It takes a lot to feed a growing city. To meet the nutritional needs of Melbourne’s 5 million residents, we need constant access to a wide variety of nutritious locally grown food. The farmers at the forefront of Melbourne’s foodbowl strive every day to produce sustainable products that supports a growing community.

The Melbourne Foodbowl Virtual Farm is an interactive tool that shows you how farms in Melbourne’s foodbowl get food and fibre from their paddocks to your plate, and how they interact with and support the local environment along the way.

The virtual farm allows you to take a self-guided tour and explore the key elements of a farm system and how these elements contribute to sustainability, for the benefit of the environment and the community.

The virtual farm presents real-life examples of managed environments, providing rich learning material for the Victorian Curriculum in Design and Technologies - Technologies Contexts strand in food and fibre production. It also relates to the Sustainability cross-curriculum priority and showcases a diversity of careers.

This site was developed as part of the Farms2Schools program.

• Concept by Karen Thomas
• Project managed by Nick Fallu and Alice Zaslavsky
• Content and creative direction by Beverley Laing
• Illustrations by Vera Babida
• Case study videos by Winnie O’Neil
• Soil and catchment videos by Maria Papoutsis
• Animation sound design and engineering by Sam Lowe
• Website development and animation by Krissalle