Rachel Carey

Food Policy Development in the Australian State of Victoria: A Case Study of the Food Alliance

This article explores the development of a food policy body called the Food Alliance and the role of the organization in encouraging the development of food policy that integrates health and ecological issues. The Food Alliance is located within the Australian state of Victoria. A policy triangle is used as a framework to describe and analyse the work of the Food Alliance. Lessons are drawn about effective strategies for influencing integrated food policy. This occurs in a context where food policy typically favours powerful industry and agricultural interests and where relationships between the health and environmental sectors are in their infancy. The implications for planning and organizing a state-wide food policy are explored from the perspective of policy and the ways in which this can be influenced through working with key stakeholders.

The Role of Peri-Urban Land Use Planning in Resilient Urban Agriculture: A Case Study of Melbourne, Australia

Peri-urban agricultural production remains important globally and its value will increase as the impacts of climate change, energy costs, rising world population and changing patterns of food consumption are felt. Maintaining the natural resource base for food production around cities will become an increasingly important part of city planning. Yet peri-urban areas continue to undergo radical change over much of the world, displacing traditional agriculture and reducing the capacity of cities to adapt to non-linear change. Urban resilience is best maintained through a regional approach which connects urban and peri-urban systems. Such system relationships are examined in a case study focused on the city of Melbourne in South-East Australia. Peri-urban Melbourne produces a significant proportion of the fruit and vegetables grown in the state of Victoria, but agricultural production on the city’s outer fringe is under pressure from rapid urban development. This case study examines three scenarios which relate rural and urban land supply and demand, and explore land use planning techniques for limiting rural land development and transferring demand for rural land to regional settlements. It argues that stronger statutory planning measures are required to stem the loss of peri-urban agricultural land and that these will need to be accompanied in future by a range of other strategies to strengthen the resilience of city food systems.