Region. Farms will 'cripple growth'

Preserving farms on Sydney's fringe in the name of agricultural self-sufficiency will cripple the city's growth, putting extra pressure on renters and home owners, said Aaron Gadiel, chief executive officer of the Urban Taskforce a property developers' lobby group. Chairman of the NSW Farmers' Association's horticulture committee, Peter Darley, said that the city needed to retain its farms because they had a more reliable water source than those further west, especially during drought. Sydney farmers can eliminate the ''middle man'' because they are within 50 kilometres of the market, but if they moved further west, they would have to employ more people to move the produce, increasing the cost of vegetables, he said.

Region. Decline in vegetable farms

There are just 1050 vegetable farms left in the Sydney basin and these are set to disappear because they are in the southern and north-western growth areas that the NSW Government has earmarked for suburban development over the next two decades, according the NSW Department of Industry and Investment report, which recommended a review of the Sydney vegetable industry to consider whether it should be encouraged to expand so that the metropolis becomes more self-sufficient in produce. The 603 hectares devoted to vegetables in the south-west and north-west growth areas, about 52 per cent of Sydney's farms, are likely to disappear and the area devoted to greenhouse vegetables could decline by as much as 60 per cent when these areas are developed, according to a story in The Sydney Morning Herald