Category — Australia

Out of the Scientist’s Garden – A Story of Water and Food

By Richard Stirzaker
CSIRO Publishing
January 2010

Out of the Scientist’s Garden is written for anyone who wants to understand food and water a little better – for those growing vegetables in a garden, food in a subsistence plot or crops on vast irrigated plains. It is also for anyone who has never grown anything before but has wondered how we will feed a growing population in a world of shrinking resources.

Although a practising scientist in the field of water and agriculture, the author has written, in story form accessible to a wide audience, about the drama of how the world feeds itself. The book starts in his own fruit and vegetable garden, exploring the ‘how and why’ questions about the way things grow, before moving on to stories about soil, rivers, aquifers and irrigation. The book closes with a brief history of agriculture, how the world feeds itself today and how to think through some of the big conundrums of modern food production.

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Illustration by Robin Tatlow-Lord

By Elise Harris
Email: eliseharris2@gmail.com
An Honours thesis submitted as part of a Bachelor in Urban and Regional Planning School of Natural and Built Environments University of South Australia
October 2008

Excerpts:

Abstract

Community gardens have been shown to have positive social, nutritional and educational benefits for their users, and improve the amenity, safety and patronage of the surrounding area. They also tie into wider themes of sustainability and food security. Despite these benefits, urban planners, as the keepers of land and determiners of land use, have had little to do with community gardens. This thesis will explain the benefits of community gardens and detail planning policies throughout the world that support community gardens. Lastly, recommendations will be made on how the South Australian planning system can better support community gardens.

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Photo by aardvark. CERES Market Garden, Melbourne, Australia

There’s a growing city appetite for what we once had down on the farm

JULIANNE SCHULTZ
The Sydney Morning Herald
January 23, 2010

When I was growing up, in the 1960s, the supply of food we ate was tangible – outside the dining room window. We had cows for milk; sheep that grew from suckling lambs to Sunday lunch; chooks whose eggs we ate, and whose feathers we plucked, when their recently headless bodies stopped the mad dervish dance; vegetables that still had clods of dirt on them.

Our animals were not pets – they were creatures that fed us and that could be trucked to the saleyard to pay pressing bills. It was smelly, dirty, unrelenting hard work, even on the fertile plains of Victoria’s western district.

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See larger image of the Farm plan here.

By sydneycityfarm
18th November 2009

Sydney siders are one step closer to having a City Farm and Sustainable Living Centre with the unanimous support of the City of Sydney Environment & Heritage Committee to fund an investigation into potential sites and models.

City of Sydney Lord Mayor Clover Moore spoke in support of the proposal which goes before a full sitting of Council on Monday November 23.

“City Farms provide real, hands-on experiences to teach residents, businesses and schools about sustainable living. City Farms demonstrate the simple ways that everyone can Live Green and give the community access to local organic produce.”

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Dan Palmer, the permablitz visionary.
Photo: Shaney Balcombe

Permablitz: new word, noun

1. An event in which volunteers use permaculture principles to transform a suburban garden into a place that produces its own food. A combination of the words permaculture – a design system for sustainable living and land use – and Backyard Blitz a television program in which backyards receive a makeover.

The rules of a permablitz are simple: if you want a permablitz crew to turn up to your place, you have to help out on at least two other working weekends before they will do so. In addition, Palmer defines a permablitz as a day in which “two or more people come together to:

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Costa’s Garden Odyssey

Six episodes of Season One are now on-line in brilliant colour. See what’s happening in the city of Melbourne. You must see these shows! (Mike)

Examples of stories from the show:

Collingwood is an inner city suburb of Melbourne and it’s the home of the Collingwood Children’s Farm, a special place where children enjoy the opportunity to have some “hands on” experience with farm animals. It’s also a community garden where Costa meets people like 70-year-old Harry Haralambos who grows wonderful produce for his entire family here as well as Joy McGaffrey who introduces Costa to the taste of “Worm Juice”.

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An artists impression. The ARKit studio on the grassed area, the small scale garden next to it. People gardening, learning, engaging in the space.

Docklands has come a step closer to achieving a community garden with the establishment of a demonstration urban agriculture project in Victoria Harbour.

A project of the Future Canvas organisation, the garden is a six-month experiment playfully called “reforestation” and is the brain-child of 25-year-old environmentalist Emily Ballantyne-Brodie.

Ms Ballantyne-Brodie said Docklanders could expect to see food grown in raised beds in a small plot on Victoria Harbour in front of Dock 5.

