A team of University of Canberra researchers has set themselves the task of finding out, developing an app for gardeners to log what's growing in their backyards.

Ro McFarlane is an assistant professor at the University of Canberra working within the food for the future research collective.

She said bushfires, floods and the pandemic had increased awareness of the need for urban areas to improve resilience - to ensure food doesn't run out when supply chains were disrupted.

As less than 20 per cent of ACT dwellings are flats or apartments, finding enough backyards to up the output shouldn't be a major challenge.

Dr McFarlane said identifying space to grow, whether it be public land, rooftops, backyards or community gardens, is just one part of feeding a population.

"It's not just about space, it's also about people," she said.

"You can't just grow food because you've got space. You've got to have the people with the knowledge and the passion and the care to actually grow it.

"What we've been very interested in doing is talking to different groups and reaching out to backyard home producers to understand their backgrounds, motivations, challenges, as well as how much food they're producing."

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As Canberra gardeners are currently reaping the benefits from their pre-summer planting, the researchers are aiming to collect data now on what's been grown where and in what quantity.

Home producers are being asked to download an app to log their current yield and pick it up again during a second peak period for growing and harvesting in winter.

Dr McFarlane said there's evidence coming from overseas that, with some creative thinking, cities like Canberra have the capacity to produce significantly more fresh food than they currently do, to subsidise what's being brought in.

She said part of their study included finding out what was sustainable, practical and desirable for the local region and the Canberra population.

"Obviously, you can produce anything if you pour a lot of energy and water and people might not only want to eat what is produced locally. So there's also issues about how acceptable or interesting local food production is for the population," Dr McFarlane said.

The research has built on a report commissioned nearly 10 years ago which recommended a strategy to encourage more food production in the ACT.

As 90 per cent of fruit and vegetables consumed in Canberra comes from Sydney, increasing local yields to reduce transport emissions has been identified as a target area for government.

The ACT government is scheduled to release its Capital Food and Fibre Strategy in the first half of 2023, outlining a plan to invest in urban and regional agriculture and build a thriving local food economy.

Dr McFarlane said waitlists for community gardens blew out during the pandemic, demonstrating the desire to dig around in the dirt is definitely there.

"I think we've got the capacity to do groundbreaking work, we've got fantastic green space, we've got fantastic integration with our Peri-urban cross-border neighbours, as well as with ACT farmers," she said.

A review of the territory's agricultural policies, which is part of the food and fibre strategy, will consider ways to bolster Canberra's food production, including examining existing short-term leases.

Producers have flagged that without freehold land tenures, farmers are disincentivised to make long-term investments in their properties.

Environment Minister Rebecca Vassarotti said some very complex lease arrangements, including split arrangements with the Commonwealth, had made it very difficult for some farmers.

"We have been looking at ways in which our leasehold system or our planning system might actually be putting unnecessary barriers in place of people in terms of agriculture, whether it be in a rural area or the urban area," she said.

"That's a really active conversation that I'm having with colleagues across government."

Dr McFarlane said the ACT was once a food bowl, however, when a decision was made to flood the valley, it meant losing a lot of land primed for production.

"We've been in a situation where, like the rest of Australia, we've had a concentration on or a focus on commodity agriculture," she said.

"So we grow sheep, we grow cattle, we don't do that mixed agroecology farming.

"But there's much more of that happening now in and around cities and there's an interest in expanding that here."

Visit: www.canberra.edu.au/about-uc/faculties/health/future-of-food - for more information.

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