The trial of the Living Smart Action Guide took place during the first pilot presentation of the course in late 2008. The course, offered by Randwick City Council through their Sustainability Education Officer, Fiona Campbell (a TerraCircle associate), targets citizens of Sydney’s Eastern Suburbs who have made, are considering or are on the verge of changing the way they live so that it is more sustainable.

Council’s established sustainable living courses and workshops have disclosed considerable citizen interest in being proactive in making the change towards sustainability. The Living Smart course offers a longer, more intensive course for motivated people. In terms of ideas diffusion in society, these people are the ‘early adopters’ and those in the pre-change phase who are considering changes to their lifestyles.

The Living Smart course was brought from Western Australia, where it was devised, by Fiona Campbell and Council adult educator consultant, Renata Sheehan, in 2008. The course has been quite successful in Western Australia, however considerable work had to be done to repurpose it for NSW conditions, specifically for Sydney’s Eastern Suburbs. This included the localisation of the Living Smart Action Guide and writing additional material for inclusion. The Action Guide takes the form of print pages supplied to course participants a week prior to each of the eight meetings. The idea is that participants come to the meeting having read that week’s content. By the end of the Living Smart course, participants have a reference book on sustainable living. At the completion of the course, participants are awarded a certificate by Randwick’s deputy mayor.

Topics covered in Living Smart, and which appear as chapters in the Action Guide, include:

• setting goals
• transport
• water
• energy
• waste minimisation
• personal health (diet etc)
• healthy home (building materials, paints, safe and healthy cleaning etc)
• living in the community (becoming involved in community organisations).

In addition, the Action Guide includes a chapter briefly introducing the geography, built environment, indigenous history and biogeography of the Eastern Suburbs bioregion. An introductory chapter on global challenges has been included to provide a global context for householder and community actions.

Revisions for the second draft of the Action Guide include refining existing chapters, adding more diagrams and photographs and producing a ‘food smart’ chapter on food issues, Sydney’s urban food system and the economic and environmental importance of localised supplies of food.

The food chapter has been planned because of the growing realisation that the first and probably ongoing large scale impact of climate change will be regional, and perhaps a global, food crisis. Research findings from last year’s University of Melbourne project, Sustainable and Secure Food Systems for Victoria, are included as they demonstrate the critical role of food choices on domestic energy consumption (and, therefore, greenhouse gas emissions), water consumption and waste production. Material developed by the Sydney Food Fairness Alliance will also be included.

Production of the NSW iteration of the Living Smart Action Guide is being done by Russ Grayson, a member of TerraCircle. TerraCircle’s first activity in Australia was a community training workshop in compost production for Wahroonga Council.

Photo: by Russ Grayson of Annette Barlow‘s illustration for Randwick City Council eduational trailer.

Although Rosemary Morrow’s video is the focus of a different article, it is pertinent to the book I want to write about. I had seen her garden in construction and looked curiously at what seemed to me to be a rather large hole that she had dug. As I watched her video, I came to understand the logic of that hole and its role in the curious earth-shaping exercise she had been undertaking when I visited. As it turns out, those backyard earthworks were all about harvesting, detaining and infiltrating into the soil the rainfall that comes onto and flows through her site.

It is this that Brad Lancaster’s book, ‘Rainwater Harvesting for Drylands and Beyond’, is all about. The book arrived unexpectedly in my mailbox just before Rosemary arrived on my doorstep, and that was a fortunate coincidence. Like Rosemary, Brad is no stranger to the practice of permaculture design, and that shows through rather plainly in the 179, well-illustrated (illustrative drawings and black and white photographs) pages of his large-format softcover. Oh, and Brad’s book isn’t just for the permaculture demimonde; it’s relevant to virtually all Australian cities and towns below the Tropic of Capricorn, including the better watered but recently drought-affected big cities. It’s also for those comparatively few Australians who derive a living from our often-parched soils, a description that doesn’t really do justice to our farmers west of the Great Divide who are now into their tenth year of drought.

