Michael Green

Journalist, producer and oral historian

Farming on the fringe

In Architecture and building, Environment, The Age on

What will we reap when agriculture moves away from town?

IF you drive through Clyde, on the south-eastern outskirts of Melbourne, you’ll see the old farms where a new, very different, crop is being sown.

Next to the market gardens and green paddocks still lined with windbreaks are expanses of soil dotted with earthmovers and giant concrete pipes. On these properties, houses will become the next harvest of the land.

Melbourne’s urban growth boundary was extended last year and is under review yet again. In May, the state government appointed an advisory committee to recommend “logical inclusions” to the boundary in seven municipalities on the city’s fringe.

In Clyde, the City of Casey opposes any further extension (pdf), and argues instead for “logical exclusions” from last year’s ruling. In its submission to the committee, it stated that the boundary has already exceeded a sustainable limit.

Kathryn Seirlis, the council’s manager of strategic development, says the current and former governments haven’t given enough weight to the role of agriculture in the region, especially in creating employment and improving health and wellbeing.

“We think it’s critically important to protect viable, high value agricultural land for the future communities of Casey and beyond,” she says.

The controversy over Clyde fits within a larger debate about farming on the city’s fringes. The issue was the subject of a recent forum on “peri-urban agriculture”, coordinated by placemaking consultancy Village Well.

Trevor Budge, associate professor of planning at Latrobe University, argues good soil should be managed like any other resource. “If you found a supply of building sand or gravel, you wouldn’t just build over the top of it, you’d treat it as a finite resource,” he says.

“From everything we know – whether it’s climate change, peak oil, energy costs or transport costs – having productive agricultural land close to the city makes us more resilient for the future.”

Mr Budge says constant shifts and reviews have turned the urban growth boundary into a “zone of impermanence”. Many farmers and landowners outside expect to be re-zoned inside, and don’t keep investing in their land.

It’s a problem acknowledged by the Growth Areas Authority, the statutory body charged with coordinating the development of new suburbs.

“One of the problems in the past has been short term, knee-jerk reactions, with huge numbers of people all expecting make a lot of money by being [re-zoned] in the next new residential area,” says Peter Seamer, CEO of the authority.

He says the latest round of reviews is different, and will set aside enough residential land for decades to come. “The processes we’re going through will be sorted out by government in the next few months and they’ll set a very clear direction for the next 25 years,” he says.

Mr Seamer says that although “no one likes to see a reduction in farming land”, urban growth comprises a very small proportion of Victoria’s total farmland.

“The growth has got to go somewhere,” he says. “There was a crisis in the middle of last year, when prices for land went up very steeply because there was a shortage of supply, particularly in the Casey area.”

The state government has not yet released the findings of the logical inclusions process.

But the Casey council has foreshadowed using its planning tools to support farming within the growth boundary, even if its submission is rejected. Together with the Cardinia and Mornington Peninsula councils, Casey has been working on a plan to establish the Bunyip Food Belt, a zone of intensive agriculture that would draw on recycled water from the Eastern Treatment Plant.

Mr Budge accepts that Australia isn’t running short on agricultural land, but says proximity to the population makes all the difference.

“Growing food is part and parcel of the way cities operate. The better metropolitan strategies around the world make agriculture one of the core social and economic components of their plans – not something that sits off the edge and can be pushed further out,” he says.

As well as the added security afforded by a short food-supply chain, he says peri-urban farming also improves wellbeing. “Having contact with nature and an understanding of where food comes from is good for us socially and psychologically. It maintains the contact with the real world that we’ve had for 10,000 years of human history.”

Trading herbs for suburbs

IT’S the end of a normal day on the farm at Australian Fresh Leaf Herbs, in Clyde, just beyond Cranbourne.

While the packing workers tidy the cool room before heading home, banker-turned-farmer William Pham gestures at the rows of hydroponic basil in front of him. “We recycle our water, so we need one-sixteenth of the water for conventionally grown basil,” he explains.

