Category Archives: Community gardening

agroecology, Argentina, Capitalism, Churchill Trip 2014, Collaborative cultures and networks, Community gardening, Corporate control of food, Democratic food systems, Ecology, economics, fair food movement, Fair Food systems, Food policy, Local and regional food economies, Supermarket Duopoly, Urban agriculture

Food Tank interviews Dr Nick Rose

Republished from Foodtank – original article here – Interview with Dr. Nick Rose, Australian Food System Activist – Food Tank

Food Tank recently had the opportunity to interview Dr. Nick Rose, Executive Director at Sustain, about the health of Australia’s food system and his view on what are the key factors impacting on a healthy and resilient food system in Australia.

Food Tank (FT): What are some of the biggest opportunities to support Australia’s food system?

Nick Rose (NR): The single biggest opportunity lies in the field of education, with the introduction for 2017 of a paddock-to-plate food literacy curriculum, Food Studies, as an elective for all Grade 11 and 12 students in Victoria, Australia’s second-most populous state. As a result, in a few years, as many as 10,000 students could be taking Food Studies. These students will form a growing cohort of capable tertiary graduates who can inform and lead the development of good food policy at the local, state and federal government levels. If other states follow Victoria’s lead and introduce a Food Studies curriculum, the wave of food systems change generated by tens of thousands of highly informed and motivated youth will, I think, be irresistible.

Other significant opportunities include the embrace and resourcing of sustainable and regenerative forms of food production, as well as the expansion of new and fair distribution systems and enterprises, such as farmers markets and food hubs. Legislative and planning protections for Australia’s major food bowl areas close to capital cities are sorely needed. Governments at all levels have a crucial role to play in these and other necessary shifts.

FT: With increasing innovation in the food system and networking technologies, what are you most excited about?

NR: I’m excited about creating a dynamic, multi-layered, and searchable food systems directory that will, for the first time, reveal the scale and breadth of Australia’s growing food systems movement. The development of this directory is a project that Sustain is now working on, with the support of the Myer Foundation, and we’re looking forward to making it a reality in 2017.

FT: From your extensive travels, what are some successful innovations in other countries that could be applied in Australia to improve the food system?

NR: I have a strong personal interest in the great potential of urban agriculture to transform the food system as a whole, and I saw dozens of examples of innovations on my Churchill Fellowship visiting the mid-west United States, Toronto, and Argentina in July–September 2014. Those innovations include: community urban land trusts to make city and peri-urban land available for sustainable and intensive food production, education, and social justice; capturing large organic waste streams to support sustainable and highly productive urban agricultural systems; planning overlays and zoning to facilitate commercial-scale urban agriculture production; the multiplication of inner-city farmers markets with dedicated space for urban farmers; the establishment of small-scale artisanal food processing facilities to incubate food entrepreneurs; the facilitation of city-wide urban agricultural networks; and, the development of comprehensive and inclusive urban agricultural strategies that recognize, value, and support the work of urban farmers and the organizations they are embedded in.

FT: How do organizations and individuals get involved in supporting a healthy and resilient food system in Australia?

NR: There are so many points of entry for individuals, from growing some herbs and vegetables, to supporting a kitchen garden at your local school (as a parent) and, or, your local community garden (more than 500 across Australia). Also, shopping at your local farmers market (now more than 180 in Australia) and, or, fair food enterprise, supporting local and sustainable producers wherever possible. Major change is needed at the level of policy, legislation and regulation, and here organizations can make a difference by joining one of the many local and regional food alliances that are in existence around Australia, or forming one if it doesn’t already exist in your region.

FT: If you could change one thing in Australia to improve its food system, what would it be?

NR: The single biggest obstacle in my view is the concentration of economic and political power represented by the supermarket duopoly—Coles and Woolworths. In the past 40 years, the grocery market share of these two companies has more than doubled to 75 percent. Meanwhile, Australia has lost more than 40 percent of its farmers, with the average age of farmers now approaching 60 years, compared to 42 years for the workforce as a whole. These two trends are deeply connected. As a country, we need to confront our tolerance for oligopolistic concentrations of political-economic power, and the supermarkets present the most urgent task, regarding the long-term sustainability and fairness of our food system.

