Victorian government agricultural land action plan needs to go further, say planners

Planning minister Sonya Kilkenny said the plan aimed to protect Melbourne's green wedge areas, complementing the government's proposal to build more homes in established suburbs.

The minister said the plan protected areas responsible for supplying 41 per cent of metropolitan Melbourne's food needs, including 80 per cent of its vegetables.

Planning reforms would also be introduced to provide better permanent protection for green wedge areas against over-development and inappropriate use, through controls for agricultural land.

"More housing doesn't have to come at the expense of our green wedges - that's why we're providing better permanent protection for these areas against over-development," Ms Kilkenny said.

Under the Planning and Environmental Act 1987, green wedge land is defined as non-urban areas of metropolitan Melbourne, lying outside the urban growth boundary.

University of Melbourne Food Systems senior lecturer Rachel Carey said the plan laid out a positive vision to protect the city's food bowl and secure its food supply, in the face of population growth and climate change.

But she said there was a question mark over whether the proposed planning measures would actually achieve that outcome.

"There are positives in the plan - a new overlay to protect two key areas of irrigated agriculture that are important to the city's fresh food supply at Werribee and Bacchus Marsh, a focus on increasing access to recycled water for farmers, and strengthening the right to farm," Dr Carey said.

"But the new overlay only applies to two strategic areas of farmland, when stronger protections are needed for all of Melbourne's farmland to create certainty about the future of these farming areas and dampen speculative investment.

"There is more work to be done through the parliamentary inquiry into securing the Victorian food supply and the Plan Victoria initiative to strengthen protection for all remaining farmland around Melbourne and regional towns in Victoria."

Dr Carey said it was good the government had acknowledged the new action plan meant increasing housing need not come at the cost of agricultural land or green wedges.

"(But) to protect agricultural land as we increase housing supply, all agricultural land around the fringes of Melbourne and regional towns in Victoria needs to be mapped and given stronger protection with a new 'food production zone'," Dr Carey said.

From 2019, the government carried out technical assessment and consultation on how to identify key challenges relating to land use planning in green wedges and agricultural land.

An options paper received 879 public submissions but the process stalled during and after the COVID-19 pandemic.

RMIT Professor in Sustainability and Urban Planning Andrew Butt said the plan echoed the "constant tension between agricultural land and amenity protections, but also the desire for urban expansion in Melbourne".

The fact the government was doing something about the issue was "very much welcome".

"This isn't just a planning problem, it's a whole of government approach," Professor Butt said.

There also needed to be confidence in private and government infrastructure investment would continue, such as in improved water supply, he said.

"I suspect we are at a point were we are moving towards Plan Victoria, we have already had statements the government is very keen to have a building approach, which is as much about urban containment as it can be," he said.

In some respects, the plan "gazumped" the parliamentary inquiry into Victoria's food supply, Prof Butt said.

"I think that inquiry needs to look more broadly at all the connected parts of this, beyond just land use," he said.

The minister was ultimately responsible, but local government and the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal had to have "strong and unambiguous" approaches to making planning decisions.

"If we can be confident the system is clear in what it intends to do, and aims to do that without too many exceptions, we can be confident decisions can be made to protect agricultural land," he said.

Sydney University Business School Adjunct professor John Stanley said the title of the report was "somewhat misleading", as it focussed on planning for agriculture, not Melbourne's Green Wedges.

"That focus necessarily brings in some challenges of how to manage competing land uses, such as urban development, but that does not amount to a comprehensive plan for protecting Melbourne's green wedge values," he said.

"In terms of protecting agricultural land uses, the report seems to make a positive contribution in terms of direction setting and is well linked to related strategies, such as the housing strategy and to Plan Melbourne's intent of setting a hard urban growth boundary."

The major shortcoming was the absence of any sense of direction, in terms of protecting the environmental and biodiversity values of the green wedges, which were probably under greater threat than agricultural values, he said.

"The report is silent on how to handle any such trade-offs with agriculture, which must be informed by state-level policy/legislation as well as by local green wedge management plans," he said.