Assessing the Capacity and Resilience of Melbourne’s Foodbowl: The Foodprint Melbourne project

The city of Melbourne is located in a highly productive agricultural region with the capacity to meet approximately 41% of the city population’s food needs. Melbourne’s “foodbowl” is an important building block in a resilient and sustainable food system for this rapidly growing city. This article presents some findings of the Foodprint Melbourne initiative led by University of Melbourne researchers who worked in partnership with local governments to investigate the significance of periurban food production to the city’s long-term food security and the regional economy. They identified risks to city fringe food production from urban sprawl and the impacts of water scarcity, and generated an important evidence base to support the development of a vision and roadmap to strengthen the resilience of Melbourne’s foodbowl