FOOD SOLUTIONS-URBAN AGRICULTURE

According to experts watching the food scenario in Australia, that country is going to face a food crisis one day or the other, if adequate steps are not taken immediately to disperse production, creating smaller entities working nearer to consumption centers. It seems, on an average, fresh food supplies in many urban settlements reach there after traveling about 1500 kilometers in most cases and any disruption of this flow due to conditions beyond the control of the industry, people will be starved of fresh food supplies in 2-3 days time. This is the logic behind serious pleas by many planners to encourage setting up of local production centers near the urban settlements. Such an approach also reduces the carbon foot print very significantly besides providing fresher food with superior quality. Here is a commentary touching upon this issue which is very revealing.

"Steven Newton, the chairman of the Retailers Action Working Group, which plans food industry responses to potential national crises such as pandemics or floods, said that ''fresh food would be the first thing to go in a crisis''. He said the supply channels of Australia's increasingly concentrated and commercialised farming industry were more vulnerable to disaster shocks than the dispersed small-scale farming model of 30 years ago. Sally Hill, of the Youth Food Network, wants to turn back the clock to a time when fresh food came from local farms distributed across the urban hinterland and people grew vegetables in their backyards. ''The average distance food travels is 1500 kilometres,'' Ms Hill said. ''If anything interrupts that flow you have a real crisis on your hands.'' The Youth Food Movement, which grew out of the global slow food movement, argues that sourcing food locally and from smaller farms would not only insulate supply from the interruptions of disasters but also alleviate longer-term threats to food security such as climate change. ''If we had a really broad network of people going through local [farmers] or growing it themselves in their backyard you have a lot more resilient system,'' Ms Hill said. ''That tackles a whole lot of associated problems, like emissions from transporting food.'' She encourages young urbanites to think critically about where their food comes from and buy from local farmers - or grow their own. But getting young people interested and involved in agriculture is a difficult undertaking. The Bureau of Statistics has found the average Australian farmer is 55. Enrollments in agriculture courses are down dramatically. This year the University of Western Sydney's campus in Richmond - formerly Hawkesbury Agricultural College - suspended its agriculture course due to low student interest".

Theoretically such proposals are sound in concept but very difficult to implement. There are a few countries where urban agriculture is deliberately encouraged through incentive oriented policies but their impact nation wide cannot be considered significant. Australia is a country with vast land mass and centralized food production is easy to achieve. Therefore decentralization with emphasis on local production in and around urban areas may be some what formidable in nature. Still investment in developing lands near major towns and cities and creating a green belt for exclusively producing fresh crops like fruits and vegetables can bring in lot of advantages to the urban families. Parceling out small plots of land on a long lease to willing families for doing some type of farming operations, backed by evolving standardized input packages for use by these new generation of agricultural entrepreneurs may still be feasible if adequate efforts are made by the government. Such models can be thought of in many countries where land is controlled by the government and real estate activities are minimum.

V.H.POTTY
http://vhpotty.blogspot.com/
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