local produce

Join Aussies In Supporting Local Produce

The concept of growing fresh local produce in the garden is popular with the majority of Australian households, and more plan on joining in on the trend in the future.

An Australia Institute paper by Poppy Wise named 'Grow your own: the potential value and impacts of residential and community gardening' was launched by Gardening Australia's Costa Georgiadis on March 31, and uncovers positive statistics toward locally produced food and waste reduction.

Among Ms Wise's findings is two out of three households in Australia support locally produced food via community gardens, aged care facilities and school gardens.

In addition to this, half of all Australians are getting busy in the garden growing their own food, with taste, cost-cutting and health all at the forefront of incentive to 'grow your own'.

While half is a fantastic number to begin with,  what's even more pleasing is that a further 13 per cent plan to start their own patch too. This means that even less Australians may be supporting the use of synthetic fertilisers and the environmental effects of transporting food.

According to the paper, Australians could save $657 million and two million tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions if more households were to follow suit and grow their own food as well as decrease waste.

Ms Wise stated, "our survey found that food gardening influences behaviours in relation to food waste and locally produced food items. Nearly half of all food gardening households strongly agreed that growing their own food has encouraged them to waste less food, use most of their food scraps in their garden and be more inclined to buy locally produced food".

She also added growing your own food works to build resilience of the food system by shortening the food chain system, which can be affected by weather conditions or transport issues.

South Australian, Tasmanian and Victorian households were most likely to grow their own food, but we think it's high time every Australian follows suit growing local produce – remember to take your reusable mesh bags for vegetables when shopping and help save the planet!

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