Together with his business partner Jan Vydra and their 60 casual and full-time staff, Mr Pham produces and packages 70,000 bunches of herbs each week.

They began operations here in 2008, but their farm was included in the revised urban growth boundary in 2010. They’re looking for land elsewhere. “When we bought here, this road was empty,” Mr Pham says. “Now you can’t recognise it. The development has happened much faster than I expected.”

Mr Vydra, who was recently named the 2011 Young Australian Farmer of the Year, says he wants to stay within 40 minutes of the city. That kind of proximity is better for business: it’s easier to find workers, supplies are cheaper and more accessible, and the cost of transporting the produce is lower.

But once the boundary expands, property values rise and rates increase. “That’s what happens – you have to sell up. It’s beautiful soil around the whole area at Clyde. People have been farming it for 100 years and they have to move,” he says.

“There’s an economic benefit – we get much more money for our property – but as a community, we lose some really fertile soil and they’re going to put slabs on top of it.”

Although he can see the dilemma for planners, who want to provide affordable housing, he’s worried about food security as older farmers retire. “We need to figure out what’s being produced here and how we’re going to shift it elsewhere to make sure we keep producing food for our people.”

Mr Pham is ambivalent about the change: he says small-time farmers will disappear, but doesn’t think there’ll be any impact on shoppers. “A lot of the smaller growers will sell up, make their money and have an easier lifestyle.

“We spent a lot of money on this place, so what the heck – we may as well do it again. We’re too young to retire. We just have to move further out.”

Read this article at The Age online and watch Trevor Budge’s talk on the importance of peri-urban agriculture in Australia, at the On The Edge Forum.

Edible weeds

In Greener Homes on

That plant you despised could become your dinner

ADAM Grubb makes a beeline for a plant clumping in the mulch, behind a park bench, next to the barbeque area.

“This is mallow,” he explains, “which is related to the marshmallow plant and to okra. You can eat the leaves, the seeds and the flowers. It’s eaten widely around the world, especially in the Middle-East.”

We’re in a small, typical park in Brunswick. Mr Grubb, from Very Edible Gardens, runs regular edible weeds walks, in which he traces an extraordinary, wholly overlooked fact.

“The vast majority of herbaceous annual weeds – the most common plants that pop up without invitation – are edible. And a lot of them are medicinal,” he says.

Most can act as substitutes for our normal leafy greens. Mr Grubb also suggests blending them with fruit to make green smoothies.

But it so happens that today in the park, we find mallow, with its seeds, and salsify, a starchy root that looks like a white carrot. “They could be the foundational parts of a meal,” he explains. Nearby we identify five more edibles, side-by-side: milk thistle, dock, dandelion, wild lettuce and cleavers.

At the moment, Mr Grubb is up to his elbows researching edible weeds for a book he’s writing with Annie Raser-Rowland, who teaches workshops on the subject at CERES Environment Park. (While you wait for theirs, see this booklet by Pat Collins.)

Facts about all kinds of plants roll off his tongue – like these about cleavers: “Also known as sticky-weed or goosegrass, it’s in a lot of ancient medicinal books as a lymphatic stimulator. Pliny the Elder said it’s good to improve one’s lankness and to keep from fatness,” he says. “You can also make a coffee substitute out of it.”

If that sounds obscure, here’s something more straightforward. “Remarkably, a large percentage of these wild plants are more nutritious than spinach,” he says. “They’re higher in vitamins A, C and E, higher in omega-3, and much higher in anti-oxidants.”

Aside from the nutritional benefits, there’s a practical plus to all this weed-eating. “Learning to see the benefits of these plants is revelatory, because it means you have to do less work in the garden. The only definition for a weed is a plant out of place. We can do the weeding in our minds,” he says.

