The loss of a city’s agricultural lands due to land use change through urban development is a global problem, as local food production is an essential green infrastructure for intergenerational sustainability. Like many cities, much of Sydney’s rapid urban development occurs on land previously used for food production. Sydney has one of the highest rates of urban growth among Western cities and a planning strategy that marginalises its agricultural productivity. To better understand and advocate for Sydney’s capacity for food production we explore all available government datasets containing agricultural biophysical capacity using a critical GIS approach. Employing various spatial-data visualisations to contextualise agricultural production, we examine inherent biophysical agricultural capacity in Sydney and comparable regions along the eastern coast of NSW. Our approach interrogates the notion that Sydney’s metropolitan landscape is of low inherent biophysical quality for agriculture, thereby challenging current development and planning orthodoxy and policy. In ascertaining Sydney’s comparative capacity for agriculture we find that, despite current metropolitan planning policy, datasets reveal western Sydney is biophysically well suited for agriculture. Sydney overall is comparable to five of six other coastal regions of NSW and superior to at least two. While acknowledging metropolitan land use complexities that shape agricultural production in practice, we argue for improved critical application and contextual understanding of existing agricultural datasets to better inform future planning policy to advance regional food security and aid long-term sustainability.

Urban agriculture (UA) can be perceived as inconsequential to the immense industrial food system, yet is far from insignificant. UA offers considerable financial returns, production volumes of selected produce, sustainability benefits and prospects, and is of vital social value worldwide. This chapter frames UA’s dominant ideologies, influences, discourse, and value through six key dimensions: spatial, economic, social, environmental, practical, and intellectual. This multidimensional overview of the burgeoning field facilitates an inclusive perspective through which to critically examine dominant perceptions and better assess its possibilities and shortcomings in a developed world context. A clearer understanding of UA’s worth within governance, academia, and communities is imperative, together with an increase of skilled professionals instigating systematically designed and coordinated systems and infrastructures to overcome regulatory barriers and better harness its growing momentum.

Agriculture has the largest visual and environmental impact on Australia’s landscape, ecologies and environments. It is frequently visually communicated through romantic imagery and reinforced by messaging that emphasizes trust, environmental stewardship, and ethical livestock practices. The quality of satellite imaging is generally inadequate for verifying these practices and illuminating the state of agricultural environments. This visual essay presents a photographic counter narrative based on a comprehensive visual research process spanning the breadth of the continent. It presents 56 unaltered still images selected from over 10,000 captured by the author using a consumer drone. Images have been chosen to represent all of Australia’s major commodities by economic value, all land-dominant practices, and all primary government classifications. Photographs are accompanied by industry quotes to challenge bucolic notions, and to posit that human production scales are superseded by commercial agribusiness. The research seeks to depict an ‘agri-industrial landscape sublime’ to highlight paradoxes within Australian agriculture as a Western practice providing food abundance from a weathered and volatile continent, while adversely affecting ecosystems and drawing animal suffering into question. Finally, the essay seeks to highlight the importance of recognising insensitive agribusiness as systemic of imposing neoliberal systems on Australian farmers and embracing extractive paradigms. Accordingly, this essay carefully composes imagery that both celebrates production capability while suggesting the need to evolve insensitive agri-philosophy and practice to food systems realising improved ecological, environmental, and animal welfare outcomes.