Picture a vegetable farm and chances are you see boundless crops in even more boundless paddocks. Giant sprinklers, heavy-duty tractors and automated harvesters may come to mind.

What you are probably not envisaging is an intensively cultivated pocket of land in a residential suburb of Sydney or Melbourne. Commercial-size crops of coriander, kale and broad beans don’t typically butt up against houses, schools and hospitals.

Charlotte Bartlett-Wynne and Eve Fraser at the Farm Raiser urban farm in Bellfield. Credit: Chris Hopkins

Yet that is exactly the sort of arrangement springing up in Australian cities in recent years. Often located in high-density locales, the built-up surroundings of these farms belie their wide-open approach.

Urban agriculture isn’t only about cultivating food

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