From Rural Lands to Agribusiness Precincts: Agriculture in Metropolitan Sydney 1948–2018

Abstract

Sydney is both the birthplace of the nation of Australia as well as its western agricultural tradition. Since its founding in 1788, Sydney has been a continually growing settlement whose significant metropolitan expansion has come at the expense of its immediate agricultural hinterland. While this phenomenon is not unique per se, Sydney's natural context presents a constrained and finite area of immediate and proximate land available for local production of fresh food. Official metropolitan planning commenced in Sydney from 1945 and the first scheme in 1948 provided genuine but only rudimentary strategic and statutory consideration for the preservation and continued use of its agricultural lands. Sydney's subsequent eight metropolitan plans have given agriculture lip service at best and complete disregard at worst, largely treating it as land awaiting ‘higher' economic development. Maximizing short-term financial windfalls through urban land development continues to undermine Sydney's local food supply security, while gearing food supply to an energy-intensive ‘just-in-time’ system sourcing from further afield. The latest (2018) metropolitan plan has evolved to high-tech indoor food production for lucrative overseas markets via a new ‘aerotropolis' precinct. Sydney’s metropolitan agriculture has thus been remade into a late fossil fuel era expression of corporate and neoliberal industrial agribusiness