FT: What personally drives your work to improve Australia’s food system?

NR: My drive stems from years living in Guatemala (2000–2006). It was here my political consciousness was awakened on realizing that the deaths of 200,000 Guatemalans, mostly Mayan indigenous peoples, could be traced to the refusal by the United Fruit Corporation and the then U.S. government of President Eisenhower to countenance even the partial redistribution of its massive landholdings and excessive wealth. This story is all documented in Bitter Fruit: The Untold Story of the CIA in Guatemala. It was a book that changed my life.

I believe that in working to improve Australia’s food system, I am part of a huge and growing global movement to transform the world’s food system. I dedicate my efforts to the memory of those who died in the struggle for a fair Guatemala.

advocate, Community gardening, Self-sufficiency

Community Garden Road Trip, North from Coffs Harbour

Community garden road-trip

A version of this article first appeared in the Coffs Coast Advocate on Saturday, 22nd December 2012

Last month, Steve McGrane, President of the Coffs Harbour Regional Community Gardens Association, and a team of fellow gardeners headed north for a few days’ exploration.

They were on a mission, to visit half a dozen community gardens between here and Brisbane, in order to see what others were doing, learn from their experiences, and lay down a vision and goals for the Coffs garden at Combine St over the next few years.

The trip exceeded all expectations. “It was amazing to visit so many community gardens in such a short space of time. There were such big contrasts”, said Matt Downie, co-cordinator of the Combine St garden.

Among the lasting impressions the team took home, the presence of garden art, such as murals, sculptures, ceramic displays and decorative signage, was especially striking. Clear notice boards introducing the garden and its key people, as well as tasks, projects and how to get involved, are also now on the Coffs ‘to-do’ list.

Ceramic artwork Northey St
Ceramic artwork Northey St

Even though most of the gardens were thriving sites of diverse food production, the team felt that it was the social aspects that were most important. Community gardens are all about building community, and activities like ‘swap meets’, where gardeners exchange surplus produce, is just one way in which this happens. They are also multi-functional sites with a strong educational focus, places where gardeners and visitors alike can get to know where their food comes from, and rediscover their connection to it.

The team visited gardens in Lismore, Nimbin, Tuntable Falls, Mullumbimby, Northey St City Farm in Brisbane, the Seed Savers’ Network in Byron Bay (run by Michel and Jude Fenton), and Yamba. They also briefly stopped by the combined market and community garden run by Gold Coast Permaculture in Ferry Rd, Southport.

Yamba Community Garden

The gardens varied in longevity, with Northey St, now in its 20th year, the oldest. So one of its most attractive features, which makes it a great place to spend time, are the well-established fruit trees, such as large mangoes, that provide excellent shade areas, for meeting and socialising.

Most of the gardens were considerably younger. The garden in Lismore, like Coffs, had been set up in the last couple of years, while Nimbin’s garden, located in a church on the main street, had been going for about 10 years.

But, according to the team, Nimbin’s garden appeared to be on its last legs. The garden looked dilapidated and un-cared for. Through talking to some locals, the team discovered the reason for the decline: political in-fighting. Things had gotten so bad that a virtual state of civil war had broken out, with one group actively sabotaging the garden projects and efforts of the other.

There was a very clear lesson here for the Coffs garden – and any community garden, for that matter: the need to maintain open channels of communication at all times, allow complaints to be aired and dealt with, and have good procedures for mediating conflict.

While in Nimbin, the team learnt of the community garden in the nearby intentional community of Tuntable Falls, which was not on their original itinerary. But it was a moment of serendipity. Not only was the Tuntable Falls garden a beautiful contrast to Nimbin, with abundant art and creative design; it was the passionate and strong community that had built it, as well as a food co-op and a huge common hall, that most impressed the team.

 

Mullumbimby Community Garden

The Mullumbimby garden also stood out, for its wonderful art, excellent signage and paths, and strong volunteer core, self-organised in 20 different ‘pods’. As well as smaller plots, the Mullum garden had larger spaces, up to 400m2, which were being leased on a semi-commercial basis, as a market garden.

