SA’s agricultural identity diminished in proposed planning reform
Would you like to hear a great little bit of agricultural and land use policy, dear reader?
Well, do I have something for you.
“South Australia’s food producing and agricultural areas are one of our primary and premium industries which we are all immensely proud of and which we want to preserve and protect.”
“Protecting these areas, in turn, protects our food security, economic growth, local jobs, prized tourism areas and our state’s global reputation as a premium producer of food and wine.”
One could be forgiven for thinking that was taken straight from the Primary Producers SA (PPSA) policy platform.
Rather surprisingly, they are the South Australian Government’s own words – the rationale behind designating key regions around metropolitan Adelaide as “assets to be protected from housing sub-division as Environment and Food Production Areas”. Read it for yourself on the PlanSA website under the aptly titled section, The importance of protection.
This was spelled out in the 30-year Plan for Greater Metropolitan Adelaide (now the Greater Adelaide Regional Plan, or GARP) released in 2010 and updated in 2017 with the establishment of EFPAs.
You might like
However, last week the state government announced its intention to change these safeguards and redraw the EFPA boundaries to release greenfield land for more housing growth by rezoning land currently used to grow the food that feeds our communities.
The areas now targeted include some of the most arable and sustainably productive land in SA – land that makes a huge contribution to our $18.5 billion agribusiness, food and wine sector.
The argument made by the state’s planners is that this realignment is needed now to secure land supply not just for the next 15 years as proposed in the 2010 plan, but now for the next 30 years. The areas proposed for rezoning would provide a potential 61,000 new homes over this extended 30-year period.
PPSA has been working with the SA Planning Commission over the past 18 months debating our very real concerns about these “draft” (as we were advised they were) proposals.
Under existing legislation, the EFPAs are due for statutory review in 2027 anyway, and PPSA was assured that our engagement in such a review process would allow our concerns to be properly addressed.
However, last week the government introduced legislative reform in advance of the much-anticipated review, with the Planning, Development and Infrastructure (Environment and Food Production Areas) Amendment Bill 2025.
According to the state’s peak development lobby group, redrawing of these safeguards is being delivered at the behest of property developers eager to fast-track greenfield housing development. MPs will be asked to vote to amend the EFPAs, effectively moving the line on unchecked urban sprawl in key food-producing regions.
PPSA’s concerns are not just with this expansion of paving over scarce arable land.
Stay informed, daily
It is also about the growing competition for water resources – essential for both agriculture and the environment – amid increasing pressures from population growth.
At a time when the cost-of-living is impacting all South Australians, can we really support a legislative reform that, at its worst, would push more intensive agriculture into more marginal regions in the long-term, driving up input requirements to sustain productivity as well as the costs of production, and thus the cost of food even further?
SA was declared to be in a climate crisis in 2022. However, more expansion of wall-to-wall Colorbond fencing and eaves touching from house to house is the antithesis of biodiversity conservation and climate adaptation.
Yet, we continue to decouple property development from the very laws designed to protect landscapes and heritage.
This narrow view of the value of EFPAs to SA’s standard of living is what happens when planning decisions prioritise short-term development over long-term strategy supporting agricultural sustainability and the very values we hold dear as a state.
How can the agricultural industry have confidence to invest in its future – in infrastructure, improved technologies for climate adaptation, water-use efficiency and sustainable farming practices – when land and water security are so easily sacrificed? These family businesses cannot be merely a trade-off for accelerated population growth.
There is a legacy of poor planning and infrastructure design in existing communities in South Australia, including those now being targeted for even more development.
Too often, we see urban “sprawl” colliding with generational farming due to inadequate planning, leading to neighbourhood disputes.
Complaints start trickling into local councils, which are quick to impose bans to prevent so-called disturbances from noise, dust, or other farm activities. Farmers are then expected to adapt their practices or set aside buffer zones – sacrificing their productive land in the process – when they were there first!
Remarkably, Parliament is prepared to legislate protections for live music venues, yet local government can so easily restrict something as fundamental as keeping the humble backyard chook.
If food production were valued in the same way as live music, the erosion of EFPA protections would be unthinkable.
Instead, it appears to be yet another signal that farming’s role in our state’s identity is being systematically diminished.
Professor Simon Maddocks is Chair of Primary Producers SA (PPSA), the peak industry body representing the interests of South Australian primary producers and is the South Australian member of the National Farmers’ Federation (NFF).