The swale, or infiltration trench, at Fairfield City Farm in south-western Sydney detains and infiltrates rainwater running downslope.

Let’s diverge. Australian governments, the whole three layers of them (whether that’s one too many is a different debate) have made great strides in encouraging individuals, companies and even government itself to take water-conserving measures. We now get rebates for installing water tanks and even bigger rebates is we have those roofwater tanks plumbed into our toilet flushing and other domestic systems.

The ban on urban watertanks that existed just 30 years ago definitely was in another country, another time, another mindset. Even the Manly Council Art Gallery down the road from me has a line of rainwater tanks the full length of its rear wall. And local government sustainability education programs feature water conservation… all about harvesting, storing and using the stuff carefully. The ‘Living Smart Action Guide, a 300 or so page manual I am writing for a local government sustainable living course, has an entire chapter on how urban people can make best use of water, and the topic is taught in the course by a water engineer knowledgeable in all aspects of water harvesting and use, including greywater. This indicates the seriousness of the local government interest in water conservation in our sometimes parched metropolis, and it suggests why Brad’s book is one for the times.

A mine of how-to

Back on topic again, and we find Brad’s book a literal mine of how-to information. Yes, I know he’s a North American and that the peculiar Imperial system of measurement survives in this country, however… good news… Brad has been thoughtful enough to supply critical figures in both Imperial and Metric. The plants he mentions, of course, are not relevant here, but I’m sure that readers will be smart enough to devise their own species list.

So, what’s in this book for we southern hemisphere dwellers? First, there’s the eight rainwater harvesting principles. The first might sound a little familiar to practitioners of permaculture design because it’s about beginning with long and thoughtful observation. It’s about understanding what goes on on our site, which is knowledge gained through the dual process of observing what happens and asking why it is so… why do those plants grow here? why is this soil moister than elsewhere? why does rainfall runoff flow this way and not the other? why is this area eroding?

Reading this, it reminded me of the Action Research process I have used in projects. That is based on the idea of look > think > act – look and observe to understand what is happening (more formally, this would be called baseline data collection in project management-speak), analyse it by thinking and learning about it, then act to design and develop the project. Call it what you will, observation reveals sometimes hidden processes and features in the landscape, whether that is of a farm, an urban garden or what is to become an community food garden in the suburbs. ‘Observe and contemplate’ is the rather nice way that Brad puts it.

His second point of advice – his second principle – is to start thinking about water flow and how you might interact with it at the highest elevation of your land. It is from here that we begin our interaction with rainfall and overland flow and channel it into detention structures such as bunds (raised ridges), detention ponds and infiltration trenches or contour ditches, also known in permaculture-speak as ‘swales’.

Brad’s third principle is to start small and simple, a suggestion that resonates with David Holmgren’s permaculture principle about small and slow solutions. Although I think there are situations when we need big and rapid interventions, the principle is one borne out in a development program I have had a long association with in the Solomons Islands. There, the principle was field rested and found to offer manageability and, as Brad suggests for water projects, reduced maintenance over time.

Domestic rainwater tanks come in a range of sizes, shapes and materials. This flatish, galvanised iron tank was installed at the home of Keelah Lam, from Manly Food Co-op.

The fourth principle is about infiltrating water into our soils, which is accomplished by slowing and detaining overland flow so that it has time to sink into the soil where the roots of our plants can get at it. This leads nicely to the next principle, that of planning an overflow route for the excess water that falls during prolonged rainy periods or storms. The cost of not doing this is erosion. Spillways should take water to a larger infiltration zone or, more likely in the city, to storm water drainage. While this might seem a waste, we are responsible for the downstream impacts of our earthworks and water harvesting installations on other properties, so we don’t want excessive water flows entering them. In the city, inattention to this could lead to a visit from your local council officer.

Overflow routes or spillways should be reinforced against erosion by planting them with a mat-rooted species, perhaps a variety of durable and drought-resistant grass, or by paving them with closely-packed stones, known as rip-rap. Brad talks about moving water from retention basin to basin in a stepped progression down our site, assuming we have the slope to start with.