Mullumbimby Community Garden Mural
Mullumbimby Community Garden Mural

 

All the gardens, the team noted, had started with some form of public grants. The most successful ones had built a strong and collaborative relationship with their local councils, and had also developed ways of becoming more self-sustaining financially. Northey St, for example, had a consultancy and design service, available to local schools and private householders; and they also ran permaculture design certificate courses several times a year. It also had a large and successful nursery.

Northey St signage
Northey St signage

 

As the Coffs team plan their priorities for 2013 and beyond, this trip has provided fertile material for inspiration.

To find about more information about the the Coffs Community garden and to join, visit http://www.coffscommunitygardens.org.au/.

advocate, Coffs Coast, Community gardening, Fruit growing, Land sharing, Permablitzes, Resilience, Self-sufficiency

Community-run edible streetscapes

Community Spirit alive and well in Sawtell

A version of this article first appeared in the Coffs Coast Advocate on Saturday 24th November, 2012

A quiet revolution is underway in Coffs Harbour and its nearby towns.

Supported by small grants from Coffs Council, first under the Local Food Futures Project and now via the ‘Our Living Coast’ Regional Sustainability Program, several primary schools and child care centres have established productive gardens for their children over the past year.

These intiatives build on longer-established school veggie gardens, such as those at Toormina Primary School and Casuarina Steiner School.

And now school veggie gardens are becoming edible streetscapes, with the planting of around 30 ctirus trees in two locations in Sawtell. First, on Friday 16th November, kindergarted and class 5 students from Sawtell Public School planted trees on the school’s boundary. Then, on Sunday 18th November, over 30 local residents of all ages worked for an hour and a half to plant lemonades, oranges, mandarins, lemons, limes, cumquats, grapefruits and blood oranges on the road verge off 18th Avenue, adjacent to the Richardson’s Park sporting oval. Thus was born the very first ‘Sawtell Community Citrus Grove’.

The Sawtell Citrus Orchard team!
The Sawtell Citrus Orchard team!

Both these initiatives were spearheaded by the Sawtell Healthy Homes community group, with the organising energy provided by Peter and Erika van Schellebeck. Advice on species selection and soil preparation came from Juliet Thomas, of the Coffs Harbour Regional Community Garden. Over the past year Juliet has worked with the school principal, Michael Cheers, as well as staff, students and parents, to set up a beautiful fruit and veggie garden inside the school.

 

 

Erika highlighted the social and community-building aspects of the citrus tree plantings. “The project has been a great opportunity for us to get to know our neighbours, and I hope that the grove will become a community space where neighbours meet and walkers and cyclists stop for a rest and some shade”, said Erika. “This pathway is very popular, and so we designed a pathway through the grove to encourage people to move through it and enjoy the space. We also designed a small circular space in the middle that hopefully will one day have a seat and table to encourage neighbours to meet up in the space – maybe for Friday night drinks.”

 

Sawtell Public School kids planting citrus trees
Sawtell Public School kids planting citrus trees

Planting and caring for fruit trees also brings clear health and educational benefits for children. “I hope that the nature strip planting at the school will build on all the work the school is already doing to educate the students about healthy eating, and growing fresh fruit and vegies”, said Erika. This is part of raising levels of food literacy amongst children – an understanding where food comes from, how it’s grown (and raised), what healthy eating involves, and the importance of composting food scraps, so that soil fertility can be maintained and enhanced.

Erika hopes that these initiatives in Sawtell will help inspire other groups of residents in other parts of Coffs Harbour and its surrounds to also get behind the push to make this region ‘edible’ – and for the Council to support them with small grants and making the paperwork easy.

“The grove already looks great – it has turned an unloved and unused piece of swampy land into a space for the whole community to enjoy, and, in a few years, to enjoy a wide variety of free citrus. I hope that the grove and school nature strip planting will encourage Council to consider the merits of growing food in public spaces.”

This work in Sawtell builds on the Bellingen Edible Streetsacpes project begun in 2011, as a collaboration of Northbank Rd Community Garden, the Bellingen Chamber of Commerce, Transition Bellingen, and with funding from the Local Food Futures Project. Bellingen Council has also embraced the spirit, with a raised veggie garden at the entrance to Council Chambers.

