Ag land vs housing: Is it time to go Dutch in Sydney Basin?

While a comforting rally cry, it was clear to the room the future of farming in the Sydney Basin will be forever changed by the unstoppable sprawl of Western Sydney.

Whether this future is good or bad hangs in the balance – but for many it could be the Dutch example that drives farming in the region to new heights.

“The Netherlands alone is second largest exporter of food in the world and it’s the size of the Sydney basin,” said Ash Salardini, NSW Farmers chief economist.

“A country the size of Sydney pumping out more food than nearly anyone in the world on its own. The discussion should not be about whether we have farming here or not, but how should we have it.”

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Fears over the ag production space east of the Sandstone Curtain are long-held, and will surely build as Sydney grows from 4.9 million to 8 million people by 2050 as expected. 

At this week’s roundtable at Parramatta – ironically once-rich farmland itself long swallowed by development - attendees recognised a hyper-charged, rolling, peri-urban conflict:

The right to farm, where the “doctrine of new arrivals” often sees farms wilt in the face of noise and smell complaints from new residents; The availability of fresh local food for a region with “sub-standard” transport links to other major farm production areas; Whether the highest invest use is better for a community than the interaction with, and jobs provided by, a traditional industry. 

What was clear from the forum was that better leadership is needed for the direction of the region’s $870m farm sector, which currently supplies 20pc of the city’s food needs. 

It was the second roundtable hosted by NSW Labor this year to help shape the party’s ag policies for 2019. 

The issue is also on Primary Industries Minister Niall Blair’s radar, who said the recent Western Sydney City Deal between state and federal governments and eight Western Sydney councils included a feasibility study into an agribusiness precinct.

While Labor leader Luke Foley has been combative on schools and Sydney stadium infrastructure, there’s been little agriculture-focussed promises from the Opposition to date other than a promise scrap the new native vegetation regime. 

On Tuesday Labor MPs Michael Daley and Peter Primrose were joined by producer groups including Egg Farmers Australia and Sydney Markets, agri-academics, beekeepers, as well as the Western Sydney Regional Organisation of Councils, Regional Development Australia, and the NSW Business Chamber.

Mr Daley said the rampaging growth of Sydney was a topic of fierce debate.

“And it is rampaging,” the Deputy Opposition Leader said. 

Mr Daley also said when councils sit down with the Greater Sydney Commission, they shouldn’t necessarily rezone areas currently marked rural. 

“One of the things that government is now going to have to do is the electorate, the communities all across the Sydney basin, and even the Central Coast, Hunter and Illawarra, is have a conversation about the growth of Sydney, the changes that are happening very very quickly,” he said. 

“A sentiment is emerging is that they aren’t being asked their view about what Sydney should look like.

“One of the things I say to developer groups and they don’t particularly like it is ressie (residential zoning) is not king.

“Yes we have to accommodate a growing population but it doesn’t mean that every time a block of dirt changes use it should default to what developers love to call highest invest use, which is a block of units.”

“Fighting to retain commercial and industrial land as we want to make sure the jobs are dispersed all across Sydney, we need these green belts.”

Shane Chester, head of corporate strategy at the Flemington-based Sydney Markets, said he was working with the Greater Sydney Commission on the relocation of the business.

He estimated 15 years life left in the current site before it became to costly for suppliers to transport and store food. 

“At Flemington we’re not running out of trading floor space or growers, but we are running out of warehouse space,” Mr Chester said. 

“In a 10km radius around market there is 7000 square metres of warehousing held by businesses in the market. And they are being pushed west by more residential developments.

“The further they get from us, the more it is going to cost them, which will be put back on to the consumer, which we try and avoid.”

DPI says the Sydney Region's vibrant agricultural sector was valued at an estimated $870 million in gross value of production for 2016-17, accounting for almost 6 per cent of the overall NSW agriculture GVP.

In 2015-16, the region accounted for 36 per cent of the state's poultry production, 36 per cent of vegetable production, 43 per cent of nursery production, 68 per cent of turf production and 59 per cent of flower production.

Significantly, the value of agricultural production in the Sydney Region is also growing - despite being increasingly cramped for space. The 2016-17 GVP was an increase of nearly 18 per cent on the 2013-14 base year, with significant increases in the value of poultry, eggs and cattle production.

NSW Farmers’ research and innovation spokesman David Ayres said positive planning was key to continued prosperity.. 

