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.

Solar initiatives in built-up areas may be left struggling to see the light of day

THE eco-friendly Australian cities of the future will combine dense housing with savvy, energy-smart design. Or will they? Is there a conflict looming between the twin green goals of urban densification and widespread harvesting of the sun’s rays?

More and more people are installing solar panels and solar hot water systems, growing their own vegies and adapting their houses for passive solar gain. But as they do so, they may find their desire for direct sunlight overshadowed by bigger buildings next door.

Professor Kim Dovey, chair of architecture and urban design at the University of Melbourne, says the right to sunlight is a growing issue.

“Since the 1990s, there’s been a strong push for higher densities, often based on green arguments, such as getting more people living closer to train stations and so on. But at the same time, the solar access issue has been forgotten,” he says.

He says planning rules treat sunlight as a matter of amenity, not sustainability.

“To me, the deeper issue is that the ownership of a block of land seems to imply some kind of right to access the solar energy that comes with it,” Professor Dovey says. “And we also have a public imperative for distributed energy systems – the idea that we should generate electricity everywhere, not only in one place.”

Currently, although every level of government offers subsidies or incentives for solar panels and hot water units, there’s been no equivalent attempt to safeguard those investments against overshadowing.

Similarly, the Victorian planning controls don’t shield householders’ access to direct sunlight in the winter, the time of year when it’s needed most for passive heating.

Despite this criticism, the Victorian Department of Planning and Community Development maintains that its regulations adequately protect existing north-facing windows and backyards.

Under the rules, shadow diagrams are drawn at the spring equinox, not the winter solstice – which means they don’t take account of the six months when the sun is lowest in the sky.

Seamus Haugh, a spokesperson for the department, says the current practice represents “a sensible balance”.

“In Melbourne, [using] the winter solstice would unreasonably restrict redevelopment opportunities and would significantly impact on homeowner rights to modernise existing housing,” he says.

A review of the state planning scheme is underway, and is scheduled to report its preliminary findings to the minister at the end of November.

Angela Meinke, manager of planning and building at the City of Melbourne, acknowledges that sustainability isn’t a key consideration under the rules, as they stand. “The planning scheme doesn’t address the impact you could have on green initiatives on neighbouring properties,” she says.

“The challenge we have in planning is to weigh up the rights of property owners to develop and the rights of neighbours not to be affected by development. We try to strike a balance.”

But as the risks of climate change and energy scarcity grow more pressing, it is becoming increasingly apparent that householders everywhere must adopt low-consumption, low-impact lifestyles. The notion of “balance” may need to favour sunlight over development – especially where the plans in question are only for larger houses, not more dwellings.

Professor Dovey contends that the government must “take some responsibility for a sustainable future” by planning actively, rather than prolonging the market-led approach of recent decades.

“In the middle of winter it’s very hard to avoid the blocking of sun, so there have to be compromises. I think that will mean that in any given area, the height limits ought to be reasonably flat,” he says.

“You could have a law that says properties cannot differ by more than a couple of storeys from one property to another. And that would improve the city, because it won’t be pockmarked with large towers.”

In the case of solar photovoltaic panels, Stephen Ingrouille, from Going Solar, believes overshadowing concerns can usually be solved by careful planning or by negotiation between landowners.

“You could get people to set back a little, or bevel the corners of buildings,” he suggests. “Potentially you can move solar panels to another spot, but who pays for that? What is reasonable?”

He notes that in the UK, residents have defended their solar access under the common law doctrine of Ancient lights, which gives owners of long-standing buildings a right to maintain their established level of illumination. In Australia, the courts have heard very few cases about solar access for sustainability.

As a general rule, Mr Ingrouille advises would-be customers to consider the likelihood of “overdevelopment” on the property immediately to their north. “Be mindful that might happen and try to plan for it,” he says.

There goes the sun

IN the mid-1990s, the Walsh family extended their Kensington home. With the help of their next door neighbour at the time – an architect – they designed a living area with glass doors and high windows to capture the sun.

“In winter time, it’s like a sun room in here,” says Wally Walsh. “We’ve got a grape vine to provide shade in summer, but in winter it loses all its leaves, the sun streams in and you don’t need to heat the room.”

The architect has since moved on, and the family’s new neighbours have extended twice. The most recent addition was a second storey, erected earlier this year.

The length of the block runs east to west, so the home’s northern windows look out onto the house next door. But where once they saw sky, the family now see rows of cream weatherboards.

“I came home one evening and the frame was up and I thought: ‘My God’,” Mr Walsh says. “I contacted the Melbourne City Council immediately, who told me that we had no grounds to appeal other than on the basis of heritage.”

Angela Meinke, the council’s planning and building manager, confirmed that in this case, heritage concerns were the only matter the council could consider in determining its planning permit.

The building surveyor, however, was required to assess the shadows cast on their existing north-facing windows. Unfortunately for the Walsh family, the demands of the regulations aren’t stringent enough to safeguard their winter sun.

By Mr Walsh’s reckoning, the rules favour development over energy-efficient design. “It’s going to be colder and darker in here. We’ll need to have the heating and lights on more often,” he says.

“They’re doing what they’re entitled to do, apparently. But it’s sad. You’re supposed to design your house so you get sunshine in winter and shade in the summer, aren’t you? For us, ultimately, it was a waste of time.”

Read this article at The Age online