Further afield, the trail has been well and truly blazed by Yorkshire café owner Pam Warhurst and her army of volunteers in the market town of Todmorden, with the Incredible Edible Todmorden project.  In Pam’s words, “I wondered if it was possible to take a town like Todmorden and focus on local food to re-engage people with the planet we live on, create the sort of shifts in behaviour we need to live within the resources we have, stop us thinking like disempowered victims and to start taking responsibility for our own futures.”

Amazing things have been achieved in Todmorden, and they’re just getting started. Makes you wonder what’s possible for Coffs Harbour, with our climate, water and soils.

For more info on Incredible Edible Todmorden, search for Pam Warhurst’s TED talk on www.ted.com.

advocate, Coffs Coast, Community gardening, Resilience, Self-sufficiency, Uncategorized

Garden of Eden at Coffs Jetty

Garden of Eden – Garden by the Sea

A version of this article was first published in the Coffs Coast Advocate on Saturday 13th October, 2012

For the past 21 years, Wayne Kirkland and Mary-Ann Crowther have been living with as low an environmental footprint as it’s possible to have – on a yacht, travelling up and down the east coast of Australia.

For the last few years they’ve been coming back to Coffs, and now they’ve so fallen in love with the place, that they’ve taken over the lease for the Galley café and burger bar at Coffs Harbour jetty.

Wayne and Mary-Ann are passionate about sustainability and treading lightly on the earth, but it’s not about preaching to people. As Wayne told me, ‘I live by the philosophy of just show people how to do it’.

And now, with the help of Steve McGrane, Matt Downie and some willing volunteers from the Combine St community garden, Wayne and Mary-Ann are showing their customers, and the people who work, live near and visit the Jetty, just how amazingly productive a 6m2 veggie garden can be.

Steve McGrane (left) and Wayne Kirkland

 

This wasn’t a case of turning the first sod. Rather, it involved clearing out some pretty massive rocks, on the café side of the breakwater. Underneath was some gravel and fairly barren soil, laced with salt spray.

But Wayne wasn’t deterred, because he knew Steve had a very cunning plan. After years of research and trial and error in his own gardens, Steve has developed a special no-dig garden, layered lasagne-like with ’17 secret herbs and spices’, as he likes to say.

Actually, they’re not so secret. They include lucerne; sugar cane mulch; blood and bone; bags of comfrey, tansy and other leaves;  various manures; molasses (‘very important for the microbial action’); wood chip; and mineral rocks (calcium and phosphate). With the exception of the lucerne, everything’s organic.

The Garden by the Sea – early stages

The results are truly impressive. The garden is barely six weeks old, and Wayne and Mary-Ann have been eating out of it for three weeks. As Steve explains, the porosity of the mix, and the rapid action of the microbes in breaking everything down and making the nutrients available, allows the roots to grow very fast, producing very rapid growth above the ground. More than that,  the nutrients ‘aren’t leached out of the system, because the microbes hold them in suspension’.

The end result is both a super-healthy and productive garden right now; and even better, it ‘will be more fertile at the end of this growing season that it was at the beginning.’ That’s something, because what’s already growing is impressive enough: rows of broccoli, beetroot, kolrabi, lebanese cress, leeks, onions, chillies, tomatoes, a pumpkin vine, two varieties of sweet potato, several types of basil, parsley, lettuce, chinese greens, choko, taro, kumara, and flowers for companions.

The Garden - up close and personal!
The Garden – up close and personal!

The food tastes sensational, and because it’s so rich in minerals, it is very nutrient-dense.

In the next phase, Wayne will put in native wildflowers and grasses, ‘to attract the birds and bees’. He’s already got a resident blue tongue.

As for the salt, everyone told Wayne he could never have a veggie garden by the sea. He’s proved the doubters wrong, through ‘a bit of love and care, and keeping the salt spray off it – I just come and gently hose the plants down when there’s been a bit of spray, and that keeps them fresh.’

