Food for the cities programme

Insights from Melbourne, Australia during COVID-19: Civil society leading the response to strengthen the city region food system


Photo credit: Rachel Carey

By Rachel Carey, Maureen Murphy and Leila Alexandra

Footprint Melbourne research team, School of Agriculture and Food, University of Melbourne



Melbourne is a city of around 5 million people in the state of Victoria in southeast Australia. It is currently the second largest city in the country but growing so rapidly that it is expected to outgrow Sydney by 2026. Melbourne is in a region experiencing significant warming and drying due to climate change, and the COVID-19 pandemic follows a period of drought in parts of the state and the recent devastating bushfires. Farmers and consumers are experiencing the cumulative effects of multiple shocks to the food system.

Australia’s economy has been strong in recent years, but almost a million Australians have lost their jobs since COVID-19 physical distancing restrictions began in mid-March. Food banks and community organisations in Victoria are reporting a sharp increase in the number of people seeking emergency food relief, and civil society groups have mobilized rapidly to lead the response.


Food system challenges during COVID-19

During the early stages of physical distancing restrictions, increased consumer demand for staples such as rice, pasta, flour and tinned goods led to shortages in supply in stores. The major supermarkets introduced purchase limits for foods in short supply and dedicated shopping hours for vulnerable consumers, such as the elderly. This situation has now eased as supply chains catch up with increased consumer demand, although disruption to global logistics and transportation systems continues to present challenges for food retailers in maintaining full product availability in stores.  

Demand for food relief has increased sharply. However, many foodbanks have been receiving fewer donations of food from retailers because of the increased consumer demand at supermarkets. Foodbanks run largely on a volunteer workforce, which has had to stay home to comply with social distancing measures, challenging the sector’s ability to respond. 

In some Australian states, government has stepped in with emergency food relief packages for those in mandatory self-isolation, including Victoria and New South Wales, and the South Australian government has increased funding for food banks.  Local governments are providing deliveries of ‘meals on wheels’ to senior citizens and have received a funding boost for these services from the Australian government. Despite these initiatives, the response from government has been patchy overall and more needs to be done to address rising food insecurity, which is likely to continue for years to come.

Food markets have been classified by the Australian and Victorian governments as an ‘essential service’ that can remain open under physical distancing restrictions, but some farmers markets in Melbourne have been closed down by local governments, reducing opportunities to buy fresh local food and leaving farmers without their usual sales outlets. There have also been price increases for some fruits and vegetables, related to the impacts of the recent drought and bushfires, as well as COVID-19.


Civil society leads the response

Civil society is leading the response to addressing food insecurity during COVID-19 in Melbourne and Victoria. Mutual aid groups appeared rapidly on social media, offering food relief and support at the local level. An alliance of social enterprises has come together to form the Moving Feast collective which aims to provide food relief to low income households by delivering produce boxes, emergency meals and backyard gardening kits. Community gardens across Melbourne that have closed to the public due to physical distancing restrictions are instead growing produce for the food relief effort, and the collective aims to expand the infrastructure for urban agriculture across the state.

There has been a huge increase in farmers and farmers markets going online on the Open Food Network to overcome physical distancing restrictions. People are turning to growing their own vegetables, and suppliers are struggling to keep up with demand for seeds and seedlings. 

The food service and hospitality sector has been hit particularly hard by job losses with businesses closing their doors due to physical distancing restrictions, and many staff are ineligible for government support. Some restaurant kitchens are being repurposed as new social enterprises, such as Fair Feed, which aims to provide livelihoods for hospitality workers and low cost meals. 


Strengthening Melbourne’s city region food system

A city region food system approach is helping Melbourne to strengthen the resilience of its food system to COVID-19 and climate shocks. The Foodprint Melbourne project is working with local government partners and other food system stakeholders to assess the resilience of Melbourne’s food system to shocks and stresses like drought, bushfire, flood and pandemic. This is a parallel project to the City Region Food System Climate Resilience project led by the FAO and RUAF. Our aim is to understand the vulnerabilities in the food system and to identify governance approaches to strengthen its resilience.

Melbourne is surrounded by a highly productive peri-urban region that has the capacity to meet around 40% of metropolitan Melbourne’s food needs. This region produces almost half of the vegetables grown in the state of Victoria and can meet a significant proportion of the demand for fresh vegetables in metropolitan Melbourne.

Increasing local production and distribution of food within Melbourne’s city region could increase the resilience of the city’s food system to future shocks and stresses, and reduce dependence on more distant sources of food. It could also help to build a stronger circular food economy for the region, making better use of valuable city waste streams to produce food, including recycled water from the city’s water treatment plants and organic waste.