Stop paving paradise to put up a parking lot!
Our Land 2021 just came out, the required reporting from the Ministry for the Environment and Statistics New Zealand, on the state of our environment. Focusing on land it has a go at including Te Ao Māori and also highlights the issue of urban expansion affecting our productive soils. Finally. Thank you.
Peri-urban growers, those ones on the city fringes, where the fertile production land has sat for generations, face the onslaught of urban sprawl as houses march out of the city areas into farmland. After years of hammering our soils, first by colonial settler clearing of our native forests, then planting of grass for livestock production, followed by grains and other plants, our soils still forgive us and produce. They are resilient and able to rebuild, after all that is how they came to be in the first place, but not once they’re paved. Housing encroaches on our elite soils, and farms are paved for box stores and malls, saying goodbye to our soil, paving paradise to put up the proverbial and literal parking lot. The rest of the time, we can resurrect it and bring it back to life, potentially better than ever. But once it’s paved, it’s gone.
The Pukekohe Hub is 4359 hectares of some of New Zealand's most fertile and productive land. According to Auckland Council's Climate Action Framework it generates $327 million a year, which is the equivalent of 26 percent of the country's total domestic value of vegetable production. Private developments with plans to change land zoning through private plan changes for areas like Patumahoe or the Pūkaki Peninsula have begun to show awareness for the issue of loss of prime horticulture land and have had some opposition, including from Auckland Council itself.
In 2020 the scale of urban expansion in the area, at the expense of growing land, was highlighted in evidence before the Environment Court in the case of Self Family Trust v Auckland Council (2020) NZEnvC 214. In that case the court found that for the Auckland region, “The accelerating regional rates of urbanising the most productive soil types is cause for concern in terms of the sustainable management of these soil resources.” The Court had new data to go by and drew on the fact that from 1915-2010, a total of 343ha of land containing elite soils was consumed by urbanization. The Auckland Unitary Plan “currently provides for 6,632ha of such land to be consumed during the next 35 years - an almost-20-fold increase in one third of the time.” There it drew a line in the sand for the development of the Pūkaki Peninsula.
Nationwide, according to Manaaki Whenua Landcare Research and the Land Use data tables, between 1996 and 2018 urban areas expanded 14.6% (or 30,264 hectares). Just over 83% (25,248 hectares) of the landcover converted to urban area was from exotic grassland (ie farmland). Nearly 9% (2,602 hectares) of the landcover converted to urban area was from cropping/horticulture. This amounted to 30% of horticultural land converted during this period.
Read it again: 30% of our horticultural land has been paved for housing over the past 22 years.
Further, Our Land 2021, states that ‘the area of highly productive land that was unavailable for agriculture (because it had a house on it) increased by 54 percent for 2002–19. Urban land use increased by 31 percent on land that was potentially available for agriculture during this period. The area of residential land outside city boundaries (rural residential areas) also more than doubled in this time.’
Why is it that food production and our food history is taking a back seat in the discussions around urban sprawl and housing? Perhaps it’s that housing is the political issue of the time and the proponents of it are more vocal and perhaps wealthier with interests in private housing property developments. Or more vocal because of not having wealthy housing interests, instead the opposite.
Where’s the voice for food systems? Intelligent city planning that ensures longevity of food supplies for a city along with addressing housing issues needs to take place. Food can no longer be on the back burner in these discussions and decisions. It’s place is society and our cities and towns is so important. What is really needed is acknowledgment of the role of our sustainable food producers and their priority over urban sprawl and low density or ‘lifestyle’ blocks in rural areas.
Yes, these issues are now being considered nationally in a policy framework and get mentioned in national reports on the state of our land, but this is in the better late than never category, as it could have been foreseen and addressed by planners and governments a long time back. Since the 1960s it’s been an issue in the greater Auckland region as the city sprawls out: it’s cheaper to build on flat lands than to build inside the already large footprint of the city, or to build on difficult, hilly or stony areas.
It ends up hurting the consumer. Less productive land means higher prices for fresh produce, as demand outstrips supply. Another issue for growers there is that of ‘reverse sensitivity’ which is where the land is potentially re-zoned and new occupants complain about noise, smell, and odour: things that have always been a part of operating a productive farm for the growers, and then the growers have to internalise that cost and end up charging the consumer more for food.
This is one of the topics of our time. Councils and central governments need to step up and sort this out to ensure the food resilience of our city-region food systems, the economical viability of our growers that want to keep growing food, and the local food story our country lacks, but that so many of us are working so hard to enhance.
Emily King.
Director, Spira.