Chicken meat production in decline, partly due to urban sprawl pressures

The Legislative Assembly Environment and Planning committee inquiry, headed up by Wendouree Labor MP Juliana Addison, had received 16 submissions when the deadline for comments closed last week.

The inquiry is looking at the impact of urban sprawl on agricultural production on the outskirts of the state's major cities and towns.

One of the submissions, from the Australian Chicken Growers' Council, said constraints on Victorian meat chicken farming growth were likely to have longer term implications for food security.

"Victoria's share of national chicken meat production is largely unchanged since the 1960's, but is now declining slowly, even in the face of a rising population rate," the council's chief executive Joanne Sillince said in the submission.

"The decline since 2009 is largely attributed to loss of farms from the Mornington Peninsula and Geelong areas, subdivision and retirement of those farmers.

"On this basis, and noting the continued loss of agricultural land to population growth, it is right to question the longer term food security of Victorian meat chicken production."

Previously, chicken meat production had been keeping pace with population growth.

Dr Sillince said the Mornington Peninsula was probably the most significant example in Australia of all the negative effects or urban encroachment on food supply.

"Traditionally rural or peri-urban with a good percentage of dirt roads and small holdings, with some of the best land in Australia and beautiful views and well connected with both the city and broadacre livestock areas, this highly productive food hub has been eroded first by lifestyle blocks and now by dense urbanisation.

"In essence, we are replacing the food production with the food eaters.

"Sadly, concrete has a depressingly poor nutritional value and while the issue hasn't been noticeable until now - due to increasingly efficient farming methods - the sudden rapid and ongoing rise in population finally has planners and farmers questioning longer term food security."

Dr Sillence said as Australian farmers did a magnificent job in turning the country's non-arable land into food, it had been easy for governments to think activities that reduced the amount of arable land didn't matter as Australia "had a lot of it".

"This is patently and completely untrue," she said.

"It is by now apparent that while Australia remains a net exporter of food, perishable food supply in Australia, including chicken meat production, is under threat in the medium-longer term and food security will be the price."

She said to the council's knowledge there had been no planning controls that genuinely protected agricultural land, in green wedge/peri-urban areas or anywhere else.

"Moreover, there is a form of limbo where farmers and the community are not notified of future planning in many cases, resulting in rumour and investment guesswork," Dr Sillince said.

"Peri-urban farmers consistently report being harassed by developers to sell, have no knowledge of what the zoning future holds, and have no "right to farm" in any case.

"They report that logged native forests "have better protection" than they have, in spite of producing Australia's most popular, least carbon emitting and least-cost animal meat protein."

There had been the "idiocy" of the EPA in fining farming businesses for not keeping "odour" [normal agricultural smells] inside their boundary - "something that is patently and physically impossible".

"Sadly, there has not only been no protection of farmers by the EPA, but actually laws have been developed that are physically and environmentally impossible (like laws to "keep a smell on a property").

"Farmers have been victimised by newcomers to the point that some farms have closed, farmers have struggled with mental health issues and some have simply closed the farm and left it empty."

The council recommended the establishment of "right to farm" legislation, coupled with agricultural zoning, to give farmers security of tenure and ability to invest.

It also called for development of controls over councils and the EPA, which included repealing some elements of current laws and consultative development of new ones as part of state planning for agricultural enterprise.

There should also be oversight and removal of council restrictions on use of agricultural land for food production, which may include an appellant court against "right to farm" legislation.

State governments also needed to provide further investment in the state's road and freight infrastructure, as well as training courses for agricultural workers.