Australia: More Than Enough Yard To Have Your Lawn And Eat Too

In the study published in Sustainable Cities and Society, researchers calculated self-sufficiency by measuring the capacity of private vegetable gardens to supply the recommended daily vegetable intake of residents.

By Kelly Brown
University of Adelaide
Mar 11, 2021
(Must read. Mike)

Excerpt:

The researchers found that 93 per cent of the residential blocks in the study could be self-sufficient for vegetable production.

PhD student Isobel Hume from the University of Adelaide’s School of Agriculture, Food and Wine, says that by getting a birds-eye view with airborne photography, they were able to identify land area immediately available for vegetable production.

“We looked at lawn areas because they can more readily be transformed into vegetable gardens than spaces such as driveways, trees, and street verges, which were considered in previous research looking at self-sufficiency through urban agriculture,” Ms Hume said.

We chose Adelaide for the case study to model self-sufficiency because with approximately 400 people per square kilometres, Adelaide is a low density city, it is situated on a productive agricultural landscape, and a high percentage of dwellings (75 percent) are free standing houses.

“Additionally, each of the sites we looked at in the study has a unique settlement history. For example, Gawler was South Australia’s first regional settlement and was historically separate from Adelaide, but as the population has increased along with urban sprawl, it now marks the greater north Adelaide region.”

The study also found that under high yields, just 23% of domestic lawn areas would be required to grow enough vegetables to meet the recommended daily vegetable intake.

Read the complete article here.