University General - Research Publications
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ItemFoodprint Melbourne: What does it take to feed a city?(Victorian Eco Innovation Lab, the University of Melbourne, 2016)This report explores Melbourne’s ‘foodprint’ – the environmental footprint of feeding the city. It takes a lot of land, water and energy to feed a rapidly growing city like Melbourne, and a significant amount of food waste and GHG emissions are generated as a result. As supplies of the natural resources underpinning food production become more constrained, the city will need to explore new approaches to increase the sustainability and resilience of its food supply. This report aims to provide an evidence base to support this process. The principal findings of this research are: • It takes over 475L of water per capita per day to feed Melbourne, around double the city’s household usage. • 16.3 million hectares of land is required to feed Melbourne each year, an area equivalent to 72% of the state of Victoria. • Feeding Melbourne generates over 907,537 tonnes of edible food waste, which represents a waste of 3.6 million hectares of land and 180 GL of water. • Around 4.1 million tonnes of GHG emissions are emitted in producing the city’s food, and a further 2.5 million tonnes from food waste. • Melbourne is likely to grow rapidly between now and 2050, and its foodprint will increase significantly as a result. • Melbourne’s city foodbowl could play an important role in increasing the resilience and sustainability of the city’s food supply. • The city foodbowl has significant capacity for production of fresh foods. It also has access to recycled water and organic waste streams, and could reduce the city’s dependence on distant sources of fresh foods. • Key vulnerabilities in Melbourne’s regional food supply include loss of agricultural land, water scarcity and the impacts of climate change. • Potential strategies to increase the sustainability and resilience of Melbourne’s regional food supply include increasing urban density, shifting to regenerative agriculture, increasing the use of recycled water for agriculture, reducing food waste and modifying our diets. • Multiple strategies are likely to be needed to increase the sustainability and resilience of Melbourne’s regional food supply. • Around 10% of the available recycled water from Melbourne’s water treatment plants would be enough to grow half of the vegetables that Melbourne eats. • Increasing urban density as Melbourne grows could reduce urban sprawl by about 50% over the next 20 years, saving 180,000 hectares of land in Melbourne’s foodbowl – an area equivalent to almost 5 times Victoria’s vegetable growing land.
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ItemJoint Commissioning in Health and Social Care: An Exploration of Processes, Services and Outcomes(Joint Commissioning in Health and Social Care: An Exploration of Processes, Services and Outcomes, 2013)