What happened to all those market gardens on Sydney’s fringe I remember in the 1950s - and which have just about all gone over to housing estates. In addition, the city has now twice the mouths to feed as it had in the 50s.

The author says that Sydney is being supplied by its market gardens! That is a surprise.

I commend anyone interested in future food supplies to look at the most rational solution for the developed cities' fresh food production at www.verticalfarm.com The concept of vertical farming using multi-story hydroponic food factories in downtown areas has much to recommend it. Seasonality is irrelevant; it conserves water; travel to market is greatly diminished; it saves huge amounts of energy. And the initial investments are very manageable. This is a most important technology for Australia.

Healthwatcher you are correct. I am currently living in an area south west of Sydney that up until a few years ago was a strong dairying area. Now it just consumes dairy products from the north and south coasts.

I also lived in a wheat growing district for many years and when I see articles like this and then recall the hundreds of grain-laden trucks that would line up for days every Christmas waiting to deliver to silos at Junee (one of dozens of receiving sites) I realise just how out of touch with reality the 'grow it at home-ers' are. Sorry people, I know that home-grown strawberries and spuds are a romantic product but I doubt any amount of nearby market gardens would supply even a single Woollies store year round.

The reason society exists as it does now is because we can grow (or import) vast quantities of food and do it cheaply. Market gardens were great 100 years ago (along with broad acre grain crops and lots of dairy farms) but there was a much smaller population to feed in 1907. I'd like to see how the Food Fairness Alliance (of which the author of the article is a member) came up with the 90% figure quoted. Still the picture of the ladies with their dozen jars of homemade preserves is heart warming.

Peter JH
I agree, efficient farming is necessary both to feed our population cheaply and to make the best use of scarce resources, including water and land.

Fringe market gardens tend move outwards over time as towns and cities expand, as they are displaced by higher land values and competition for resources such as water. This is not something that should bother government unduly, and indeed it should be encouraged where suitable alternative land is available for farming, especially in cities where housing affordability is poor, or where market gardens’ use of water is at the expense of more valuable alternatives.

By all means have a home vege patch, but it’s usually about the least water-efficient way of growing vegetables (unliess you find a way to recycle your domestic waste water), and who on earth is going to police a policy of permitting urban vege growers a higher water allocation than people with ornamental gardens?

" ... it is time for state and local government to protect the urban fringe farms that supply our cities and towns with fresh produce and to recognise the value of food production in urban gardens."

Now THERE'S a novel idea!

First though you will have to get the well-rewarded senior public servants ... er, sorry, Public MANAGERS, 'executive directors' and so on who 'manage' (control) our communities, out of the pockets of the 'developers' and the financiers behind them!

On the question of community gardens I refer you to the article cited below -

Community Gardens in New York City:the Lower East Side of Manhattan

http://www.notbored.org/gardens.html

"If you live in an unrealistic world then you can say everything
should be a community garden." Rudolph Giuliani, quoted in The New York Times, 16 February 2000.

good luck!

Hurrah for Mr Grayson, making some practical suggestions about a problem MSM will ignore until it 'appears out of nowhere'. The cheap food that many are fooled into buying is a very poor bargain, is another of the questionable benefits of growth economics.

With alot of hard work (and less "but we used to..") we can substantially feed ourselves (veg & fruit poss. across s.australia, protein produced locally in many 'less developed' countries as fish, fowl, v.small game) and there are plenty of good reasons for doing so. Mass-manufacturing of food will wither away without its cheap energy subsidy (10J of f.fuel in for every 1J food out says Pimental), and gardening clubs ala Cultivating Community will be ubiquitous in each and every city and town in Oz. We might even make progress on the pollution & illhealth waivers granted by the best politicians money can buy.

PeterJH, cereal cropping is a different proposition and seems likely to continue on some smaller scale for decades, climate permitting. While fruit & veg are nearly as mechanised, it doesn't have to be that way and IMHO as fuel prices rise along with unemployment, labour will before long be cheaper than machine. How we will protect remaining family farms from price squeeze long enough for them to pass on cost rises, god only knows and am interested in any suggestions (so long as not drought-assistance packages that go mostly to the Banks).

Rhian, i believe you're right about urban veg garden water use efficiency vs. commercial producers WUE, but i'd be interested in any hard data you have on the subject. It seems intuitively obvious to me that the overall energy & water budget for home production vs. distant multi-handler production would be less, do you agree? Few of us are used to actually physically working for our living, and nearly all of us lack the complex knowledge and experience required to farm well, but necessity is a great teacher.