In 1991, Australia’s backyards were productive places
WAY BACK IN 1992, the Australian Bureau of Statistics did something as unusual as it was useful. It assessed the productivity of Australia’s home gardens.
Why this was useful was that this type of do-it-yourself productivity is not counted in the national accounts, it does not appear in estimates of GDP. For the bean counters in planet Canberra, it belongs in the household, not the national economy.
Admittedly, when you drive through the suburbs it’s hard to imagine that there is anything other than hectares of sprawling lawn all shaved to uniform height, but there is. Those same suburbs produce fruit and vegetables, herbs and eggs, nuts, meat and wine. Australia’s home gardens, it turns out, are more than lawn and concrete — they are productive places.
The census question
This was disclosed in a 1991 survey of domestic food production in Australia by the federal government’s Australian Bureau of statistics (ABS).
The ABS report of 1992, entitled precisely if unimaginatively Home Production of Selected Foodstuffs, found that non-metropolitan households accounted for a higher level of self-provisioning than capital city households. When you consider that garden space around homes is declining in area in the cities, that many younger people cannot afford the high prices asked for urban real estate and that many householders prefer to live in apartments, that’s not surprising.
The pity is that ABS has not repeated their assessment of home garden productivity because, if anything, there must have been an increase in the popularity of home food production since, if book sales, television shows and gardening courses are a reliable guide.
As well as disclosing that Queenslanders are greater boozers than NSW folk and that Italian families like their wine, here’s the rundown on what ABS found to be the situation in 1991.
Food by age
The ABS research indicated that the 55 to 69 year age group produced the most fruit, vegetables, nuts and wine around their homes.
The 35 to 44 year age group produced more eggs, beer, poultry and seafood.
It seems that the home gardening of food had little appeal to the younger demographic in 1991.
Domestic animals
Fowls were the most popular of the productive domestic birds, accounting for 1005 tonnes of home-produced meat in 1992. That’s a lot of chook on the chopping block. Chooks as tasty, locally raised and processed protein far outweighed the mass of turkeys eaten. Turkey provided 521 tonnes of dinner table meat.
What about ducks? They provided only 345 tonnes. Compared with chooks, ducks are messy creatures to have roaming around the home garden. Does this in-part account for their lower contribution to the household meat supply?
The average figure for surveyed households keeping poultry was 24.8 kilograms of meat a year.
Popular fruits
Lemons and limes were the most popular home grown fruits with apples, then oranges, bananas and plums following in order of popularity.
This does not imply that all of those fruits were eaten by the householders who grew them. Much of this produce goes to waste, as there are only so many lemons a family can eat, so many oranges. Few families today know how to preserve foods.
Breakdown by food type
Fruit
Victoria and Queensland led NSW in production.
Annual production:110, 000 tonnes
Average productivity per household: 48.9kg
Breakdown by state: Queensland (25.8%) Victoria (24%) NSW (21.1%).
Vegetables
Annual production: 153, 000 tonnes
Average productivity per household: 70.4kg
Breakdown by state: Victoria (28.7%) NSW (28%) Queensland (16%).
Nuts
Annual production: 1541 tonnes
Average productivity per household: not available
Breakdown by state: South Australia (26.6%) Queensland (21.1%) Victoria (20.1%).
Poultry
Annual production: 2000 tonnes
Average productivity per household: 24.8kg
Breakdown by state: Victoria (23.6%) Queensland (23.2%) NSW (18.2%).
Eggs
Annual production: 26.1 million dozen
Average productivity per household: 63.5 dozen
Breakdown by state: Victoria (21%) Queensland (22.7%) NSW (22.4%).
Recreational fishing
Annual production: 31,000 tonnes
- crabs: 2800 tonnes
- yabbies/marron: 1400 tonnes.
Average productivity per household: 27.1kg
Breakdown by state: Western Australia (16.8%) Queensland (23.5%) NSW (21.3%).
Beer
Annual production: 39.8 million litres
Average productivity per household:165.9 litres/ year; 3.2 litres/week
Breakdown by state: Victoria (14.7%) Queensland (32%) NSW (27%).
