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The localisation of food production, particularly in the form of urban/peri-urban agriculture, is only gaining increasing public and political attention in industrialised nations such as Australia amid growing concerns about urban sustainability. Small-scale family farmers on the peri-urban fringe of cities such as Sydney, Australia's largest city, are considered key actors in the creation of a more sustainable and just urban food system by those advocating for food system change. The assumed alterity of such small-scale farmers from the so-called 'mainstream' food system, however, has led to a focus on localised threats such as urban development and solutions such as alternative food networks. This localised focus risks neglecting the way in which small-scale family farmers, such as those on Sydney's urban fringe, are directly connected to and reliant on the mainstream for their economic viability. Emphasising the importance of issues such as supermarket power and consumer choice, this paper illustrates that it is necessary to examine the continuing connection between the mainstream system and 'local', small-scale producers to achieve food system change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Australia, as in other Western countries, peri-urban farmland is increasingly being considered a public good, contributing to urban sustainability and climate change mitigation. To retain local food production, advocates have called for the implementation of farmland protection policies that restrict urban development, such as exclusion zoning. Many such policies have been abandoned due to protests, often from the very people the policies are ostensibly intended to protect - farmers. Examining the failure of Sydney's latest 'green zones' through a political ecology lens, this paper challenges the prevailing narrative that these protests indicate a lack of community support for the ideal of farmland protection. The failure of the green zones was one of political process, specifically the lack of consultation with Sydney's culturally and linguistically diverse small-scale farmers, rather than community rejection of the principle of protection. Interview responses from farmers suggest that a bottom-up approach to policy-making would have yielded alternative and more successful approaches to maintaining farming on the fringe. This paper concludes that ensuring small-scale farmers have access to and agency in the environmental decision-making process generates options for farmland protection policy that move beyond a housing-versus-farming dichotomy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]