Wayne and Mary-Ann are delighted with the garden, and so are their customers. ‘People love it, they sit here and look at the plants, and talk about it.’ Some people have even anonymously put in plants after closing time: Wayne has arrived in the morning to find chillies and tomatoes that weren’t there before. And in the few short weeks of its existence, it’s already creating a web of relationships, so that it can truly be regarded as a ‘community garden’ in its own right.

One of the most satisfying things for Wayne is that he can now send all the green waste from the café to the community garden, where Matt has established an extra worm farm to cope with it all. In return, Matt takes plants to the ‘garden by the sea’, and Wayne now gives him extra seedlings. Community garden volunteers will help out with extensions to the café garden. And Wayne is even getting donations of plants from other yacht owners; and encouraging people to pick parsley.

For Wayne and Steve, this garden is about living their vision: ‘We both have the philosophy that we should be planting every square inch that’s available. Food is essential to life, and if people got more involved in the backyard garden…That’s what stitched communities together, a generation ago. But today, you buy everything from the supermarket. A lot of young people don’t know what fresh food is, they’ve never seen it”, says Wayne.

“This is trying to show people that fast food doesn’t come from MacDonalds. This is fast food. I can take this out of the garden and put it on your plate in five minutes. That was the essence of the project, to shift people’s understanding, and thinking, of what you can do with a garden.”

If the last few weeks are anything to go by, Wayne and the team behind this garden have already achieved a lot.

advocate, Backyard Gardening, Community gardening, Self-sufficiency, Small-scale farming

Our shrinking trust horizon

The ‘trust horizon’, and what it means for the future

A version of this article appeared in the Coffs Coast Advocate on 11th February 2012

“Politicians typically make a bad situation worse, as quickly as possible. The [economic and political] systems that we have established have become sclerotic and unresponsive. Hostage to vested interests. They have no ability to adapt quickly to provide for changes that happen very rapidly… So I don’t look for solutions from there….There aren’t really any mechanisms for these large bureaucratic institutions to offer anything that will help…­­­What they’re far more likely to do is suck resources to maintain the centre, like a body that’s hypothermic, cuts off circulation to the fingers and toes to preserve the temperature of the core…Unfortunately for us, we’re the fingers and toes, we have to look after ourselves, nothing is coming from the top down.”

Nicole Foss, speaking with Italian interviewers in January 2012.  

Nicole speaks of the diminishing ‘trust horizon’: how large, centralised political institutions that have evolved over the last few hundred years are losing, and will continue to lose, their legitimacy; and with it, the ability to impose norms and rules that most people will accept. “The response these institutions typically have”, says Nicole, is “surveillance, coercion and repression”. Recent police actions towards the Occupy movement in the United States would seem to confirm this assessment.

The solutions Nicole proposes to the converging financial and energy crises – and she stresses that these are not solutions to maintain “business as usual”, which is “no longer possible”  – are grassroots, “from the bottom up”. The starting point is the recognition that the large centralised systems on which we have come to depend will, over time, begin to fail to “deliver the goods and services that we have come to rely on”.

Grassroots initatives, on the other hand, will work, according to Nicole, because they are based within the ‘trust horizon’.  “Where trust still exists”, says Nicole, “systems working within it can operate really quite well. The critical thing is that they’re small, they’re not bureaucratic, they’re responsive, they make the best use of very small amounts of resources, because there’s no enormous administrative overhead…It is amazing what can be done at a very small scale.”

Hearing this, I’m reminded of the concept of ‘square foot gardening’, popularised by Mel Bartholemew, who claims that his raised bed intensive method achieves the same yields as conventional gardening, but at half the cost, a fifth of the space, a tenth of the water, five per cent of the seeds, and two per cent of the work. Such claims might appear exaggerated, but there are impressive examples of substantial food production in small spaces with less inputs. And just last week, we learned that backyard chooks are producing as much as 12 per cent of the nation’s total egg production, according to the Australian Egg Corporation.

The Square Foot Garden
The Square Foot Garden

But there’s no time to lose in building local economies and social systems: “The key point is, we have to do it right now, because we don’t have a lot of time before we start to see centralised systems failing to deliver what they have delivered in the past.”

