Melbourne’s fresh food supply is dwindling as urban sprawl takes over farmland.
A drier and hotter climate makes feeding Melbourne even tougher.
By 2050 Melbourne will produce little more than 15 per cent of its food needs locally[i].
Melbourne’s food growers have few expansion options. The next generation of farmers need scale and certainty in water and land.
Yet so much water is wasted: Melbourne discharges over 160 billion litres of treated effluent into the fragile Port Phillip Bay ecosystem every year.
And farmers use billions of litres of fresh river water to grow Melbourne’s food.
FoodSecure Melbourne is the smart answer to all these challenges.
It is a $350 million commercial recycled water infrastructure program in Melbourne’s outer south-west.
It takes billions of litres of treated effluent destined for dumping in the Bay, professionally treats it to very high standards and distributes this water into new irrigation systems in Werribee and Balliang – creating over 12,000 hectares of drought-proofed, high-quality food bowl on Melbourne’s doorstep.
Run by and for growers in a cooperative structure, it will grow Melbourne’s fresh food economy and provide a bright future to grower communities and the natural environment they work in.
[i] Deloitte Access Economics analysis for FoodPrint Melbourne project (2016).
Key benefits
- Provides water and land certainty needed by growers; encourages an estimated $500m in new on-farm investments
- Grows an estimated 1,600 new jobs in Melbourne’s West
- Run as a cooperative structure designed with and for growers by world-leading engineering and policy expertise.
- Melbourne finds a productive use for a major waste product: 65 billion litres per year of damaging treated effluent dumped in Port Phillip Bay.
- Acts as major ‘green wedge’ planning buffer to halt further outer suburban sprawl in Melbourne’s west.
- 100% renewable-powered.
- Major opportunity for local indigenous jobs and ‘healing of country’
- Research and innovation partnership with the University of Melbourne drives investments in food, climate resilience, water, indigenous affairs.
“FoodSecure Melbourne confronts a changing climate and threats to fresh food production head-on. After years of careful design innovation with State government and world-leading water expertise, grower communities can finally take charge of a secure water future. Along the way they will help to heal our Bay and River environments. We encourage everybody to get behind this program”