He also talks about maximising planted groundcover because this, too, slows, detains and helps to infiltrate runoff. Plant roots also pump soil water towards the soil surface, and the leaf fall eventually forms a mulch that breaks down to add the organic matter that keeps our soils open and porous. Maximising groundcover is Brad’s sixth principle.

His seventh will be familiar to permaculture designers because it’s about stacking functions. This links with the principle of designing for multifunction, which appeared way back in Bill Mollison and David Holmgren’s ‘Permaculture One’. Brad talks about constructing contour bunds, which are earthern mounds made along the contour, so that they act as paths providing access through the garden. Bunds, of course, are a water harvesting technique. He discusses other strategies to increase productivity and make best use of limited space, and one of them I see if I look out of my window. It’s a trellis that makes use of the side of the rainwater tank and, currently, it supports a scrambling and largely unproductive pumpkin vine.

The final principle is an important one, that of monitoring your water works and continually assessing their performance. This discloses where improvements can be made and is a way of learning more about your landscape. It applies the philosophy of the continuous improvement of design to water systems.

The possibilities of techniques

The first swale I saw in action, actually working that is, was when I was a Landcare educator at Liverpool Council’s Fairfield City Farm in south-western Sydney. It was carved into the sticky clay soil of the urban permaculture demonstration garden and it held water well and separated the vegetable garden from the fruit and nut orchard planted immediately below its berm. As water infiltrates, swales (and, presumably, berms) form an area of moist soil immediately below and this slowly moves downslope under the influence of gravity. It is this that the roots of those fruit and nut trees accessed. The next swale I came across was the set at Habitat and Harmony Community Garden in the lower Hunter. These, too, worked well and were full of water when I first saw them.

Swales are something that long ago caught the imagination of perma-folk and now we find them from farm to suburban backyard, however they are only one of many water harvesting earthworks. We’ve already mentioned berms, which, unlike swales that are incised into the soil, stand mounded along the contour above it. There are mini-catchments, too, such as the ‘boomerang’ bunds Brad talks about — they are smaller, curved, low-raised berms made on gently sloping land. He also mentions basins, another excavation and one made around trees in dry climates. You can see some, well mulched and with their berm planted to banana, at the Yandina Community Garden on the Sunshine Coast.

Also mentioned in his book are terraces, which are really a means of turning a steep hillside into a stepped series of smaller, flat strips for cropping. I was introduced to them by Badri Dahal, now living in Sydney but then with the Institute for Sustainable Agriculture Nepal, when he gave me a copy of the book, ‘Sloping Land Agriculture’. I was impressed when, in the early 1990s, I encountered a low hillside of terraces at the Angel Street Community Garden. Brad suggests low-raised walls to boost their water harvesting capacity.

Swales don’t drain

Despite their popularity, there remains confusion about swales in permaculture circles. It is due to the misunderstanding of this fact: swales hold water, they do not drain it away; drainage ditches or channels move water from one place to another, such as to a dam. Drainage lines are excavated with a gentle grade, swales are flat along the contour — at the same height, that is — across the land.

Sometimes, but only where large enough and where the soil is deep enough, they have pits dug into them at intervals that act as cisterns to hold water and allow it to infiltrate. This is mentioned in Brad’s book, too.

And so much more

There’s an informative, illustrated chapter on site analysis for the home and garden. Site analysis, and its accompanying needs analysis of those who will live on-site or make use of it if it is something like a community garden is the staring point of design, as many reading this will know. There are also formula for calculating harvest capacity, boxes of interesting information and pages with scaled grids for doing your own design.

Brad Lancaster’s is the first of his three (so far) books on water. Rainwater Harvesting for Drylands and Beyond, Volume 1, leads to Volume 2, which is all about earthworks. Volume 3 covers roof catchments and cisterns — water tanks to us. I’ve seen Volumes 1 and 2 in Sydney bookshops (Gleebooks and Kinokinoya stock them) but I’ve not yet come across Volume 3. They are distributed in Australia by Tower Books in Sydney, so would presumably be found around the country.