What’s the glue underpinning the newly configured trust horizons? Relationships and community. “It’s the strongest approach”, says Nicole. “We do need to do things at an individual level, because if we are on a solid foundation ourselves, we can help others. But we must build community: relationships of trust are the foundation of society.”

“So we need to know, and work with, our neighbours”, Nicole continues. “ We need connections, family and community, so that we’re less dependent on money. In many parts of the world where people have little or no money, their societies function entirely on barter and gifts, working together, exchange of skills – this works as a model, at a small scale. It’s this kind of structure that we need to rebuild.”

Nicole Foss will be speaking at the Cavanbah Centre, this coming Saturday, 11th February, from 12 pm to 2.30 pm. Gold coin entry, light lunch for $5.

­

Coffs Coast, Community gardening, Corporate control of food, Cost-price squeeze, Fair Food systems, Food policy, Food sovereignty, Global hunger, Growth paradigm, Local and regional food economies, National Food Plan, Self-sufficiency, Small-scale farming, Uncategorized

Interview: Nick Rose

Thanks to Juliette Anich for the opportunity to create this portrait. Being able to explain at length my motivations is a rare opportunity and much appreciated.

advocate, Bellinger Valley, Community gardening, Self-sufficiency

Herbal wisdom in a community garden

Recovering the Wisdom of the Herbs in a Community Garden

Nick Rose

This article first appeared in the Coffs Coast Advocate, 23.10.10

Image

When we think of sustainability, we think of the environment. Yet it’s personal sustainability – of our own health and well-being, mental as well as physical – that’s increasingly challenged by the nature and pace of modern life. According to some estimates, the incidence of major depression has increased 10-fold since 1945.

Without in any way denigrating the vital role that primary health care and pharmaceutical drugs play once we are ill, preventative health care is based, above all, on a healthy and balanced diet. Herbs, like parsely, basil, coriander and sage, are an essential part of that diet. These herbs don’t just add flavour to our food; they are full of beneficial nutritional – and medicinal – properties that augment our physical and mental health.

Then there is the huge diversity of the purely medicinal herbs. At the North Bank Road Community Garden in Bellingen, local resident Penny Burrows has been working hard on creating a diverse medicinal herb garden since February 2010. In a space about 6 metres square, she – with various helpers – has planted an astonishing range of medicinal herbs, from lavenders, thymes, echinacea, evening primrose, rosella and parsley to borage, motherwort, valerian, Californian poppy, tansy, mugwort, yarrow, mullein and angelica.

Image

Obtaining many of her seeds from a specialist supplier near Lismore and Eden seeds in Beechmont, Penny has propagated the vast majority of the herbs herself, with the help and generous donation of time and seeds of local permaculture expert Aleasa Williams. “It’s been incredibly satisfying to see [the plants] all the way through, from seeds to harvest, and now be drying the flowers, and making remedies”, says Penny.

The flowers Penny has been drying recently are chamomile and calendula, which is a popular remedy for wounds, rashes and various skin complaints. She is making a calendula salve at home, drying the flowers in a dehydrater and soaking them in almond oil, then mixing the product with beeswax.

“It’s really beautiful, and fantastic for insect bites and stings, and skin rashes for the kids – I’m always using it for that sort of thing”, says Penny. “[Also] as a tincture it’s great to put on cuts, scrapes and sores, [as] it has cleansing/ disinfectant properties.”

Nearly all the herbs are multifunctional. Take borage, for example. Borage, says Penny, “is a good adrenal tonic – the classic saying is, ‘Borage for Courage’ .” It can be taken – like most of the herbs – as an infusion, using either fresh or dried leaves.

Then there’s chamomile, which “is really good for calming and soothing, and one of the reasons for that is because it’s quite high in calcium”, says Penny. She adds, “People [also] take it for cold and flu symptoms, [and] pain relief – it’s [also] great for the digestive system.”

Recently planted in the garden is the common herb sage. This herb has a reputation for enhancing mental acuity. It is an excellent gargle for colds, and is good for breastfeeding mums who want to cut back on their supply of breastmilk. Then there are herbs which stimulate the supply of breastmilk, like thyme, fenugreek, and cumin. And those herbs have other properties: thyme is good for sore throats and coughs; fenugreek helps with respiratory complaints and is also a nitrogren-fixing legume; and cumin is both a digestive tonic and is also a remedy for colds.