Unfortified wine
Annual production: 3.9 million litres
Average productivity per household: 84.8 litres/year; 1.6 litres/week
Breakdown by state: Victoria (40.5%) NSW (22%) South Australia (18%).
In Victoria, people of Italian descent brewed 2.4 million litres.
How the pandemic stimulated home production
Has the quantity of home food production increased, and has the age range partcipating in home food production changed over the years since the ABS survey, given the popularity of TV gardening shows, home gardening courses, participation in permaculture and the evidence of observation? Add the upsurge in home food production reported as a result of food security fears during the pandemic of 2020, and the answer is most likely that it has.
Sustain Australia’s Pandemic Gardening Survey of 2020 surveyed over 9000 gardeners from urban, regional and remote communities across Australia who shared information on edible gardening. The Survey reported that “Nearly 20% of respondents said they could not have made it through the pandemic without their garden. Another 62% said the garden meant a great deal to them during the pandemic. Along with their substantial mental health benefits, edible gardens have the power to create greener cities, reduce household waste, strengthen community connectedness, enhance food security and encourage fresh produce consumption.”
The Survey disclosed:
- 52% of respondents were over the age of 55, of which 27% were over the age of 65; this continues the trend reported in the 1992 ABS survey that home gardening is a practice mainly of the middle-aged to older demographic
- the ethnic and cultural background of respondents broadly reflected the wider Australian community, as revealed by the National Census
- 77% or respondents were female
- 70% reported a lower household income than the national average of $117,000 per annum; approximately a quarter reported a household income below $50,000, the poverty line in Australia for a family of four
- 54% had more than 10 years’ gardening experience
- a significant minority were new gardeners with less than a year’s experience; of that number, 341 commenced gardening during the COVID-19 pandemic
- 49% grew less than 10% of their own food; more than a third grew 10–30% of their own food; the remaining 14% grew more than 30% of their own food
- a quarter significantly increased their gardening activity during the pandemic; 37% reported a lesser increase; 35% indicated their gardening activity remained unchanged; 3% reported that the pandemic reduced time spent gardening
- low-income gardeners were amongst the most productive; as household income goes up, the less likely a gardener is to be growing significant quantities of their own food.
The future
An unacknowledged challenge to home food production and edible home gardening is the boom in housing and rental prices and the associated shortfall in properties for sale and rent which became apparent in most Australian states over the years leading to the middle months of 2021.
While some landlords allow renters to make a vegetable garden, and altough in 2021 the state of Victoria enshrined the practice in rental law reform, renters elsewhere may have difficult in obtaining permission for a vegetable garden. The churn of renters into and out of properties also reduces willingness to start a garden.
Commentators on permaculture design system social media point to the bias in much permaculture education and practice towards home and land ownership, saying this is a barrier to practicing permaculture and, along with it, the growing of food.
Community gardens, which are shared places where people grow food and other plants, are sometimes posed as an alternative growing space which can contribute to family food security. This is true if the community garden is managed intensively enough to grow a quatity and range of commonly eaten food. Some allotments are too small for growing food in quantity and serve at best as a minor supplement to bought food. Other limiting factors on the utility of community gardening for household food security is their limited distribution and peoples’ time availability.
Australia’s cities, as well as those in other countries, are having to cope with increasing populations. In some Australian cities this has led to the building of ‘granny flats’, small accommodation buildings in the backyard which take space that could be used for food production. It is a form of urban infill housing that answers social needs but not food needs. Newer suburbs put larger houses on smaller blocks, leaving little opportunity for edible gardening.
Where can we look to increase urban food production? There is land available in the cities, however some of it has been contaminated by past landuse. There is also competition in communities for access to land for different uses. Container gardening on paved surfaces and hydroponic growing, which requires no land at all and can be practiced on paved surfaces and flat rooftops of suitable strength, offer solutions.
Comparing the data disclosed by the 1991 ABS census question to that disclosed in the Sustain Australia pandemic gardening survey shows an upsurge in home food production. What we do not have are contemporary figures for the home production of different foods.
It is time to incorporate home gardening, community gardening and commercial market gardening on the urban fringe in a comprehensive urban food security strategy such as was developed around 2007 by the Sydney Food Fairness Alliance. This we need to do before urban sprawl paves even more urban fringe farmland in suburbs.