Ours, we know only too well, is a dry country likely to become drier as climate change makes itself increasingly felt, especially in the south east. That is why, even in the cities clinging to our coasts, Brad’s manuals are potentially useful. What they do is take the ‘enrich soil + mulch’ message of permaculture and local government sustainability educators a step further to shaping the ground to get the most from the rainwater that runs over it.

Now, a note of caution. Get advice in land shaping if you do not really understand what Brad is about or the hydraulics of your site. Consider your downstream neighbours and what happens to water leaving your land and entering theirs’. This is what Rosemary Morrow did before she reshaped her land to harvest water and, if she — one of this country’s most experienced permaculture educators and designers — does this, then it’s only common sense that we do too.

So, should you invest your scarce dollars in this book and, perhaps, in Brad’s other volumes? I suggest the answer is ‘yes’. You will just have to apply a little observation and reasoning to adapt them to Australian conditions. Again, if you don’t feel confident doing what he describes, get help from a competent and experienced permaculture or landscape designer. These are manuals for our parched times and gardens. They are easy to read, easy to understand and it is evident that they are written from the knowledge that comes of experience.

Publishing details

Lancaster B; 2006/2008; Rainwater Harvesting for Drylands and Beyond, Volumes 1; Rainsource Press, Tuscon USA; ISBN 978 0 9772464 0 3.

Paying very high prices for water that is merely filtered – water sold as ‘mineral’ water must comply to a standard regarding content – is being recognised for the commercial rip-off that it is. Its legacy is not only taking money from the pockets of its drinkers, it is a high-carbon product when the resource and energy production costs its PET plastic packaging, with its embodied energy, are taken into account. Then there’s the cost of cleaning the discarded, empty packaging from our beaches and streets, and the landfill issue.

Why pay high prices for what you can get free? Filling up with free filtered water at a Manly Council bubbler in The Corso.

The bottles, of course, can be reused, however there is growing consumer resistance to doing this with allegations of chemicals leaching from the bottle into its contents. Even keeping bottled water in your car can have health impacts because, as the water rises in temperature, it becomes a fine medium for bacterial growth. The plastic of used bottles, however, can be converted into other products. Adventure equipment manufacturer, Paddy Pallin, makes a colourful line of warm jackets from the material of old PET bottles.

It seems the era of the refillable bottle may be about to dawn, if the ban spreads. Manly Food Co-op, for instance, carries a line in refillable stainless steel bottles. These are lightweight and, being steel rather than aluminium (such as the popular Sigg bottles are made from), they can be filled with liquids other than water, like orange juice. You can get these elsewhere, too. Sigg also make a range of internally-coated aluminium bottles that can handle juice, however last time I checked they would not disclose the plastic they coat the inside of the bottle with, ignoring the public right to know (especially about materials users of their product could ingest and that could have negative health effects) and raising questions as to food safety assurances around whether their plastic release chemicals into the liquids inside the bottles.

As for polycarbonate bottles – those hard, durable plastic types – they have been reported to leach chemicals too, however I understand that some manufacturers have started to produce polycarbonates bottles that do not do this.

A challenge to the Bundanoon ban by the packaging industry would paint it into the same corner that its resistance to container deposit legislation (CDL) has forced it in all states but South Australia. Even such an influential organisation as Clean-Up Australia has remained mute on CDL, clearly preferring to pick up the discards rather than solve the problem at source. So has federal Environment Minister Peter Garrett.

Interestingly, the NSW government is ordering its departments to get rid of plastic bottled water.

So, what’s the solution?

Do we go thirsty in public or just drop into the nearest bar when we feel a thirst coming on?

Look no further than Manly for the answer. There, Manly Council engaged Culligan Water to install filtered water refilling stations in The Corso. Bearing a message about it being a climate change initiative, the filling stations are equipped with a tap, conveniently placed for refilling water bottles, and an adjacent bubbler. More bubblers would be a good idea in all municipalities and all shopping centres, including big box malls.

