By Adam Carey
Farms that operate within 100 kilometres of central Melbourne will be protected from encroaching urban growth, with new rules set to restrict subdivision and residential and industrial development near agricultural land.
The farmland that fringes Melbourne produces 41 per cent of the city’s food needs and 80 per cent of its vegetables, but faces growing threats, including climate change, unpredictable rainfall, population growth, conflict between farming and non-farming neighbours and distorted land prices, a state government review found.
Market gardens at Werribee South will be protected by new planning controls for Melbourne’s green wedge zones.Credit: Jason South
In response the government will introduce planning controls that protect the city’s green wedges and its peri-urban farmland will be strengthened, including a special new overlay to safeguard the irrigated market gardens of Werribee South and Bacchus Marsh. Access to recycled water for those farms will be prioritised as part of the controls.
Farmers within the 100-kilometre ring will also be given a strengthened “right to farm”, the government said, with the onus put on new non-farming neighbours such as tree changers to mitigate the impacts of agricultural activity, such as noise and odour.
Similar “agent of change” principles have been applied to residential developments that are built close to an existing live music venue.
New controls on the scale of group accommodation, exhibition centres and hotels will also be put in place in Melbourne’s 12 green wedge zones. New data centres will be prohibited in the green wedges, as will subdivision of land beyond the minimum lot size.
The protections for agricultural land against competing urban uses will also be applied to extractive uses such as quarries, which often operate inside green wedge zones.
Planning Minister Sonya Kilkenny will release the Green Wedge and Agricultural Action Plan on Saturday, outlining a focus on balancing competing land use needs for housing and farming on Melbourne’s outskirts.
“From our iconic wine regions to market gardens, our green wedges contribute not only to our economy but make Melbourne one of the best cities in the world to call home,” she said.
“More housing doesn’t have to come at the expense of our green wedges – that’s why we’re providing better permanent protection for these areas against overdevelopment.”
Councils will be given new guidance on green wedge land management.
Victoria’s planning tribunal regularly hears cases in which an applicant has sought to overturn an outer suburban council’s rejection of a proposal to build housing or a business premises within a green wedge zone.
Earlier this month VCAT affirmed the City of Casey’s rejection of a proposal to build a dependent persons unit on green wedge land in Harkaway Hills, which would have involved clearing native vegetation to build accommodation, a swimming pool and basketball court.
The tribunal also rejected an application last month to subdivide farmland in Wandin North in Yarra Ranges Shire for housing.
Melbourne’s green wedge zones are under pressure from competing urban uses.Credit: Paul Rovere
University of Melbourne Professor John Stanley has studied the role of Melbourne’s green wedges in protecting biodiversity, while also campaigning to block a proposed quarry inside a green wedge zone on the Mornington Peninsula.
Stanley said there were strong environmental grounds for protecting agricultural land on the city fringe.
“Once you sacrifice them to another use then you push further afield to try and replicate them and that’s not good in terms of carbon miles; the more accessible your agricultural land use the better,” he said.
But Stanley said his research for the University of Melbourne found there is also competition between productive and environmental land uses in Melbourne’s green wedges.
“We saw a tension between agricultural uses and biodiversity value and our core perspective was the biodiversity value should be at the top of the tree and should receive absolute protection,” he said.
Andrew Butt, Professor in Sustainability and Urban Planning at RMIT, said protecting the “right to farm” was philosophically sound, but tricky in cases where farm practices change and become more intensive over time. He said they should be managed on a case by case basis.
“Farm practices can change in time and become more potentially offensive … truck movements, feed coming in and out, all those things have an impact,” Butt said. “So just because someone is there first doesn’t give them the right to continue to change their practices.”