Mr Grubb offers a word of caution, however: some are poisonous. The Greek philosopher Socrates was sentenced to death by drinking a cup of hemlock, which is common around Melbourne. “Don’t go eating anything you haven’t identified beyond doubt,” he says.

Ms Raser-Rowland says that from an ecological perspective, many weeds help repair damaged land. “They can stabilise and rebuild topsoil, trap nutrients and slow water movement,” she says. “In doing that, they create homes and food for birds, insects and other animals.”

She says the good things about backyard vegie patches, such as reducing transport and packaging, are magnified in the case of weeds.

“If these plants can produce food in our urban areas, with no need for labour or inputs pillaged from other ecosystems, it seems worth asking whether they have a role here – not an unchecked role, but a role.”

“There’s also something very, very reassuring in walking your territory and picking food. It has been the dominant activity of most of our human history, so perhaps that shouldn’t be surprising.”

Read this article at The Age online

State of Australian Cities

In Greener Homes on

How well are our cities working?

Here’s some encouraging news for city-dwellers: per person, since 2006, we’ve been consuming less energy and water, producing less waste and recovering more of it, and breathing cleaner air.

This information comes from the State of Australian Cities 2011 report, prepared by the federal government’s Major Cities Unit.

The study, which was first undertaken last year, compiles dozens of indicators regarding population, productivity, sustainability and liveability in urban areas.

Among its varied findings, the report reveals that while inner-city areas have become denser, it’s the outer suburbs that still accommodate most of the population growth.

Despite the gathering sprawl, average commuting times – longest in Sydney (35 minutes) and Melbourne (31 minutes) – remained steady in the decade to 2006.

The report also shows that public transport use is on the rise. The average distance travelled by vehicle peaked early last decade and has fallen slightly since then. Nevertheless, the total “vehicle kilometres travelled” in our cities continues to increase, because we have more people and more freight altogether.

So how should we judge these facts about our cities?

Alan March, senior lecturer in urban planning at University of Melbourne, says the analysis lacks a yardstick. “I don’t see a forward projection there, which is the point of ‘sustain’ in sustainability: a sense of how we’re going to deal with a low-carbon or a low–fossil fuel future,” he says.

He’s also troubled by the scant attention given to inequality and disparities in service provision. “The way cities operate is crucial to the difference between the haves and the have-nots, which is clearly increasing in Australia,” he says, citing, for example, the need for everyone to have a primary school within walking distance.

“I put that under the social sustainability mantle – if you let some people get a long way behind then it’s much harder to bring them back later. In many ways it’s much less efficient.”

And while a reduction in energy, water and waste per person is heartening, it’s the total eco-impact that counts. With a growing population, cutting overall consumption is a bigger challenge. When it comes to housing, that could entail retrofitting and adapting the housing we have, rather than building new.

Dr March argues that governments need to switch investment away from roads and into public transport, and pay heed to other concerns, including habitat loss and the way we feed our towns.

“We need to take our food supply into account,” he says, “particularly all the knock on effects when you relate it to oil-scarce economies and the large distances involved. Food should be weighing more heavily on our minds.”

In the same way, he says, we must assess our cities’ ability to withstand crises. “The evidence is conclusive that we’re going to have more extreme weather events. We’re also becoming increasingly aware of the fragile nature of the world economy.

“One of the big movements in sustainability now is thinking about the resilience of places, not just to natural disasters, but also to things like economic shocks, terrorism, or pandemics,” Dr March says.

“We have very vulnerable single-service systems, like our water and electricity supply. We know they’re not resilient and therefore not particularly sustainable if something goes wrong with one key element of that chain.”

Read this article at The Age online

Mandatory disclosure

In Greener Homes on

The eco-standard of houses will be made public at sale or lease

IF you buy a car, you can easily find out its fuel efficiency. But what about a house? The ongoing costs and eco-impacts of existing buildings vary widely, but it’s hard for would-be buyers or renters to know what we’re in for.