Despite its sometimes bad press, Sydney tap water, it turns out, really is safe to drink, even if it is unfliltered. If you don’t believe me, do an experiment with you as subject and compare it to drinking some of the stuff you get from the tap (where they can be found) in developing countries.

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Based on a David Holmgren’s (and here) address at the food security theme day of the Australian City Farms & Community Gardens Network’s national conference, March 2007, Collingwood Town Hall, Melbourne.

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STANDING THERE ON THE STAGE and looking out over the several hundred gathered in front of him, did he momentarily reflect that this is where his work, started thirty years ago in that southernmost capital city of Australia, would lead him? Did he ever imagine that he and his collaborator’s ideas would be the reason that people nationwide would come to listen to him?

a grassroots, international movement of practitioners, designers and organisations – of networks

He stands there briefly, in front of that crowd, then starts to talk about a design system for sustainable living, “ …one that’s concerned with both the production and consumption side and that is based on universal ethics and design principles which can be applied in any context”.

There’s no prizes for guessing what David Holmgren is talking about. For those that do not know, he went on to describe permaculture as  “a grassroots, international movement of practitioners, designers and organisations – of networks”.

Quickly, he warms to his topic that day in late March 2007 when he addressed the national conference of the Australian City Farms and Community Gardens Network on the day set aside for presentations on food security.

That the day would be set aside for such a topic is testament to the journey from fringe to mainstream that the idea of food security has traveled. It seems just a few years ago that people would respond with a ‘what’s that?’ on hearing those two words. Then, it was heard mainly in the isolated conversations of international development practitioners. How things change!

The city feeding itself - allotment garden at Collingwood Childrens' Farm, Melbourne. Government can assist urban food production by adopting policy to support community allotment and other types of shared gardens. The high fences separating the allotments have now been removed.

The design approach to sustainability

“I want to take the design approach of permaculture to look at food security in a future world of low energy availability,” David announces. He suggests that there is confusion over the issue of food and that is is only now starting to appear in official sustainability thinking.

“The official version of sustainability we get from government, very well intended and often well informed… it’s all about buildings and transport but it’s not about food. This is why gardening is seen as a hobby rather than a serious form of agriculture”.

David has long advocated that the production of food in our cities, whether in home or community gardens, should be recognised as a valid form of small scale agriculture. What he talks about, in effect, is the farming our suburbs. He coined the term ‘garden agriculture’ in recognition of this.

Part of the household economy

David distinguishes between garden and urban agriculture. “I see urban agriculture to be in some way commercial or which produces a surplus for sale. Garden agriculture I see as part of the household economy where people produce for their own needs. Of course, there’s a complementary relationship between them”.

The practice of home garden agriculture is an Australian tradition, just as it is for most cultures. It is not something new. You hear this when people recall how their parents or grandparents had a backyard vegetable patch or kept a few chooks. Those recollections indicate the problem, however. Home gardening has become a memory for all too many, a memory that harks back to their early childhood.

Home gardens are part of the household economy. The home garden of a shared house in Perth, Western Australia.

Just how pervasive home food production has been in Australian social history was disclosed in an Australian Bureau of Statistics report on the subject in 1991 and, more recently, by Andrea Gaynor’s book, Harvest of the Suburbs (Harvest of the Suburbs – an environmental history of growing food in Australian Cities; 2006; University of Western Australia Press, Crawley, WA. ISBN 1 920694 48 X).

Permaculture more than organic gardening

For David, the challenge is to bring those memories to life in the present. It’s not a vain hope. Home gardening started to pick up as an urban activity back in the late 1960s, thanks to the rise of the organic gardening movement. Subsequent years have seen a steady growth, propelled in part by food fears such as those over agro-chemical contamination of our food through the use of farm chemicals – a concern stretching right back into the 1960s with the publication of Rachael Carson’s Silent Spring.

