Food Self‐provisioning in Europe: An Exploration of Sociodemographic Factors in Five Regions

Abstract

This article presents the results of an international comparative study on food self‐provisioning, an activity still widespread in the countries of the Global North. We collected the data in a sociological survey done in 2010 as a part of the household energy use research project GILDED. We selected a region with urban and rural areas as a case study in each of the five EU countries, including Scotland, the Netherlands, Germany, the Czech Republic, and Hungary. Our article raises two main research questions: (1) What is the level of food self‐provisioning in the regions? (2) Who participates in it? Additionally, we inquired into the motivations of self‐provisioners using the results of analyses of sociodemographic and food consumption habits for their interpretation. We found that the level of self‐provisioning varies considerably among the regions. Its share ranges from 13 percent in Dutch urban areas to 58 percent in German rural areas. The effects of some sociodemographic and geographic factors differ significantly among the countries. However, we can summarize that living in one's own property, living in a house or in a rural area, having a partner or children, being retired, or having a low income increases the probability of food self‐provisioning.

Neither Poor nor Cool: Practising Food Self-Provisioning in Allotment Gardens in the Netherlands and Czechia

“…As such, our research complements large-scale quantitative studies on gardening populations in different European countries [52,53] and invites future comparative studies. To our knowledge, comparisons of gardening practices in CEE and Western Europe are rare, as scholarship on both regions comprises largely separate literatures.…”

The Urbanization of Nature in a (Post)Socialist Metropolis: An Urban Political Ecology of Allotment Gardening

“…Except for a growing interest in the more general issue of vague urban terrains and urban wilderness (for example, Zemková, 2012; Haluzík, forthcoming), a bourgeoning issue in relation to urban gardening is alternative food production (Smith and Jehlička, 2007;Jehlička and Smith, 2011;Jehlička et al, 2013;Sovová, 2015;Vávra et al, 2018) and more recently also urban agriculture in general (Tóth et al, 2014;Duží et al, 2017). Except for a growing interest in the more general issue of vague urban terrains and urban wilderness (for example, Zemková, 2012; Haluzík, forthcoming), a bourgeoning issue in relation to urban gardening is alternative food production (Smith and Jehlička, 2007;Jehlička and Smith, 2011;Jehlička et al, 2013;Sovová, 2015;Vávra et al, 2018) and more recently also urban agriculture in general (Tóth et al, 2014;Duží et al, 2017).…”

“…In the particular context of the Czech Republic, studies exploring the cultural and historical specificity of urban nature together with its political-ecological aspects, especially with emphasis on urban gardening, are scarce. Except for a growing interest in the more general issue of vague urban terrains and urban wilderness (for example, Zemková, 2012; Haluzík, forthcoming), a bourgeoning issue in relation to urban gardening is alternative food production (Smith and Jehlička, 2007;Jehlička and Smith, 2011;Jehlička et al, 2013;Sovová, 2015;Vávra et al, 2018) and more recently also urban agriculture in general (Tóth et al, 2014;Duží et al, 2017). Studies of allotments in particular have focused on contemporary experience and practices of urban gardening (Gibas et al, 2014;Gibas et al, forthcoming) as well as on historical developments and related negotiations over allotments (Gibas et al, 2010;Pauknerová and Gibas, 2011;Spilková and Vágner, 2016;Tóth et al, 2018).…”

Home Gardening and the Social Divide of Suburban Space: Methodological Proposal for the Spatial Analysis of a Social Practice in the Greater Paris Urban Area

“…Studies aiming to estimate this domestic production are scarce, but they all confirm the persistence of an ancient phenomenon that is still firmly rooted in the food landscape of the cities of the globalised North (studies cited in [13]): In North America, a national study estimated that 25% of resident households in the United States self-produced part of their food [21], while more targeted studies of large cities in the USA [22,23] and Canada [24,25] showed that between 40% and 50% of households surveyed grew a vegetable garden. In Europe, a quantitative questionnaire survey that includes five regions from five countries compared in each case the answers of urban and rural respondents and estimated that the share of urban households engaged in food gardening activities in urban areas varies from 13% (Netherlands) to 49% (Hungary) and also showed that this self-production was strongly correlated with the ownership of a single-family house [26]. In France, a 2008 national survey on household food consumption revealed that nearly 30% of households living in suburban areas, where the single-family house dominates the urban landscape, declared that they self-produced part of their food [27].…”