[Pil-pc-oceania] Age article "Where to Water"

[Kerry Dawborn]

Re the article Fern was talking about - link didn't take me to it but a 
search found it....

cheers - and thanks Fern!

Kerry


  Where to water


Water restrictions should support community gardens and the backyard 
vegie patch, says Ben Neil, CEO of Cultivating Community (above left 
with gardener Sabri Kiziltam).

Water restrictions should support community gardens and the backyard 
vegie patch, says Ben Neil, CEO of Cultivating Community (above left 
with gardener Sabri Kiziltam).
Photo: /Simon Schluter/


December 5, 2007

*The inventor of permaculture is among those calling for backyard 
farmers to be freed from water restrictions. Katherine Kizilos reports.*

IN A drought year, during an era of climate change, what does it mean to 
be a responsible gardener? Cactuses, paving and a sculpture near the 
barbecue? Or an old-fashioned vegie patch, fruit trees, herbs and a 
compost bin in the corner?

Some serious gardeners are now questioning the conventional wisdom that 
the best way to save water at a time of low rainfall is to put a clamp 
on the hose. While pushing the use of rainwater tanks and grey water, 
they also argue that growing fruit and vegetables at home is, in the 
words of David Holmgren, "the best thing you can be doing" for the 
environment.

Holmgren, with fellow Australian Bill Mollison, devised permaculture, a 
design system for sustainable living and land use. He puts his ideas 
into practice at his property, Melliodora, at Hepburn Springs, where a 
hectare of land supports fruit and nut trees, vegetables, chooks, geese 
and two goats. Although grains, some nuts and oil-producing plants are 
not in the mix, the property allows for a fair degree of 
self-sufficiency - Holmgren says this is also possible because he eats 
seasonally and does not rely on the "drip feed from supermarkets". Water 
comes from dams and from taps connected to town water. Holmgren says the 
smallholding uses about one-fifth of the water "used by a market 
gardener or orchardist".

According to Holmgren, "if we planted out city farms and urban areas, we 
could achieve a massive increase in (water) efficiency. No one is 
talking about this ".

Holmgren also points out that farms tend to be open expanses and need 
more water than a home garden, which is naturally more sheltered. In 
addition, "farmers use overhead sprinklers which are inefficient". And 
many orchards and market gardens are sited in sunny, warm places like 
Mildura, where the rainfall is low, but where farmers achieve a market 
advantage by producing fruit and vegetables slightly ahead of the season 
in colder, rainier Melbourne.

Holmgren has based his calculations on water use on a 2001 Australian 
Bureau of Statistics study by Lenzen and Foran. The study estimated "the 
amount of water needed throughout the whole economy to provide final 
consumers with $1 worth of various goods and services". It found that 
fruit and vegetables required 103 litres per $1; beef products 381 
litres and dairy 680 litres.

By contrast, Melliodora uses about 20 litres of water for every $1 of 
fruit and vegetables produced, while the two goats that provide milk and 
cheese consumed about two litres per $1 of value, or 1/300th of the 
amount used by a dairy farm.

According to Lenzen and Foran's figures, commercially purchased food - 
not including the food purchased in restaurants - accounts for about 48 
per cent of the water consumed by the average Sydney household. While 
the water that comes out of the tap at home accounts for only 11 per 
cent of a household's total water use.

For Holmgren, the data suggests that putting restrictions on watering 
suburban gardens makes little sense. He knows that water restrictions 
are necessary but proposes households be given a seasonal allocation of 
water, with the decision of whether to use this in the spa or on the 
tomatoes left to them. Under this system the price of water would 
"skyrocket if you exceed" the allocation.

"There are good public policy reasons that home food production is 
desirable," he says. "We need policies that at least don't impede this, 
even if they don't actively support it."

Holmgren's ideas have been given a boost by a recent petition to the 
State Government; hundreds of gardeners have asked for exemptions to the 
water restrictions to allow them extra water for vegetables and herb plots.

In suburban Coburg, Pam Morgan is conducting an experiment. "I want to 
explore how much food production I can get on a city block," she says.

For 22 years, Morgan managed the Collingwood Children's Farm and has 
visited Havana to see how the Cubans increased the city's food 
production by 10 times in a decade. "Fifty per cent of their food is 
grown there now."

By cultivating land in the city, the Cubans were responding to embargoes 
which slashed the amount of petroleum available to them to transport 
food; urban farms reduce food miles. Morgan also wants to recycle her 
household's biodegradable waste to create compost (commercial farms use 
petroleum-based chemicals and fertilisers). She also hopes to save water 
by using grey water and roof water.

Morgan argues that policy makers are approaching the water-shortage 
problem "from a mechanistic perspective. Minimal water use in the garden 
and drought-hardy plants. It ignores the issue of carbon recycling or 
organic waste and also of returning nutrients to the land. We are 
wasting resources from the city at the moment."

According to Clive Blazey, the founder of mail-order seed company The 
Diggers Club, the "average person only needs about 60 square metres of 
space to be self-sufficient in all the potatoes, all the vegetables and 
the fruit that you wanted to grow. You wouldn't have big, massive apple 
trees or anything. You would have espaliered trees, especially dwarf 
rootstock varieties that wouldn't take up much space". He reckons the 
garden would need "about 34,000 litres of water", which could be 
gathered from the roof, or grey water.

Blazey is concerned that the present system of water restrictions does 
not make allowances "for people on a low income who want to grow their 
own food" and who might need help to divert grey water or set up a 
rainwater tank. And he believes the role of suburban gardens in reducing 
greenhouse gases is not appreciated.

He is irritated by the prevailing landscape aesthetic which advocates 
paving gardens and planting cactus "so instead of burying carbon and 
doing something useful you are stopping any organisms from growing under 
the paving and you are using plants that have so little biomass they are 
absolutely useless to you. What you need to be growing in your backyard 
is a lot of green things. Trees and shrubs and plants and food plants 
and not paving, concrete and bricks."

But the water restrictions fall hardest on community gardens, where 
gardeners do not have the option of using grey water and where tank 
water, if it exists, may not be sufficient for each plot holder's use. 
In addition, the morning watering requirements can be difficult for 
gardeners who have to travel further than the back veranda to visit 
their plot (while also being less efficient than watering in the evening).

Ben Neil, chief executive of Cultivating Community, which looks after 21 
community gardens - just under 800 individual plots - on Ministry of 
Housing sites, says that when stage three water restrictions were 
introduced on January 1, "we lost 20 to 25 per cent of our gardeners. 
There was this initial feeling of 'how are we going to cope?' We lost 
quite a lot of crops."

Since then, "some people have been quite ingenious," he says. "A 
resident on the 17th floor has a pram and comes down with containers of 
water from the shower." Neil is now talking to the State Government 
about installing more rainwater tanks in community gardens, but he also 
believes policy makers need to look at food-producing gardens and water 
restrictions in a different way.

"I believe that if local food and urban agriculture are not part of our 
future, it will be very, very difficult for us to face the forthcoming 
environmental challenges," he says. "We must have people growing food in 
the city."

By making life more difficult for gardeners, particularly community 
gardeners, you are not merely depriving them of a recreational and 
social opportunity, Neil argues. "If I don't grow my food next to where 
I live, I will jump in my car and go to the supermarket and buy 
something that is refrigerated, wrapped in plastic and that has a 
massive carbon footprint.

"It's a no-brainer. If I can't grow food close to where I live, what am 
I going to do?"

www.communitygarden.org.au <http://www.communitygarden.org.au/>




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