Peri-urban agriculture — key to future food security

CASE STUDY | Farm to Plate Victorian Peri-Urban Planning Scheme Audit

Farm to Plate Victorian Peri-Urban Planning Scheme Audit was published by Linda Martin-Chew with the generous support of the McLeod Family Foundation and Sustain, the Australian food network. Image: Paula McLeod

The complete report is available here.

Peri-urban agriculture has the potential to deliver greater food security plus economic and environmental benefits for Australian communities.

In Victoria, land on Melbourne’s rural fringes has the capacity to produce 41% of the capital’s food needs.  But with population growth and urban sprawl, this capacity could shrink to 18% by 2050.[1]

According to The Rural Planner’s founder, Linda Martin-Chew, the key to encouraging agriculture in these areas is change to our planning policy and its approach to peri-urban farming practices.

“With support for innovative and small-scale farmers and producers, our communities can have greater access to locally grown, seasonal food and farm products,” she said.

“Consumer expectations for this, and the associated health and environmental outcomes, will only increase over time.”

“The audit highlighted the local and international experience — that policy used to guide planning decisions is undervaluing the potential of peri-urban land for food and so it’s being lost to other uses.”

Martin-Chew is the author of a research publication, Farm to Plate Victorian Peri-Urban Planning Scheme Audit. The publication documents an audit of 26 Victorian planning schemes against benchmarking principles that support peri-urban agriculture. The principles are drawn from a successful food systems governance framework in the United States, which has been in place for more than a decade. 

“The audit highlighted the local and international experience — that policy used to guide planning decisions is undervaluing the potential of peri-urban land for food and so it’s being lost to other uses,” she said.

“This is a serious threat to food security. Melbourne’s population, for example, is projected to exceed eight million by the 2040s and the anticipated impacts of accelerating climate change will negatively affect food production elsewhere in Victoria and nationally.”          

Martin-Chew is eager to work with local authorities in Australia, especially in her home state of Victoria, to establish more food-positive planning systems and greater regulatory support for peri-urban producers. She also provides planning services to these producers, drawing on her knowledge of planning policy, regulations and approval processes.

“We have an opportunity to ensure that these farming practices and the associated on-farm processing, marketing and distribution of foods is encouraged and not made marginal or considered unviable as a consequence of being assessed through an incompatible policy lens,” she said.

“The benefits for local authorities include increased food resilience, economic development, environmental gains, employment and tourism outcomes, and alignment with social and well-being policy directions.

“The current reality however is that farm practices in the peri-urban regions often encounter barriers that reduce community access to locally grown food.

“Rural land on the city fringes is key to future food production and food security, yet these farming ventures risk failure if they are unable to secure the required planning approvals and permissions.”  

[1] Carey R, Larsen K and Sheridan J (2019) Roadmap for a resilient and sustainable Melbourne foodbowl. University of Melbourne, quoted in Buxton M and Butt A (2020) The Future of the Fringe: The Crisis in Peri-urban Planning, Clayton South: CSIRO Publishing, p. 114.