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Concrete Jungle – The jilted generations are turning the mean streets green

By Jake Lynch
Canberra Times, Oct 22, 2008
(Australian journalist looks at North American urban agriculture and reports for an Australian readership.)

As my first American winter gave way to my first spring, I saw veggie patches sprouting up all over the place – in backyards, but also on the strip in front of houses, and in planter boxes on concrete pathways. The local school built a garden out front where people were free to take whatever grew there. The proliferation reminded me of some poorer cities in Asia where people grew food for survival.

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A 57 minute documentary by SeedSavers on traditional diets and how they are grown and eaten in eleven countries.

Our Seeds: Seed Blong Yumi

A small crew comprising Seed Savers directors, Michel Fanton and Jude Fanton, and occasionally a local soundperson took a hundred and sixty hours of footage in eleven countries: Spain, France, Italy, India, Sri Lanka, China, Vietnam, Taiwan, Papua New Guinea and Solomon Islands.

There are interviews of farmers and expert commentators and documented seed saving, farming methods and cultural activities in both first world and tribal locations. Peasants in advanced countries, such as Taiwan, Spain, France and Italy share the same sentiments as indigenous Pacific farmers when it comes to traditional varieties.

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Girl in garden, early 1900’s. Larger image here.

Julian Cribb, author of ‘The Coming Famine’, said:

“This intensive urban vegie culture is an entirely new industry and will need a new professional – the urban farmer who can grow food on the roofs and sides of buildings, in intensive biocultures and by other novel methods to feed the megacities of 30 million-plus inhabitants.

“If we don’t, by 2050 we will have more than three-quarters of the human population – almost 8 billion people – living in places where they are totally without the means or the knowledge of how to feed themselves. Our giant cities will be gigantic death traps, at the mercy of even quite minor glitches in regional or global food supplies.”

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All the way from Byron Bay, Australia, Lesley Bayliss describes an herb business she started for people with intellectual disabilities. Part of the program is funded by the herbs that clients grow. Sales are upwards of $50,000 per year, all grown on a half acre of land in an industrial area of town. Over 150 varieties of herbs for sale:

Bush Tucker
Lemon Myrtle (backhousia citriodora)
Davidsons Plum (davidsonia pruriens)

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“During summer one Melbourne gardener, Marika Wagner, was struggling to look after her vegie patch under the somewhat arbitrary water restriction regime in Victoria – two watering windows a week is simply not enough to keep vegetables alive during a Melbourne summer!

“Like many others Marika rents her inner suburban home. For such people, those on a low income or for those who have a community garden plot, it is particularly difficult to grow vegies during summer.  For them systems such as water tanks are either out of reach financially or not worthwhile installing in a temporary situation.

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Book by Andrea Gaynor
2006 – 264 pages

Drawing upon sources ranging from gardening books and magazines to statistics and oral history, Gaynor presents an environmental history of non-commercial suburban food production in Australia. Her narrative traces animal, fruit, and vegetable production from the close of the 19th century to the present day. Particular attention is paid to the effects of economic conditions on home food production. Gaynor teaches at the U. of Western Australia. The text is based upon her PhD thesis.

Ch. 1 Into the suburbs
Ch. 2 Fecund and fetid : 1880-1918
Ch. 3 ‘His own vine and fig tree’
Ch. 4 Prudence and preference : 1919-37
Ch. 5 Fear and pride : 1938-54
Ch. 6 The contemporary and the cautious : 1955-73
Ch. 7 Circles and cycles : 1974-2000
Ch. 8 Conclusion : a diverse harvest

Purchase at Amazon here.

“As a community centre, CERES is also about helping people break through cultural barriers. They offer international cooking classes, migrant training programmes and set up education villages from the likes of Indonesian, African or Aboriginal cultures. Volunteer workers try to ensure that multiculturalism in Australia is not lost, but respected.

“While CERES’s programme is unique in its range of programmes, the urban farm trend is catching on around Australia, with city farms sprouting up in almost every major city. There is the Northey Street City Farm in Brisbane, established in 1994, where an education centre and a Sunday morning farmers market are a popular retreat.

Read the complete article in The Epoch Times, Mar 11, 2008

Link to CERES.
CERES farm demonstrates how an urban city farm can contribute to the local community by providing locally grown organic food, education in community food systems, a happening & ethical market place and employment for farmers, teachers and market workers.