this article extract notes:
We are being cautioned, however, against complacency. The Prime Minister’s own Science Engineering and Innovation Council has warned that Australia’s food capacity faces a challenges with a population forecast to rise to 40 million as fertile land is undermined by factors such as land degradation such as salination, and urbanisation.
Australia is one of the driest continents on earth. Its soils are ancient and depleted, and just 6 per cent of its total area, 45 million hectares, is arable land. Most intensive agriculture occurs on the fertile soil on a relatively thin strip of land along the coastal fringe. It is an area heavily and increasingly contested.
Australia is also among the most urbanised countries on earth, with the vast bulk of its population huddled on this coastal strip, their homes competing for space with farms, roads, factories, offices, shops, car parks, golf courses, native forests, plantation forests, native grasslands and national parks. Victoria is the most densely populated state, with more than 1500 new residents arriving weekly.
Under the same coastal band are vast seams of brown coal that have provided the fuel to power Victoria for decades and are now being eyed for additional uses, including gas. […]
In his many journeys to and from Melbourne, Vizzarri often ponders what has been lost under the housing and industrial estates he passes. “Australia is a big country,” he observes, “but all its people are concentrated on the eastern seaboard and that’s also where our best land is. I’d prefer that food going to Melbourne is produced on the outskirts; it was once upon a time.”
(If you were paranoid, you’d think it were some conspiracy to make Australia dependent upon imported food.)
You certainly can’t say that authorities and businesses have not been warned. But they seem to prefer to stick their heads in the sand and pretend we can carry on with this reckless growth and development indefinitely with no consequences.
Contrast this to the idiotic statement PM Julia Gillard made a few weeks ago that “We can be food bowl of Asia”; also “No reason why we can’t become a global food superpower”.
We know that global demand for food will escalate dramatically in the coming years, as the world population heads for 9 billion, while scarce resources of arable land and fresh water will become even more scarce. It isn’t just about sheer numbers, however, it’s about the changing nature of these populations.
In China, it’s planned that a further 350 million people will move – the largest internal migration in human history - from the countryside to the cities by 2030. This means fewer farmers and more consumers. Of the 580 million people living in south-east Asia, a quarter do not yet have access to electricity. As an Asian middle-class rises, with its associated consumer needs, the demand for food, energy and other resources is going to dramatically escalate.
As a planet and as a nation, we don’t have a choice – we simply must do much more than is being done to help feed a hungry world, and notwithstanding the obvious challenges and the doomsayers, we believe that we can.
WTF? I don’t see it as our responsibility to feed that region or any other if countries can’t or won’t contain their population growth. They should take responsibility for their own self-inflicted problems, not expect other countries to bail them out.
Letters in response, 28/5:
Independence of nation is at stake
THE article “City sprawl hits food bowls” (The Saturday Age, 26/5) raises alarm bells. Our city is renowned for its fresh fruit and vegetables grown locally. So I asked my local Italian-born greengrocer where his produce was grown. The answer was chiefly from the outlying areas of Melbourne such as Clyde and Werribee, the very areas targeted for housing developments. Only his seasonal/tropical fruit is shipped in from Queensland.
Will we soon be resorting to importing virtually all our fruit and vegetables from overseas, and will this put us in an invidious position internationally? If hostilities break out, will foreign powers cut supply lines and starve us into submission? Australian’s independence is at stake here. We need to be entirely self-sufficient in food.
– Lewis Prichard, Hawthorn
Low density like junk food
URBAN planning presents many challenges, and it is crucial to the future health of our state that decisions are made with a long-term view. To quote the parliamentary inquiry report released last week: “Traditional urban development patterns of low density sprawl which often force residents into patterns of little physical activity and car dependency are not health-promoting, and should no longer represent the dominant development pattern in Melbourne’s metropolitan fringe areas.”
Density done well makes for a very liveable city, while unbridled sprawl will swallow up our market garden areas as well as lead to worse health outcomes. If the Logical Inclusions Advisory Report suggests relaxing planning regulations further, it is far from logical. Poorly planned low-density housing is like junk food – cheap to start with but very costly in the long run.
– Margaret Beavis, Brighton
Premium will be paid
THE opposition’s planning spokesman, Brian Tee, says protecting food production areas is a difficult issue for all political parties. But it shouldn’t be a peripheral consideration, but something basic and vital to our future.
What is difficult for political parties is reining in a free-market economy based on the demands of perpetual economic growth. Australia already imports 34 per cent of fruit consumed and 19 per cent of vegetables. A 2011 Growcom report found these imports could disappear as the world population heads for 9 billion and countries retain their production for their own people.
A growth-based economy could mean that the 3 per cent of arable land in Victoria, which is half the nation’s, is buried under Melbourne’s sprawl, and we end up being victims of a healthy GDP – but with food prices at a premium.
– Vivienne Ortega, Heidelberg Heights
Targets harder to reach
YOU would not know from recent indications that the Baillieu government has set a target to double the state’s food and fibre output by the year 2030. The prospect of Planning Minister Matthew Guy rubber stamping more urban sprawl, thereby destroying productive land at Clyde North and Werribee South, is just part of the story. His decision last week to relax rules for the subdivision of farmland for housing, which will also reduce the productive capability of this land in favour of low-return hobby farming, also contradicts this policy goal.
– Ian Hundley, North Balwyn
Promote mid-sized cities
IN SUCH a lovely small state like Victoria, with established beautiful mid-sized cities such as Warrnambool, Portland, Ballarat, Bendigo and Bairnsdale, all of which could so easily be linked by a serious fast rail service to Melbourne, as well as across to Mt Gambier and Adelaide, one wonders why the Brumby and now Baillieu government keeps trying to condemn its citizens to ridiculously expensive, obesogenic distant sprawl or concrete jungles that no longer let in the sunshine in winter. Who benefits from this silliness? That’s right, the landholders holding the right parcels of land just before the rezoning.
– Bernadette George, Emu Park, Queensland