It’s also about our connection with nature, about tools and technology and about community

Other fears followed. In the 1990s, permaculture co-originator, Bill Mollison started to warn about genetically modified food. Recently, home and community food gardening and the idea of eating locally-produced food has been popularised by the international Slow Foods movement and the seeking of local solutions to global warming and peak oil.

Permaculture must take some credit for the popularisation of home food gardening over the past 30 years. It forms the focus of their permaculture practice for many.

It wasn’t that they needed convincing, but David reiterates the link: “Permaculture is clearly about people and food”, he tells the audience. “It’s also about our connection with nature, about tools and technology and about community. So it really covers a much wider scope than it is commonly understood as a specific form of organic gardening”.

David suggest that food issues “throw up an enormous number of opportunities. I’m trying to make permaculture central to the issue of sustainability, putting those simple, core ideas of small, local, nature, food on the table as the most important”.

What people think, what they feel

By this time David is getting into the swing of his presentation and speaks with greater emphasis. He tells the audience that we can expand the production of food in our cities even without breaking up pavement or taking down buildings.

“The other thing we need is dietary change to seasonal, local food that is less processed and that contains less animal protein.

“These changes are possible in a very short time. A lot of it has to do with people’s heads – what they think, what they feel. It’s said that this is the hardest thing in the world to change. We’ll see.

“Full organic methods, including the full recycling to land of all wastes including human waste, is in the long term the most critical feature in the sustainability of the food system. We won’t have that bleed of high quality nutrient in human waste not going back to the food system.

Polyculture breeds productive landscapes

“An element commonly associated with permaculture is what we can probably call polyculture – the integration of crops, livestock and structures rather than the idea that these are all separate systems. This is where we get the synergies, the efficiencies and so many of the social and environmental services. There are elements of beautiful and productive landscapes that come from this integration that polyculture brings.

It’s very hard for one or two person households to undertake household economy measures

Home garden as polyculture. Annual and perennial vegetables grow with fruit trees and vines. Fiona Campbell and Russ Grayson's one-time garden in Sydney.

“Another basic redesign strategy is to increase our household size. All our systems in modern societies are too big but our households are too small for the sustainable, efficient use of resources. It’s very hard for one or two person households to undertake household economy measures. We can get economies of scale through larger household size”.

Moving away from one and two person households would be a challenge as these are the fastest growing segment of the housing market in the major cities The trend is supported by the movement of people into apartments, of which there are two main segments. One is made up of first home buyers purchasing apartments because of their greater affordability in the inner and middle ring of suburbs in our larger cities. The other segment are ‘downsizers’ — parents whose families have grown up and left home, or who might be retirees who are no longer able to, or who prefer not to maintain suburban houses and gardens. The resource cost of one an two person households was disclosed in Sydney University research. This indicated that these smaller households still required the same number of white goods and other appliances as larger households, although the appliances might be smaller in size.

The notion of a ‘household economy’ is something that David’s partner, Sue Dennett, was to raise in a workshop later in the Australian City Farms & Community Gardens Network conference. There, she discussed the economic, environmental and food value of setting aside preserved seasonal produce to have supply of out-of-season foods without importing them over vast distances, with all the travel and greenhouse gas emissions that entails.

Thinking in terms of a household economy would certainly present a challenge to a culture in which the definition of ‘economy’ is money-related and entails working outside of the home. It would involve a mindset change to recognise the value of non-monetary activity having economic value. Women, of course, have been advocating this ides since the 1970s in regard to child care and housework.

Localising Melbourne’s food – without clearfelling Mt Dandenong

In Melbourne, says David, there’s a significant amount of public open space that could, with great social and ecological benefit, be transformed for food production.

“Public open space is about 12 percent of the Melbourne metropolitan area. We might not actually want to cut down the forests on Mt Dendenong or, maybe, log the botanic gardens and turn them into food production”, however there remains plenty of urban open space that could be used for garden agriculture.

