Growing ‘good food’: urban gardens, culturally acceptable produce and food security

Abstract

With food security increasingly seen as an urban concern, urban agriculture (UA) has emerged as one strategy for improving access to healthy, affordable food within cities in the Global North. This research evaluates the contributions of three types of urban gardens in Santa Clara County, California, to food security. Survey, interview and harvest data were collected from home gardeners, community gardeners and gardeners participating in community food security (CFS) programs, which provide low-income families with the materials and training to grow their own vegetables. To assess food security we use a multi-dimensional framework that encompasses food availability, accessibility, nutritional adequacy and cultural acceptability as well as agency within the food system. Over the summer of 2015, median garden production ranged from 26 kg for participants in CFS programs to 56 kg for home gardeners. All garden types produced enough produce for at least one adult to consume the number of cups of vegetables recommended by federal nutritional guidelines. Gardening also increased some low-income gardeners’ access to healthy food, allowing them to have the diet they wanted—one high in organically grown vegetables—but could not otherwise afford to purchase. Interviews showed that gardeners do not think of cultural acceptability strictly in terms of the presence of certain types of cultural crops; they also articulated a broader set of values concerning the environmental and social conditions of food production. At all income levels, gardeners frequently described a set of food values related to knowledge, control, trust, freshness, flavor, organic production methods and sharing, which they were able to enact through gardening. Taken together, these findings demonstrate the nutritional contributions that urban gardens make but also highlight the importance that low-income gardeners place on having food that aligns with their cultural and ethical values and being able to exercise greater autonomy in making food choices. In conclusion, we suggest that more robust, holistic assessments of UA's contributions to food security will include the subjective aspects of food as well as quantitative measures related to food production.

Urban Gardening in Germany: Cultivating a Sustainable Lifestyle for the Societal Transition to a Bioeconomy

“…The values associated with urban food production are based on knowledge of production and processing, control over and trust in these methods, with respect to freshness, flavor and organic production [45]. This study shows that self-production of food in urban gardens has a large influence on consumer behavior.…”

“…Urban gardening is currently triggering societal discourse on the sustainability and future viability of agricultural production, food value chains and consumer behavior. Food and nutrition has become a democratic instrument for sensitizing society to food systems, markets and demands nutrition habits and wasteful consumer behavior, while encouraging alternative food networks [42,45]. Cities form the starting point of this debate-in the past because of the lack of trust in production and processing methods, today additionally because the neoliberal food value chains are threatening human livelihoods (especially in countries of the South), biodiversity, natural ecosystems and climate for the sake of economic growth [20].…”

“…Consequently, urban food production fosters environmental and social values [45]. This results in a strong political statement being sent out from the urban gardens to the adjacent neighborhood, local political institutions (e.g., city development departments) and international institutions with the aim of supporting the sustainable development goals [4,5,20,30,40,42,47].…”

More Than Food: The Social Benefits of Localized Urban Food Systems

“…For approximately 90% of all survey respondents having fresh produce was a reason for taking part in gardening or direct markets. Gardeners in this study and elsewhere prize the quality-including freshness and taste-of the produce they grow (Pourias et al, 2016;Porter, 2018;Diekmann et al, 2020). Similarly, produce quality and freshness are important food attributes for direct market shoppers (e.g., Brehm and Eisenhauer, 2008;Thilmany et al, 2008).…”

iZindaba Zokudla: A conversation about food systems change in South Africa

“…For urban farmers, these modern mall and supermarket developments can be seen as the urban part of an "adverse incorporation" (Neves & du Toit, 2014, p. 846) into a neoliberal global food system. This may explain why urban agriculture delivers only minor benefits for farmers in South Africa (see Crush & Frayne, 2011;Frayne, McCordic & Shilomboleni, 2014;Ruysenaar, 2013), which is unsurprising (Stewart et al, 2013;Zezza & Tasciotti, 2010), but debatable (Csortan, Ward, & Roetman, 2020;Diekmann, Gray, & Baker, 2018;Dubbelling, 2010;Nkosi, Gumbo, Kroll, & Rudolph, 2014;UN Habitat, 2008). IZ has pioneered methods, events, and processes, albeit peculiar to the immediate context, to enable African and other marginalized producers (like urban farmers and emerging food processors) to gain access to various entry points in the South African food system.…”