May 29th, 2024Your say…

Sprawl: a serious threat to food security

While the Australian Food Sovereignty Alliance applauds Hepburn’s efforts in the Rural Hepburn Strategy to protect agricultural land from further inappropriate development for so-called lifestyle blocks we assert that the town structure plans as drafted will thwart this intent to the detriment of both valuable farmland and the character and liveability of our shire’s towns.

First, rezoning agricultural land to expand the Daylesford town boundary will merely open it up for inappropriate development wildly out of character with its historical development. Making the 14 hectares at East Street available to development is not ‘planning for predicted growth’, it is pre-empting growth – making it almost a certainty that the town will grow quickly and uniformly for the profit of some distant development company.

It will not benefit locals by delivering more affordable housing stock, including rental houses, and the developments are nearly guaranteed to be a mundane monoculture of drab and unsustainable design.

In the interest of brevity, we make a final point, looking to the loss of peri-urban agricultural land around Melbourne, such as at Koo Wee Rup and Werribee, and say that while it may be ‘only’ 14 hectares this year, how many next time, and the next?

Drawing a line to protect farmland to feed our communities must be a priority in all rural strategies. There is plenty of space within the town boundary as outlined by council itself, if subdivision permissions are eased and the 380 vacant lots developed instead of farmland.

A policy to discourage or even prohibit the proliferation of short-term accommodation that leaves up to 40 per cent of houses vacant on any given night would genuinely address the housing crisis, whereas cheap, ugly peri-urban development will not.

We recommend reading the Foodprint Melbourne reports to better grasp the long-term implications of allowing towns to sprawl, which presents a serious threat to food security and the well being of local communities.

From Tammi Jonas, president, Australian Food Sovereignty Alliance Co-custodian, Jonai Farms & Meatsmiths, Eganstown