“The Melbourne metropolitan area is nearly 9000 sq km. That includes quite a lot of land that’s not built over. On the fringes, it includes quite large areas of forest and parkland. There’s almost three and a half million people in this area, a density off 388 people per square kilometre. The area of land per person is 2500 sq metres, about a quarter acre per person. How much of this is built on I was not able to find out.

“I am not suggesting that Melbourne should produce all of its own food, but John Jeavons claims that biointensive, vegan agriculture at its extreme is capable of supplying total food supply on 300 sq metres per person. I think that’s about the top limit and maybe its theoretical.

“My estimate for a permaculture omnivore is about the 700 to 1500 sq metres per person. This is less than the total area that is not built upon and paved within the Melbourne metropolitan area. So we do have the capacity in the cities to feed those cities”.

Towards an urban agriculture – allotments, glasshouses, preserving, recycling nutrients

Just what would an urban garden agriculture that made greater use of public land look like?

“Firstly, allotment and rooftop gardens. The key thing about these is that they provide maximum solar access in higher density residential areas where individual gardens at ground level next to buildings often really lack product. One of the really great things about allotment gardens is that they aggregate plots together so that can get solar access.

“Greenhouses with minimal bottom heat for seedling production, to get an extension of the growing season, is a reasonable compromise to purely eating what will grow in the outside environment. In this climate it can provide basic winter salads, although that’s a lot easier in to do in Melbourne than where we live (Hepburn)”.

Then there’s home food processing. “Preserving and fermentation using low energy means is an incredibly important part of how we stabilise that huge seasonal flux in food production. Spring is what I jokingly call the famine time. We need methods that use minimum energy to even that out”.

The recycling of nutrients to fertilise our urban garden-agriculture is another thing that can be achieved with a little imagination. Worm farms, deep litter systems for poultry, reedbeds for treating greywater and composting toilets are important, simple, biological technologies for nutrient recycling that we can do within urban areas.

“Mushroom production on compost and wood in shaded areas is something missing in Australia, in part on account of our Anglo heritage. But it has huge potential in urban areas to produce food from decomposing material.

“Poultry and eggs in deep litter systems, chicken tractors – this idea that has been popularised through permaculture – and orchard range systems. Poultry is a key and appropriate form of animal protein in urban areas.

“I think rabbits for meat production, fed on urban lawns and weeds, are another very important and efficient use of wastes that comes as a by-product from those systems.

“There’s neighbourhood goat dairies managed on public land. It didn’t go down very when I suggested this in 1989 during a review of a ten year strategy plan for CERES – the idea of goats munching along Merri Creek. But I think we’ll get there… eventually.

New role for city parks

“Once we get intensive gardens covering significant urban areas, the demand for local organic materials will become quite significant. We can look at public landscaping as a source of organic matter and also for conversion into food systems.

“We recycle everything in gardening, but highly productive food systems need a net input of some organic material from lower-intensive systems. This is a common pattern through sustainable, low energy societies where there’s a larger range of forest woodland that supplies fuel and organic material to support very intensive areas of food production.”

Wastewater a huge opportunity

“I think stormwater harvesting is a huge opportunity in urban areas. We can use this water for low-input pond aquaculture going beyond the sort of wetland systems that are being designed at the moment for stormwater in urban areas.

“We can retrofit those systems for food production… while harvesting weeds, windfalls and surplus wildlife as free food from nature.”

The importance of small, local food markets

“I want to mention food marketing because the cost of current, centralised systems makes this is important. We need to look at how the surplus from gardens can be distributed and how local markets can develop that don’t cost the earth.

“When you shift to subscription agriculture, community supported agriculture (CSA), local supply… there’s really only the producer and consumer and there are benefits for both.

“CSA has enormous benefits for consumers because it provides food security, it connects them to a seasonal food culture and it gives them influence over the production system. They can actually talk directly to the producer.

“For producers, CSA provides a capital base and some sort of market certainty. It stimulates polyculture and tends to stabilise production peaks and troughs. CSA and subscription farming drive the system towards polyculture and away from monoculture, as shown in Japan where farmers grow many varieties of vegetables.

