The Economic Contribution of Melbourne's Foodbowl

Running head: BUSINESS STATISTICS
The Economic Contribution of Melbourne’s “Foodbowl”
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BUSINESS STATISTICS1
The Economic Contribution of Foodbowl of Melbourne
The essay is based on the review report of Deloitte on the topic “The economic
contribution of Melbourne’s foodbowl”. Melbourne is the second largest city of Australia
with its urban fringe, peri-urban area and productive agricultural lands too. However, recently
the population and industrial base is vastly accommodating the reduction of area of land
available for food production (Drew, Kortt & Dollery, 2013).
Figure 1: Population increasing chart of Melbourne
The report discovered that foodbowl of Melbourne has almost 1.7 million hectares of
agricultural land having a combination of varieties of products such as vegetables, poultry,
dairy and livestock manufacture.
Mainly in two ways, the urban development of Melbourne affects the production and
valuation of the foodbowl in farm land. These are- lesser agricultural land that leads to reduce
the supply of foods of people and growth of Melbourne and its population is asking for higher
food demand.
Figure 2: Foodbowl area of Australia

BUSINESS STATISTICS2
Approximately 12.8% of the Victoria’s agricultural land (1.7 million hectares) were
used to accounted for foodbowl area of Melbourne.
Figure 3: The agricultural lend of Victoria by region
The agricultural sector directly contributes $956 million annually as the value-added
terms to the regional economy. Foodbowl agriculture produces $742 million annually in
value-added terms as upstream indirect contribution. It also generates $756 million annually
as value-added terms. Among all the food categories, fruits and vegetables are the largest
contributor contributing $413 million value added.
Table 1: Contribution of agriculture and food manufacturing in foodbowl of Melbourne