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Sydney Morning Herald

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Hundreds of eyes are on Joe Grima as he enters the shed. "Come on boys," he says, clearing a path through 1500 plump turkeys standing on a woodchip floor.

It's a hot morning - heading for a baking 42 degrees on Sydney's south-western outskirts - so he knows it will be a day of shuttling between six sheds on a golf cart, adjusting temperature and humidity controls to stop the birds getting stressed.

But they are calm enough now, curiously studying Grima as he checks their food and water and glancing across to his wife, Pauline, in the doorway. She notes the way the male turkeys are starting to strut cockily as they mature. "They remind me of guys that go to the gym," she says.

Having arrived in their first few hours, the 15,000 turkeys on the farm will grow to an average of 16 kilograms before an Ingham's truck will take them in the cool of the night to a processing centre at nearby Tahmoor.

On Christmas Day, the couple's turkeys will turn up on tables all around Australia. Like other produce from outer area farms, they contribute to filling Sydney's food bowl throughout the year.

According to the Sydney Food Futures project, these farmers produced more than half a million tonnes of food in 2011 - 20 per cent of the city's needs, including 55 per cent of the supply of meat, 40 per cent of eggs, 38 per cent of dairy products, 10 per cent of vegetables and 2 per cent of fruit.

Up north, the biggest area for perishable vegetables and turf traditionally has been the Hawkesbury area, with chickens around Gosford. In the north-west, it's cut flowers and plants in the Hills district. In the west, eggs around Penrith, ducks near Liverpool and turkeys in the Wollondilly shire. But all sorts of produce is grown all around the city in blocks as small as two to five hectares.

But in its Food Futures report, the UTS Institute For Sustainable Futures saw this food supply falling rapidly as urban development expands. In 14 years, it estimates that on current trends these farms will be responsible for just 6 per cent of the city's food needs.

Turning point

Almost 100 kilometres from the Sydney CBD, the Grimas' turkey farm is surrounded by an orchard on one side and a market garden across the road. Third generation farmers, they have a solid business growing 60,000 turkeys a year.

But the couple say the relentless march of urbanisation towards the edges of the Sydney basin is making it tougher for them to keep farming.

"Sometimes you feel like you're farming with your hands tied behind your back," Pauline says. "People get upset about the trucks picking up the turkeys at night. But it's not a nine to five job. There's always land conflict and it's getting worse."

Across the city, newer residents have complained to their council about the noise, smells, traffic and use of chemicals on farms.

"We've got to find somewhere for another million people to live," Dench says. "But we've also got to look at how we can assist our farmers because land speculation and land banking have been big, big problems over the years."

The research director at the Institute for Sustainable Futures, Roel Plant, supports urgent action to prevent the loss of more farms.

"If you look at the latest round of plans that the Greater Sydney Commission has put out, including the five district plans, there is very, very little provision there to preserve agricultural land," he says. "Farmers feel quite marginalised; in general, they don't really feel they're embedded in the Sydney Basin.

"They get lots of complaints about spraying or using their tractors early in the morning. They're increasingly seen by new rural residents as nuisances."

But the commission's environment commissioner, Roderick Simpson, questions the figures that show the food supply is dwindling from 20 per cent to 6 per cent.

"The average household spends around $250 a week on food," he says. "There's around about 1.6 million households. So the total spend is around $21 billion every year in Sydney."

While agricultural productionin the outer arc the commission calls the Metropolitan Rural Area is worth about $450 million, just 60 per cent of that is fresh food and the rest is turf, cut flowers, hay and other non-edible products.

"You're talking about [a small share] of $21 billion - about 1.5 per cent," he says. "So I don't know where the 20 per cent comes from."

Simpson insists the commission wants agriculture to continue in Greater Sydney. In the Metropolitan Rural Area, it recognises there should be only limited urban development and it should be away from crops and poultry sheds.

"There may be a little bit more residential, carefully placed," he says. "There might be little expansions to some of the rural villages ... but we've got to be really careful about where that happens."

'You can only resist for so long'

On his dairy at Cawdor, south of Camden, Tony Biffin tots up how many milk producers have vanished in the Camden-Macarthur area in his lifetime.

