“There is a food shortage. People just don’t believe it yet.”
- Pippa Daily
- Nov 9, 2025
- 4 min read
How vertical farming could localise food, build resilient communities, and change how Australia feeds itself.
Australia does not have a food production problem. We have a food access problem.
And Chris Fullon, Director of Australian Urban Growers, is trying to fix it from the inside out.
His focus is vertical farming, which means growing food upwards instead of outwards. It uses stacked layers, controlled light and targeted nutrients to grow produce year-round with less land and less water.
But this is not just clever technology.
It is a direct response to a truth most Australians do not want to admit. Families in small regional communities are paying twice the price for the exact same fresh food that city residents buy.
The Problem: Food Systems Stretched Thin
Despite what many people think, global hunger was not solved in the early 2000s. Today, it continues to destroy people, families and entire communities. Since the early 2000s, food insecurity has increased again, driven by conflict, climate shocks, economic instability and supply chain fragilities. Progress towards “zero hunger” has stalled. Hundreds of millions of people still lack reliable access to food. The world’s food systems are under sustained pressure.
Locally, this pressure looks different, but it is no less urgent. We are seeing rising housing density, longer supply chains into remote communities, and planning frameworks that still assume food production only happens outside of cities. This is why relocating production closer to consumers, into suburbs, schools and towns, is transformative. This is why vertical farming must stop being perceived as a trend and instead be understood as a potential lifeline.
Why Vertical Farming Matters — And What It Really Is
Vertical farming grows food in stacked layers, controlling light, water and nutrients so production is year-round and far more land and water efficient. It also shortens supply chains, which means fresher food and less waste.
But it is not a magic bullet, because it is still expensive to start.
Fullon notes that vertical farms are often “ingrained with robotics and high-level control systems… meaning they become exclusive to people with a great sum of wealth.” That might be manageable in Brisbane or other capital cities, where capital is concentrated.
But what about regional communities that simply do not have that kind of capital?
This is where an accessibility issue emerges, and it must be addressed if vertical farming is going to improve food security rather than widen inequality.
Fullon says it plainly:
“We can drive an hour and a half from Brisbane and find communities paying double for food compared to the CBD.”
Not because food cannot be grown nearby, but because the food grown in those areas often does not stay local. “That is food insecurity,” he says. “These communities might only have a couple of thousand people, they cannot afford the high-capital models that work in the city.”
Australian Urban Growers: A Social-Enterprise Answer
What Australian Urban Growers is doing matters because it tackles the two biggest barriers: cost and accessibility.
Fullon is intentionally stripping vertical farming back, making it far cheaper to set up and “easy to repair when disaster hits.” They trial the model in Brisbane schools such as Kelvin Grove SHS, where more capital is available and systems can be refined. Then they take what they learn into regional and remote communities, so those communities do not carry the massive start-up costs alone. Because as Fullon explains,
“This is not just a Brisbane thing. What we do here has implications for inland towns, Pacific Islands, Asia and our whole region.”
Food security is also a regional problem, not just a city problem.
Importantly, their mission is not to be the permanent farmer in each town. As Fullon puts it, “We do not want to be the farmer in that community. We want to help someone be that enterprise.” That distinction, capacity-building rather than dependency, is core to social enterprise models that reinvest profits into mission-driven growth. Research on social enterprise effectiveness supports the idea that reinvestment and capacity-building produce sustainable local impact.
The Honest Truth
Fullon’s bluntness is deliberate. “There is a food shortage. People just do not believe it yet.” The statement is designed to jolt complacency. We all have that one person in our life who dismisses climate change, deforestation or food insecurity. But in Fullon’s words,
“Do not worry about whose politics you are not pleasing. They are not your customer.”
This is not about ideology. It is about practical action. Low-capital, locally-tailored solutions that feed people, create opportunity and strengthen resilience.
Act Now
If we care about food security in our suburbs and regions, these are the models we need to pay attention to. Australian Urban Growers is showing what practical, local food systems can look like, and what becomes possible when we prioritise accessibility rather than exclusivity.
This is not hype. It is about real people in real communities accessing food at fair prices.
If you are a school, a community group or an investor who wants to learn more, or get connected with Australian Urban Growers directly, please reach out to Chris Fullon at info@australianurbangrowers.com or connect with me and I can link you with Chris.
I will be sharing more conversations like this as part of Pip’s Passion Project, documenting the work of social enterprises and nonprofit organisations that are building solutions, not just talking about problems. To keep up with updates, please subscribe below and follow my LinkedIn located at the bottom of this page.
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