“It also develops the potential for a seasonal labour pool and, also, understanding consumers who are prepared to understand the position that the producer is in.

“Farmers’ markets are useful as local sources for consumers and for distributing seasonal surplus from home processing and preserving. They encourage gardeners to become producers. People who are good at what they do get into creating this new economy.

“Another part of food marketing in that we need restaurants and food stores that provide set menus to reduce waste – this is the food that’s available, we can’t get it much cheaper, there isn’t any waste, this is what it is.

“Local and regional currencies also encourage this local production and consumption.

Needed: sensible policy for local food

“If we had public policies that are sensible towards urban food security they would focus, first, on production of local food for local people.

we need ridiculous health and environmental regulations that constrict garden agriculture to be removed

“Secondly, they would remove health and environmental regulations that are impediments to garden agriculture. Just as the corporate world is constantly demanding that government remove the impediments to what they want to do, we need ridiculous health and environmental regulations that constrict garden agriculture to be removed.

“We need to remove the tax impediments to barter and non-monetary economies.

we can extend organic certification to include embodied energy and water

“Of course, this is a very radical agenda. We’re not necessarily going to see this but we should be articulating what would be sensible public policies.

“I think we can extend organic certification to include embodied energy and water. It would show the benefit of local systems. I believe the Soil Association in Britain is looking at the issue of food miles in organic certification”.
Food miles are a measure of the distance foods are transported and the consequent emission of greenhouse gases”.

Needed: government to get serious

“If governments really want to get serious about understanding alternative policy options, they need to go beyond the tools we have at the moment and start using things like energy accounting, which go well beyond things like ecological footprint, to try to understand the relative impacts of different possibilities.

“How does the use of energy and water in the food system compare to housing and personal transport? How large an improvement could we get by redesigning the food system and how does this compare with redesigning our housing and transport system?

“There’s a scarcity of information on this.”

Swedish research, David explains, indicates a huge saving coming from the redesign of the food system.

“This is why permaculture is focused primarily on food.”

Reform needed: water rights for urban garden agriculturists

In Sydney, households account for around 48 percent of the total water budget in supplying the average household’s food supply. This dwarfs any other category.

When restaurants are included, says David, “It probably means that over 50 percent of water consumption is actually being used to supply people’s food”.

Just as forward thinking people are looking at the energy embodied in the production of our food supply, so too some are starting to consider the volume of water used to produce it.

“This concept of embodied water (ed: also ‘virtual water‘) – all the water that is used to make a product – if we look at figures on embodied water from CSIRO researchers – litres per dollar of value, which is a better way to evaluate something in many ways than per kilo weight – we can see how huge growing rice is in Australia. We’re growing rice in completely the wrong places. When I’m dictator we’ll move rice out of the Murrumbidgie Irrigation Area and up to Northern NSW and Queensland and we’ll close down sugar cane and replace it with rice where it can work quite well”, David jokes.

“Sugar cane uses a surprising amount of water. Fruit and vegetables are 103 litres per dollar of value. Meat products are fairly high. Dairy is 680 litres per dollar value.

“I’ve done some rough calculations on our one hectare property at Hepburn Springs. Our own honey, as far as I can see, uses only two litres per dollar value, mainly in washing the equipment. Sue’s two-goat dairy uses a similar amount of water, about a 300 fold saving on going to the supermarket. Our fruit and vegetable production looks like it’s about five times more efficient than food from the supermarket.

“So, the conclusion is we should use water at home to produce food. Don’t let anyone, including the authorities, tell you that is environmentally irresponsible.

Developing our skills – now is the time

“The living soil is the water and carbon bank for future food security,” David says.

“We need to develop the skills – gardening, food processing, small livestock husbandry – and I think we can use permaculture as an organising framework for that skill development.

“There are some technical skills that need to be scaled-up tremendously. There are a lot people in this room that I see, over the next ten years, extending those skills to a lot of other people.”