He’s the king of horticulture who is oozing with passion for plants and local food – and he’s ready to indulge in Maitland.
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Gardening Australia host Costa Georgiadis wants to make a special trip to the region to visit our Slow Food Earth Market in The Levee.
He heard about the city’s fresh food revolution during a trip to Tocal last month where he hosted a live classroom about biosecurity with primary and high schools across the state – thanks to satellite technology.
He applauded the region’s shoppers for supporting the market and said the value they placed on the food they bought would only grow.
When people connect with the grower they understand what the grower is going through … if we keep buying from them and we keep their financial viability fluid and alive then effectively what we are doing is adding to our own food security,”
- Costa Georgiadis
“It’s not just food, it’s local food that hasn’t been stored at cold temperatures or gassed or a variety of other things - it’s actually fresh off the farm that day.”
Mr Georgiadis will come to the market later this year and learn more about the venture. He would like to meet the producers and have a cook-up with some of the market ingredients.
“What you’re doing is something I really love to support because it gives other potential marketeers ideas to grow and to draw in new people,” he said.
When people start to buy local the value of the actual price of the food takes on a new value …people say I can’t buy those other things anymore because they don’t have the taste.
Costa says our farming land must be valued
As he drove through Tocal and Paterson Costa Georgiadis could not help but admire the farm land that surrounded him.
“I don’t think we can value our farm land high enough in terms of our long-term food security,” he said.
“The value of this land to the state food security is massive because there is a lot of food being grown [in the Hunter] that goes down to the biggest food population in the state which is predominately from the Central Coast to the Illawarra.
We need productive food growing landscapes close to our population to reduce energy and transport costs, to provide fresh and seasonal produce to market within a couple of hundred kilometres.
The Gardening Australia host said rural areas were constantly under pressure from urban expansion and called for better planning.
“It’s inherent on us as a generation to say ‘protect this land’ because we can’t get it back,” he said.
“We need to balance these things out and in some cases trade off between quality-growing landscapes and less-quality landscapes.
We need to say this is where the houses are going to go and that is where the food is going to stay, rather than planning willy-nilly and leaving poor landscapes as the place for our food growing and all the quality soil buried under roads and suburbs.
Mr Georgiadis questioned what future generations would think at the housing boom.
“Maybe four to five generations away they will say you really messed up, but at least we can get rid of the houses and re-use this land.”
Students across NSW join Costa on a virtual excursion at the historic Tocal Homestead
It was an excursion of a different kind.
Primary and high school students across the state watched a live feed at Tocal Homestead while Gardening Australia host Costa Georgiadis shared an important lesson about biosecurity.
Mr Georgiadis joined the Biosecurity in your backyard program to help raise awareness about the challenges the population is facing – and offered personal experiences of a collection of experts to help put the message across.
He said everybody should consider biosecurity threats in their area.
The key message is biosecurity threats are only going to increase into the future as more international trade takes place and as more national movement of food takes place,
“There is not enough staff trying to deal with an ever-increasing incursion of challenges. The only way we are going to be able to keep on top of this is to have people observing what is going on in their neigbourhood, in the creeks on their streets, and on their fruit and veg.
“Their work is detective work that the NSW Department of Primary Industries needs done because they’re barely even stopping holes in the boat let along keeping the boat seaworthy.”
Part of the workshop focused on bees, which are vital to our survival.
Mr Georgiadis challenged students to start planting natives, food plants and flowers to attract bees.
“Bees are so small and if you’re not necessarily a gardener or a plant lover you tend not to realise that the bees are the pollinators that make our lives possible,” he said.
“We need the plants and the flowers in order to support the bees to do their important pollination services.
“I love to put it to the primary school kids point back and say there is nothing to dumb down here – this is something that you can get involved with.”
The program was made possible through the NSW Department of Primary Industries and Department of Education Distance Rural Technologies initiative.
“Solid biosecurity keeps farmers in business, maintains our export markets, keeps the community healthy and protects our environment,” DPI project coordinator Sarah Britton said.
“Education is a vital component of our efforts to ensure the integrity of NSW’s biosecurity.”
Belinda-Jane Davis
Passionate about community news
Passionate about community news
