Good ideas flow at Sydney urban farming event

It was the conversation rather than the presentations that made the Sydney Environment Institutes Urban Farming — Feeding the Future a source of good information and ideas.Read More

Sydney symposium explores urban agriculture

THE URBAN AGRICULTURE SPACE is diverse, spanning commercial farms, community gardens, food security and sovereignty organisations, academia, indigenous peoples’ organisations, permaculture educators and activists and heath institutes and interests. In 2017, they gathered at Packet City Farm for a forum on urban agriculture…Read More

In Adelaide, a small urban farm links entrepreneurship with good food

With around nine city farms already on the ground or in planning around Australia, it appears city farming’s time is now.

In Adelaide, one of their number, Wagtail Urban Farm, is showing that small can certainly be bountiful…Read More

Community food growers converge on Rose Bay

IT WAS A FINE, late Autumn Sunday when Sydney community gardeners converged on Rose Bay Commuity Garden in harbourside Sydney. There, the good folk at the newish Rose Bay Community Garden were hosting the seasonal gathering of the Sydney convivium … Read More

Local government reform necessary to urban agriculture’s future

It is time for reform of local government’s handling of community food initiatives on public land. It is time, too, to reform councils’ handling of complaints about those enterprises…Read More

Defending civic agriculture

This article was written for the Australian City Farms & Community Gardens Network following criticism in February 2014 of community food gardening and farmers’ markets by a representative body of the vegetable industry.

……………………………………………….

IN MID-FEBRUARY 2014, community gardeners around … Read More

Social planning comes first in community garden design

IT’S A COMMON BELIEF among people setting out to start a community garden that the first step is to find land, do a site analysis, do a design, build and start growing. Were it only so simple.

Read More

Green Square Growers get going at The Tote

THESE URBAN FOOD ENTHUSIASTS call themselves Green Square Growers, and they’re a new group living adjacent to the brownfields that will soon house an additional 20,000 people in what s going to be a major urban renewal. Some live in Victoria Park, a large cluster of medium density apartments that offers a foretaste of what will appear in Green Square.

Read More

Celebration marks end of year one for the James Street garden

IT WAS ON A SUNNY SATURDAY MORNING a little over a year ago that City of Sydney Lord Mayor, Clover Moore, opened the James Street Reserve Community Garden in what had been a poorly used pocket park in Redfern.

Read More

Celebration recognises Sydney Food Connect’s first year

A LITTLE OVER A YEAR AGO I delivered a presentation for the Sydney Food Fairness Alliance at the Plains To Plate Future of Food Conference in Adelaide. A highlight of that conference was the launch of a bold new venture in community food, Food Connect Adelaide.

Read More