In early 2009, state and federal governments agreed that a dwelling’s energy, greenhouse and water performance should be publicised at the point of sale and lease. Since then, however, not much has happened.

The policy is known as “residential building mandatory disclosure”. The name may be uninspiring, but if the reform is handled well, it could prompt a big change in household energy and water consumption.

While the details haven’t been set, the approach will be broader than the current star ratings. As well as the building fabric, it is likely to cover heating, cooling and hot water systems, together with lighting, clothes drying, rainwater tanks and water fittings, and a list of recommended upgrades.

Tim Adams, president of the Building Designers Association Victoria, says the scheme shouldn’t be compared to fuel efficiency in cars; rather, he likens it to a roadworthy certificate.

“We have consumer protection measures in place for all sorts of products. Mandatory disclosure should be seen as a kind of roadworthy check – and in this case we’re talking about protecting investments of several hundred thousand dollars,” he says.

“Unfortunately, we have a large quantity of building stock that was built before any energy efficiency provisions began. This is a way of informing us what the costs will be in our next house.”

Mr Adams argues that it will help people better judge the worth of the homes they’re inspecting.

“We’ve been lazy due to the cheapness of coal-fired electricity and natural gas,” he says. “In the future, when energy isn’t as abundant or cheap, we’ll need to be increasingly aware of these issues so we can value houses properly before we buy or rent.”

So how will it work?

In July, the federal government released a regulatory impact statement and sought feedback on different designs for the scheme. It detailed six proposals, ranging from a comprehensive, independent assessment, to an optional, self-assessed checklist.

The scheme’s success will depend on the quality of information required. The more rigorous options would be the most useful for buyers, but cost more upfront.

Some environment groups have criticised the report’s modelling, arguing it failed to factor in the health benefits of higher standards, or the avoided expense of new electricity infrastructure.

In its submission, the Association of Building Sustainability Assessors proposed a hybrid option, in which householders could choose among three tiers. Only people who opt for the most comprehensive version would be eligible to receive the highest rating.

Mr Adams’ association, which also accredits sustainability assessors, supports a system of compulsory self-assessment, at a minimum. The weaker proposals, such as an optional tick list, would be a waste of time. “The information needs to be consistent and people should be obliged to provide it,” he says.

“It’s in nobody’s interests to end up with the status quo. We need to do something about climate change and energy efficiency, so we need to start making some progress.”

Once the various governments agree on the scheme’s design, it will be up to the states and territories to enact the rules.

Read this article at The Age online

Retrofitting to six stars

In Architecture and building on

HOUSE energy ratings are on the rise again. From May, the regulations in the national building code were lifted from five to six stars. Within a year, the new rules will be in place throughout the country (except New South Wales, which uses BASIX instead).

The rating system is based on predicted heating and cooling requirements for your home. Depending on your location, a six-star rating means you’ll need up to a quarter less energy to stay comfortable than you would under the old five-star rules. With utility prices on the march, that equates to a hefty saving on your bills.

So how much does it cost to convert five-star plans to six stars?

New homes

In a recent study, Timothy O’Leary and Dr Martin Belusko from the University of South Australia analysed a dozen house designs offered by volume builders. Using standard materials and without any major redesigns, they found it would cost an average of $3900 to lift the plans to the new standard (PDF).

But Alison Carmichael, CEO of the Association of Building Sustainability Assessors, says it’s possible to build to six stars at no extra cost, so long as you include passive solar design techniques such as good orientation and cross-ventilation.

“You need to involve someone who understands thermal comfort right from the beginning,” she says.

If you wait until you’ve settled on the design, moving to a higher rating can get expensive. “By then, there’s usually been so much blood, sweat and tears put into the plan that you’re loathe to change anything,” Carmichael says. “To get it up to six stars, the building sustainability assessor is left with little option than to recommend expensive inclusions such double glazing.”

