Why grow fresh food in the Sydney basin?

What are peri-urban regions?
Peri-urban areas are the dynamic interface between our cities and rural areas. These regions usually comprise a mix of urban and rural uses, such as residential dwellings (often on large ‘rural lifestyle’ blocks), small-to-medium-scale agriculture such as horticulture, and semi-rural uses such as the horse industry, as well as the occasional town centre, often concentrated around a transport hub. Peri-urban regions tend to share many characteristics with urban regions, however they serve distinct functions that support the urban area to which they are adjacent.
SPUN_imange

Due to their close proximity to markets and populations, peri-urban areas play an important role in providing food for urban populations – especially in supplying food that is perishable such as coriander or eggs and cannot travel long distances to market. However, peri-urban regions are also the areas into which our cities tend to grow as they expand over time, making them vulnerable to being subsumed for housing and infrastructure.

Innovation and opportunities often arise at the fringe or intersection of systems, and the same is true of peri-urban regions. As the interface between urban and rural, they present us with opportunities to capitalise on the unique features of those two land types – for example, recycling a city’s food and green waste for use as a quality compost in agriculture.

The Sydney Peri Urban Network (SPUN) represents twelve councils that border metropolitan Sydney and was established in response to concerns about the lack of a comprehensive vision for the peri-urban region.

Peri-urban agriculture in Australia
The limited geographical size of agricultural lands in peri-urban areas means that their importance to Australia’s food security is often underestimated. However, despite Australia’s peri-urban regions comprising less than 3% of the total amount of the continent’s land that is used for agriculture, peri-urban agriculture is responsible for almost 25% of the total value of agricultural production (Houston, 2005) – meaning that its importance to Australian food security is much greater than its physical size might suggest. This is, in part, due to peri-urban regions being ideally suited to producing high-value products such as poultry, eggs, vegetables, herbs, nuts and orchard fruits. According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics (2008), 42% of the value of NSW poultry meat, 48% of its eggs, and 43% of the value of all vegetables grown in NSW is produced in the Sydney Basin. Agricultural production within the Sydney Basin is estimated to contribute a total of $4.5 billion to the NSW economy (Sobels, 2012).

Despite peri-urban regions comprising less than 3% of Australia’s agricultural land, they are responsible for almost 25% of the total value of Australia’s agricultural production

As is described in other sections of this site, peri-urban agriculture plays an important role in protecting food security, responding to climate change, sustaining livelihoods and insulating against significant price rises. Peri-urban agriculture has also been economically significant, providing jobs in the outer regions of Sydney for decades, especially for new migrants, who bring with them farming skills and new techniques. There are 2000-3000 people employed in agriculture in the peri-urban areas of Sydney (James, 2009), and 80-90% of these are migrants with a language other than English as their first language.