Growing for Sydney: Exploring the Urban Food System through Farmers’ Social Networks

Growing urban populations’ increased demand for food coupled with the inherent risks of relying on the global food system has spurred planning strategies by city governments for implementing urban agriculture at different scales. Urban agriculture manifests in a variety of different forms, often with different functions. However, within each type, embeddedness in the socio-ecological urban system can vary substantially as a result of specific characteristics and actors involved. This has a profound impact on the feasibility and sustainability of individual farm practices and, consequently, when scaled up to the urban food system as a whole. In this paper, I apply the concept of social networks to understand how commercial urban farmers gain access to and make use of tangible and intangible resources available to them in the context of the urban food system. Using a qualitative approach, semi-structured interviews were conducted with 15 farmers in Sydney, Australia. The question guide, developed based on the Sustainable Livelihoods Framework, captured farm traits and access to resources through social networks. Findings illustrate three emergent patterns leveraging urban-local, rural-local, and urban-global networks as farmers pursued sustainable livelihoods. In conclusion, land is only one driver, among many, of the sustainability of the local food system.