Retrofitting existing homes

Although the timing and details are still unclear, the federal and state governments have agreed that a dwelling’s energy efficiency should be disclosed when it is put up for sale or lease. That’s sure to provide a big incentive for homeowners to lift their green game. But is possible for every home to hit six stars?

The Moreland Energy Foundation (MEFL) and Sustainability Victoria have analysed the efficiency potential of dozens of existing houses.

The researchers surveyed each dwelling and calculated its energy rating. Then they modelled a series of upgrades to the building fabric: ceiling, wall and floor insulation, draught proofing, drapes and pelmets, external shading and double-glazed windows.

Govind Maksay, from MEFL, says that without major renovations, six stars will be very difficult to achieve in most homes.

The average upfront rating of the houses they examined was just 1.7 stars. With a full suite of retrofitting measures in place, the average jumped to 5 stars. But out of the 45 dwellings studied, only half a dozen were able to reach or exceed six stars.

In Maksay’s initial study, the full retrofitting package landed at an average cost of over $22,000. However, the changes weren’t all equal, in either impact or cost.

“On average, over 80 per cent of the rating improvement came from the insulation and comprehensive draught proofing,” he says, “but that constituted just 20 per cent of the total upgrade cost.”

In contrast, double-glazing proved highly expensive for more limited benefit.

Although these findings vary according to the dwelling and the modelling undertaken, Maksay says householders can learn important lessons from the study: focus on the fundamentals before going for trendy upgrades – seal gaps and insulate walls and ceilings.

“To really improve your star rating you have to tackle wall insulation, whether that’s with blow-in granulated mineral wool, or by removing the weatherboards or plasterboard and inserting batts.

“Insulating your ceiling and ignoring your walls is like trying to stay warm wearing a beanie, but no clothes,” he says. “The other message is that there’s a difference between wimpy and comprehensive draught sealing. You need more than just door snakes.”

Maksay adds another important caveat: all-out blitzing your home’s star rating probably isn’t the smartest way to spend your money, or save energy, because it only takes into account the building fabric. “You can reduce your energy costs cheaply in other ways, with efficient lighting, appliances and hot water systems, and by reducing standby power,” he says.

“Also, if you’re renovating, think about how you can more effectively heat and cool your house – for example, you could put a super-efficient reverse-cycle air conditioner into your living room and limit the total area you need to keep at the right temperature.”

RETROFITTING CASE STUDIES

From Sustainability Victoria’s On-Ground Assessment of the Energy Efficiency Potential of Victorian Homes.

Vermont House

Construction type: 1970s single-storey, detached brick veneer, 175 m2. Suspended timber flooring.

Rating before upgrade: 1.5 stars

Rating after full upgrade: 5.3 stars

Cost for full upgrade: $45,724 (including double glazing worth $26,288, which added 0.4 stars to the rating, after drapes and pelmets)

Comments: “This home was orientated well,” Maksay says. “The long axis of the block is east-west, so it has a long northerly aspect and the living areas are situated to the north. All the utility areas are on the southern side, with a small amount of glazing. It had very good sub-floor access so it would be possible to insulate the ceiling, walls and floor to a high level.”

Coburg House

Construction type: 1930s single-storey, detached weatherboard, 108 m2. Flooring partially suspended timber and partially concrete slab on ground.

Rating before upgrade: 1.2 stars

Rating after full upgrade: 3.7 stars

Cost for full upgrade: $18,376 (including double glazing worth $11,455 which added only 0.2 stars to the rating, after drapes and pelmets)

Comments: “This house is not oriented very well,” Maksay says. “It only has a couple of windows to the north and one of them is in a bedroom. Wall insulation made a significant impact here – more than doubling the star rating of the house – but there wasn’t sufficient access to install floor insulation.

“But this house is ideally suited to using an efficient gas heater in the kitchen and living space only, because that area is thermally isolated. The Vermont house is centrally heated, so even though it reached a higher star rating, it would have a much larger overall annual heating and cooling bill.”

This article was published in Sanctuary Magazine