Abstract
Community food production (CFP) is emerging worldwide as a key component of programming designed to address community food insecurity. CFP resources in the form of home gardens, community gardens, and school gardens continue to gain wide support and attention. However, the market value of gardening and garden-based programs as well as how this market value correlates to food-insecure communities are not yet well understood.This research explores, defines, and maps this value in the Madison, Wisconsin, Urban Area (USA). The extent of CFP, including both the total number of gardens and their overall area within the study, was measured and mapped through the use of a random sidewalk and roadside survey of 2,454 addresses and existing lists of area community and school gardens. The productive output of these gardens in terms of weight, gross and net market value, and caloric value was determined through test plots (n=36) tended by citizen scientists and used to estimate the absolute and relative contribution of CFP for the Madison Urban Area in terms of market value and caloric value. The work concludes with a discussion of the current and future role of CFP as a component of community food security efforts and the need to carefully assess intended objectives and attributed values.
Highlights
Introduction and Literature ReviewUrban and peri-urban agriculture (UPA) has expanded both nationally and internationally over the past two decades (Bellows, Brown, & Smit, 2003; Bruinsma & Hertog, 2003; Patel & MacRae, 2012)
The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) refers to the practice of individuals and communities growing their own food as community food production (CFP), a term defined more explicitly elsewhere (Smith, 2011, p. 9) as “the act of growing food within a community, for that community, and by that community.”
Our research focuses exclusively on home gardening, community gardening, and school gardening within the Madison Urban Area (MUA)
Summary
The urban area, located within Dane County, is home to more than 40 organizations devoted to include agriculture in some form and on some scale community food system design, boasts more than as a complementary land use feature. Using Urban Area as a study boundary emphasizes inclusion of land use that is not primarily agriculture, but which has the potential to have been of interest, but would have required decennial census, which reflects 1999 income additional time. Not unlike munity Survey five-year estimates (U.S Census many U.S cities, median household income was Bureau, 2009). The estimated median household generally highest along the urban fringe where income across the entire MUA was US$54,057 in home and lot size are larger as shown in figure 2. 1999 Madison Urban Area (MUA) Median Household Income students who live in this area. Median household income of the MUA tends to increase as distance from urban center increases
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