In the early 1960s, there were 163 dairies supplying milk to Sydney. Now there are - Biffin runs through the list with son Todd - precisely 12 left.

"I don't know when that will happen but I do know that the rest of Australia is not that good at producing food. They only think they are. The water issues they have are 10 times worse than the water issues we have on this side of the mountains."

Asked about the future of his stone fruit orchard at Oakdale, west of Camden, Ed Beil has a droll line. "Are you writing an obituary?" he says.

A thoughtful, straight-talker, Beil and wife Marilyn have been growing peaches, plums, nectarines, apricots and citrus and native fruits on 16 hectares for more than three decades. He drives his produce to Flemington Markets and farmers' markets at Camden, Warwick Farm and Everleigh.

"In my experience, the agriculture industry in general and the orchard industry specifically is on its last legs in the Sydney Basin," Beil says. "The returns aren't there but the pressures to sell your property for very large sums of money - not only to developers but lifestylers - makes farming very unattractive."

While the cost of labour, cardboard packaging, fertiliser and power have increased steadily, prices for his fruit have hardly improved in 25 years.

"When I first bought my farm, there were in excess of 70 orchards in the Oakdale district," Beil says. "Now there are two. In the Sydney Basin, there were probably more than 400 orchards. Now I'd say there are less than 40.

"It will be a terrible shame, even if just from the heritage perspective, to see it all disappear."

A trial scheme to protect farmland

"Some years we'll make a small profit; other years we'll have a significant loss. If we could be rewarded with credits every year which could be banked, that could well be the difference between agriculture remaining in the Sydney Basin or disappearing forever."

Beil believes farms have another benefit for the city - minimising the air pollution that he can see from his farm, 400 metres in the foothills on the city's south-western rim.

"On a clear day I can see the Sydney Harbour Bridge from my front paddock," he says. "When I first moved here, I could see it probably two or three days a week. Now I'm lucky to see it one or two days a month.

"The basin by its very nature is a bowl and the prevailing wind in the summer is a nor-easter so [it] has pretty well got a visibility of less than five kilometres. If you've ever seen Beijing, that's Sydney's future if the basin fills up completely with houses and cars and tarmac."

"There's actually quite a lot of extra capacity for food production," Simpson says.

And there is more potential in a proposed agribusiness district near the new airport at Badgerys Creek, which Simpson believes would stimulate production, especially for export. "With the ability for people to take high-quality, super fresh produce to a bio-secure area for further processing and packaging for export, there are some real competitive advantages that would be gained," he says.

Garry Maddox is a Senior Writer for The Sydney Morning Herald.

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'You can only resist for so long': the threat to Sydney's food bowl

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Hundreds of eyes are on Joe Grima as he enters the shed. "Come on boys," he says, clearing a path through 1500 plump turkeys standing on a woodchip floor.

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The Economist

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BCFN Foundation: Food and Nutrition Sustainability Index

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Australia has a reputation for good weather, healthy lifestyles, fresh food and a high quality of living-not least in its biggest cities, Sydney and Melbourne. However, growing urban sprawl around both cities, and associated high rents for agricultural land, are putting increased pressure on local farmers.¹,² If left unchecked, this process could have negative implications for the quality of life of the cities' inhabitants.
Agricultural land around Sydney currently produces around one-fifth of its food, ³ while that around Melbourne can produce up to 41% of its needs. However, two recent studies- Sydney's Food Futures 4 and Melbourne's Food Futures ⁵ -found that this could change dramatically if current trends are not reversed.

The studies produce stark estimates of what current policies would lead to. For Sydney, these include that the area would lose 90% of its fresh vegetable production and 60% of its total food production, and that the Sydney Basin would only be able to meet 6% of the food needs of the area's residents, from 20% currently. In the case of Melbourne, the study predicts that the area would only be able to accommodate 18% of the city's food needs by 2050.

The scale of the decline projected by the studies is quite dramatic. Although the food could be sourced elsewhere, this would mean transporting it over greater distances and sacrificing freshness. At the heart of this lies the issue of food sustainability, which is addressed in the 2016 Food Sustainability Index (FSI), developed by The Economist Intelligence Unit with the Barilla Center for Food and Nutrition.
Local issues, national priorities
The three pillars of the FSI-sustainable agriculture, nutritional challenges and food loss and waste-all link to the debate about the future of agricultural production in Australia. Overall, the country came 8th out of the 25 countries measured in the FSI. This is one of the lowest rankings for a developed state, suggesting room for improvement.

