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The Mini Farm Project also holds workshops which teach take home skills to community members.

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The site infrastructure is portable and low-impact, irrigating with a solar pump and multiple small water tanks.

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A themed mural makes the Mini Farm Project into a local community landmark.

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The privatisation of garden beds led to overall neglect and the loss of community. Since taking over, Melissa has utilised her background in permaculture to establish a garden that functions cohesively with the surrounding ecosystem.

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Education is the number one priority for Jane Street with regular workshops on reconnecting people with where their food comes from and their environmental impacts.

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Catton, William 1980 Overshoot: The Ecological Basis of Revolutionary Change USA: Illini Books.

Dixon, Jane; Kelly J. Donati; Lucy L. Pike and Libby Hattersley 2009 'Functional Foods and Urban Agriculture" Two responses to climate change related food insecurity', New South Whales Public Health Bulletin 20(1): 14-18.

Durkheim, Emile 1900 'La Sociologica' Suo Domininio Scientifico 4: 127-148.

Jarosz, Lucy 2008 'The City in the Country: Growing Alternative food networks in Metropolitan areas', Journal of Rural Studies 24(3): 231-244.

Lyson, Thomas 2004 Civic Agriculture: Reconnecting Farm, Food and Community Lebanon: University press of New England.

McKittrick, Katherine 2006 Demonic Grounds: Black Women and the Cartographies of Struggle Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Princen, Thomas 2001 'Consumption and its Externalities: Where Economy Meets Ecology', Global Environmental Politics 1(3): 11-30.

Shiva, Vandana 2016 The Violence of the Green Revolution. Third World Agriculture, Ecology and Politics Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky.

Wittman, Hannah; Michael Jahi Chappell; David James Abson; Rachel Bexner Kerr; Jennifer Blesh; Jan Hanspach; Ivette Perfecto and Joern Fischer 2017 'A socio-ecological perspective on harmonising food security and biodiversity conservation', Reg Environmental Change 17: 1291-1301.

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Coordinator Melissa Smrecnik took charge of the 17-year old garden around 3 years ago.

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Cassidy - Team Leader, field liaison.
Josh - Photographer, interviewer and field research.
Kanika - Presentation and research.
Cathy - Photographer, interviewer and field research.
Clare - Narrative writing and presentation.

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Reconciling environmental consciousness with modern life is a struggle many Australians face. So far, the myriad policy responses to issues of climate change, biodiversity loss and food insecurity have been created from a position of power and, arguably, false knowledge. Distorted views of production and consumption, naturalised theoretical assumptions and a general misunderstanding of the very nature of environmental problems (Princen 2001), has resulted in our current predicament (Catton 1980). A strong voice within policy response has been an agricultural ‘production lens’, played out in the ‘Green Revolution’. Not having lived up to its proposed success (Shiva 2016) the productionist perspective has been criticized (Wittman 2017) as a narrow understanding that disarticulates diversity and equity.

This failure, and others, have driven divergent thought and experimentation by passionate, everyday citizens with a growing desire to look for solutions outside of the system. With over half of the global population living in cities, urban agriculture offers significant contributions (Dixon 2009; Jarosz 2008) and an effective route for social action.

Lyson (2004) highlights the alienating geographic separation, between production and consumption, as a source of environmental problems. The following research reveals two responses which ignite refusal of this alienation, foster a re-connection and reclaim knowledge and power for the community.

The Mini Farm Project in Brisbane utilises vacant urban lots to provide nutritious fresh produce to the homeless, reduce food waste and landfill, and educate the community with the skills to replicate these benefits in their own gardens. Of this flourishing interconnection of solutions, the most striking is The Mini Farm’s ethic of adaptability. Above-ground growing techniques and simple infrastructure enable the constant rethinking of knowledge and connection, as the farm is spatially transferable, so too is the knowledge transferable and accessible to all. In this, McKittrick’s (2006) discussion of space as an 'interpretive alterable world' resonates and provides an alternative for the static impenetrable world of policy.

The Jane Street Community Garden in West End similarly prioritises transferal of knowledge by reconnecting people with their food. Coordinator of the garden, Melissa Smrecnik, utilises a background in permaculture in workshops that focus on the surrounding ecosystems. By removing the privatisation of garden beds, community connections were re-established which further facilitated knowledge transfer.

The rethinking of naturalised knowledge and solutions is perhaps the Social Sciences greatest theoretical tool for resisting current systems in order to build one “with a real basis in the nature of things” (Durkheim 1900). However, outside the realm of academia, there lies in wait an army of engaged resistance, with their own tactics for questioning paradigms. The contributions of both The Mini Farm and Community Garden demonstrate that social movements enable a reconstruction of hegemonic structures of understanding, which can re-shape responses to environmental issues. This research concludes that the socialised assumptions about the way the world is (and the way we can make it) can be refused. This process of refusal is not solely the realm of academics and policy makers, but empowered citizens reclaiming knowledge and power. This research concludes with a refocussing on the image of a young participant of the Mini Farm, looking out onto the work of his community and looking forward to the future, from a position built on a strong foundation of knowledge and connection.

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