Rural Community Gardens Capacity to Increase Accessibility and Affordability of Healthy Foods in Alabama

Megan Henning,Barb Struempler,Alicia Powers,Katie Funderburk,Sondra Parmer ,Ruth W Brock

doi:10.21767/2577-0586.100044

Abstract

Context: Urban community gardens have been shown to make healthy foods more accessible and affordable. There is limited research available, however, regarding the influence of rural community gardens, where populations consume less fruits and vegetables and often travel further and pay more for healthy food. Objective: To evaluate rural community gardens’ abilities to increase accessibility and affordability of healthy foods through measurement of harvest weights and conversions to edible portion serving sizes and harvest values Design: Longitudinal pilot study Setting: Six geographically dispersed counties throughout Alabama during one fall production cycle Participants: Nine established rural community gardens Main outcomes measured: Production capabilities were measured as harvest weight, in pounds and ounces, which also were converted to edible portion serving sizes. Harvest values were calculated using harvest weights and the average retail prices for harvested produce. Results: At conclusion of the three-month growing season, the nine rural community gardens in this study yielded 19 different varieties of vegetables weighing a total of 2,708.71 pounds and valued at $3,788.22. This equated to 15,110.64 servings of vegetables, which is enough for 33 adults to meet the USDA daily vegetable recommendations during the three-month growing season. Conclusions: Findings from this study demonstrate by growing fresh vegetables, rural community gardens can increase the accessibility and affordability of healthy foods. This data suggests rural community gardens also may have a role in improving overall health and nutrition of rural populations.

Highlights

Community gardens have existed for more than 250 years
At conclusion of the three-month growing season, the nine rural community gardens in this study yielded 19 different varieties of vegetables weighing a total of 2,708.71 pounds and valued at $3,788.22
Findings from this study demonstrate by growing fresh vegetables, rural community gardens can increase the accessibility and affordability of healthy foods

Summary

Introduction

Community gardens have existed for more than 250 years. They are thought to be direct descendants of the allotment gardens in Europe; the modern movement is more rooted in the victory gardens of World Wars I and II [1]. In 2018, the American Community Gardening Association reported more than 18,000 community gardens in the United States and Canada [3] While this is far fewer than the amount of victory gardens, these modern community gardens have been shown to improve accessibility and affordability of healthy foods [4,5,6,7,8,9], increase fruit and vegetable consumption [4,8,9,10,11,12,13], increase physical activity [9,10,11,12,13,14] and provide numerous social [9,15,16] and psychological [9,13,14] benefits for both the gardeners and the community; these myriad of benefits suggest

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Results

Discussion

Conclusion