Even though Australia scores strongly on food waste and loss (ranked 2 nd in the index), nutritional challenges are identified as a particular issue for the country. Australia ranks 16th in the nutritional challenges pillar, well below other developed countries such as France, Japan and South Korea. This suggests that a focus on a healthy diet is a key priority for the country's policymakers. The Australian Institute of Health and Welfare has warned about growing rates of obesity in the country, ⁶ with current figures indicating that 63% of adults are either overweight or obese. ⁷

Ensuring a large amount of operational agricultural land close to major urban centres such as Sydney and Melbourne would help to tackle this issue. If urban sprawl continues to claim agricultural land and the share of the city's overall food needs supplied by local producers continues to decline, the amount that residents need to pay to eat a balanced, nutritious diet is likely to increase. Producing food close to market reduces transport costs and negates the risk that higher energy prices will push up food prices. So-called "food deserts"-areas where there are very limited options for purchasing fresh food-are already reported to be quite common in Sydney, notably in the west of the city. ⁸ In these areas, health problems related to a lack of fresh vegetables and fruit, such as type 2 diabetes, are more common.
Nutritional centres
Guaranteeing a stable supply of fresh goods close to major population centres is also central to curbing food loss levels (defined as the mass of food production intended for human consumption that is lost during the production, post-harvest and processing stages). Although Australia is a strong performer on this measure in the FSI, pushing agricultural production further away from population centres could change this. Food that has to be transported over greater distances is liable to suffer a higher rate of loss. This is particularly the case for perishable goods. If grown close to market, the loss from these products can be reduced. ⁹ In addition, transporting goods over greater distances means higher carbon emissions.
Getting ahead
All is certainly not lost. The Sydney's Food Futures project argues that there is still time for policymakers to protect agricultural land close to the city and asserts that there are plenty of viable measures that policymakers could put in place to support this. ¹⁰ Moreover, the study finds that sustainable strategies to integrate food production with other essential services could actually lead to an increase in food production in the area and create jobs for local people.

However, this will require a concerted effort from government. A key point of reference for policymakers could be the Milan Urban Policy Food Pact, signed by 138 cities in 2015 (including Melbourne, but not Sydney). The outcome is a plan aimed at reducing food waste, encouraging healthy eating and ensuring the sustainable purchase of food in an urban context.

More broadly, these issues are relevant to Australia's commitment under the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) adopted in 2015. ¹¹ Six of the 17 SDGs deal specifically with issues related to food. In particular, SDG 3 ("to ensure health and well-being for all, at every stage of life"), SDG 12 ("to ensure sustainable consumption and production patterns") and SDG 15 ("to protect, restore and promote sustainable use of terrestrial ecosystems") all have directly relevant implications for the urban sprawl and loss of agricultural land around major population centres.
1. http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/sydneys-vegetable-basin-losing-ground-to-urban-sprawl-20160205-gmmg1v.html 2. http://www.ecoinnovationlab.com/wp-content/attachments/Melbourne-Food-Future-planning-a-resilient-city-food-bowl-web.pdf 3. http://www.sydneyfoodfutures.net/ 4. http://www.sydneyfoodfutures.net/ 5. http://www.ecoinnovationlab.com/wp-content/attachments/Melbourne-Food-Future-planning-a-resilient-city-food-bowl-web.pdf 6. http://www.aihw.gov.au/overweight-and-obesity/ 7. http://www.aihw.gov.au/overweight-and-obesity/ 8. https://www.westernsydneydiabetes.com.au/western-sydney/food-deserts-and-mapping 9. http://www.fao.org/in-action/seeking-end-to-loss-and-waste-of-food-along-production-chain/en/ 10. http://www.sydneyfoodfutures.net/interactive-maps/ 11. http://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/sustainable-development-goals/

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Australia has a reputation for good weather, healthy lifestyles, fresh food and a high quality of living-not least in its biggest cities, Sydney and Melbourne. However, growing urban sprawl around both cities, and associated high rents for agricultural land, are putting increased pressure on local farmers.