“Ag in the Sydney Basin tends to gets treated like green space, it gets locked up, and then it's a stranded asset,” he said. 

“So it's about providing positive zoning for agriculture. Not just industrial zoning.

“That said, no planning department in NSW, or in Australia, has really created a way to accommodate agriculture within a city zone.”

Charles Casuscelli of the Western Sydney Regional Organisation of Councils said the looming land-use war was not going to be solved by local government alone. 

“What is lacking here is leadership from state government,” he said. “We have a similar issue with provision of waste facilities.

“You’ve got all this old infrastructure and urban encroachment and more often than not it is the facilities that lose the argument and the communities that win it.

“We’re not really good at sustaining some kind of sustainability and resilience in our city - one of those things is the ability to feed ourselves. Or issues affecting the availability of produce.

“I think across all Western Sydney councils we could do a better job at identifying some of those remaining areas. Generally, the case could be made that there are a number of areas that are productive, in a broader regional interest we agree to set them aside.”

But why not just move Sydney’s ag production out to the Central West? 

Ash Salardini: “The more food miles you put on something the more expensive it is going to be for consumers. Putting it out further creates another issue altogether.

“We have to understand Sydney is growing and at some point there will be land conflicts between residential and commercial and agricultural land. New bits of land aren’t coming up so we have to do more with what we have.  

“But having (farms) close to markets and port and airport infrastructure is important, you might have an export industry there as well.

Professor Priti Krishna from Western Sydney University’s School of Science and Health agrees. 

She said the future of the Sydney basin’s farms very much lay in the intensification of horticulture. 

“Intensive horticulture under glass is currently a more costly, premium market but we see that expanding,” she said

The university is the site of the first national vegetable protected cropping centre, a  $7 million glasshouse that houses various industry-driven research and development projects. 

Professor Krishna said such is the potential for intensive horticulture growth in the Sydney Basin, plans are afoot to expand that facility to become the leading centre for training and education in this sector.

“Society wants fresh, green, food and for the supply to be immediate,” she said. 

“We should also be looking at possibilities with the new (Badgery’s Creek) airport coming up.”

The proposed airport, and attached opportunities, feature heavily in the NSW Farmers KPMG report Think Big Think Fresh, released in November.

If done right, the report says, it could create 12,000 jobs and become a world-leading food hub, providing local residents access to fresh fruit, vegetables and meat products sourced from within the Sydney Basin, and better export opportunities for growers. 

Mr Salardini said, otherwise, current transport links to other food producing areas, such as the Central West, were substandard and just another barrier to shifting Sydney production over the mountains.

“Western Sydney is the leading food manufacturer in Australia and food is one of the leading industries,” he said. 

“Linking food processing to production is a natural competitive advantage, but we haven’t done that yet. We haven’t linked it with supply chains.”

Conversely, Mr Salardini said Western Sydney's farming and tourism future was intrinsically linked to the Central West, or at least it should be.

“We shouldn't be looking towards the city,” he said. 

“The big problem is people (visiting Sydney) usually go north or south, they don’t go west.

“So if you made a tourism trail that starts in (Western Sydney) you’ve got multiculturalism, and food is going to be the main source of activity. Lebanese, Indian… then natural assets across the Blue Mountains, then a couple of hours and you’re in orange and Mudgee where food and wine is your major attraction.

“If you get the right international visitors and market it well, that will create an new ag and tourism supply chain. It’s already happening but it needs coordination.”

Egg Farmers spokesman John Dunn said the future of farming in Sydney – though frought with hurdles and competing interests – should be seen as a challenge. 

He proposed the idea of a Sydney Farming Centre of Excellence to tackle the challenge of innovation and sustainability, and boosting production to do as the Dutch do: Much more with much, much less. 

“We’re all talking about a necessary collision between space and utility,” Mr Dunn said. 

“If there is a land use conflict, there are people coming in, and ag has to stay viable, there is an opportunity there for us to be the most efficient centre for agriculture in the country.

“Maybe it means a centre of excellence, focusing on ag energy and emissions.

“The theme for ag in the Sydney Basin is that it has to be the most efficient, most renewable and most productive sector going around.

“If we don’t intensify and develop something like a centre for excellence it’s going to be like a busted horse you put down in 20 years because everything has gone up the proverbial.”