A lifelong gardener since her late teens, this is the first opportunity Peny’s had to really dedicate herself to growing herbs. “One of the things I love about this garden is that I have the luxury to grow the herbs because other people grow the food.”

Penny’s motivation, she says, is to create a diverse root stock of medicinal herbs for the area, sharing the knowledge and the benefits.

““[I want to] make sure that all these herbs are growing and available to us in this area. So many of the medicinal herbs used in Australia are imported.”

“The other thing about the herb garden which I really love is just the effect it has on people. Being involved in the gardening process is a therapy of its own”, says Penny. “Even if they’re not involved in the hands-on growing, just being here and hanging out – it’s a beautiful place to be, whether you’re involved in the gardening or not.”

advocate, Bellinger Valley, Collaborative cultures and networks, Community gardening, Food sovereignty, Land sharing, Small-scale farming

Sharing our land

Landsharing Australia

 Nick Rose

First published in the Coffs Advocate, 9.10.10

The soon-to-be launched Landshare Australia (www.landshareaustralia.com.au) is the work of ABC’s Garden Guru Phil Dudman and a partner, themselves inspired by the rapidly growing landshare movement in the UK.

Launched barely 18 months ago through the popular UK TV series River Cottage, Landshare UK now has over 55,000 growers, sharers (i.e., landowners) and helpers registered on its site, and many thousands more joining each month.

What the Landshare movement aims to do, according to the site, is “bring together people who have a passion for home-grown food, connecting those who have land to share with those who need land for cultivating food.” As Phil says, there’s been a tremendous loss of knowledge around food growing from the time when everyone either had their own veggie patch or knew someone who did. Together with closely-related movements like community gardening, Landshare is about recovering that knowledge and unleashing the spreading passion for food growing.

Landshare Australia is already generating great interest, even though the website will not be live till later in October. “We’re getting emails every day, especially from people with land to share”, said Phil. “That surprised us, because we thought that might be the most difficult part of it.”

The philosophy of Landshare, Phil says, is about sharing, i.e. making land freely available to individuals, families and community groups who want to grow food. In particular, Landshare Australia will be targeting church and other groups, encouraging them to embrace the challenge of making more of Australia’s idle agricultural land productive.

The focus on making land freely available doesn’t of preclude commercial leasing arrangements, although that is not something in which Landshare Australia will become involved. One such local arrangement which has been in place for 18 months is the leasing of five acres of Tom Hackett’s Kiwi Down Under farm at Bonville, by the specialist training and employment provider CHESS for its ‘Innovation Farm’. The five-year lease is a deal that “works very well for both parties”, said Tom.

The website will contain forums, blogs, tips and information about the Landshare movement. Importantly, it will also provide guidance for agreements between growers and landowners, setting out the rights of both sides. For example, says Phil, the guidance states that the grower must be working the land well and caring for it properly. It also recommends the inclusion of exit clauses, if the arrangement is not working out for either party.

There are a number of examples of non-commercial landsharing initiatives already underway in the Coffs region. Perhaps the best known is the North Bank Road Community Garden in Bellingen. Started by a small handful of individuals about two years ago on land owned by John Lavis and Hilary Weston-Webb, this garden now has around thirty regular gardeners and attracts large crowds to its local music and pizza oven evenings.

North Bank Rd Community Garden, Bellingen
North Bank Rd Community Garden, Bellingen

Crucial to the garden’s success, according to John and Hilary, has been the strong horticultural knowledge and expertise of the core group. John and Hilary have long wanted to share their land with local people to grow food, and after a number of unsuccessful attempts they appear to have got it right this time. “It’s not hurting us, it’s not hurting the land – they’ve enhanced the land”, said John.

His advice to any landowners thinking of sharing some of their acres or even their backyards to enthusiastic people wanting to grow food? “Just go for it!”, he grins. “It’s good for the young people, and for the little kids – why go to a supermarket and spend dollars, when you can grow things far better, and you know what you’ve done to them? And what you can’t eat, give it away, or sell it”, he adds.