Abstract
Supporting home and community gardening is a core activity of many community-based organizations (CBOs) that are leading the food justice movement in the U.S. Using mixed methods across multiple action-research studies with five food justice CBOs, this paper documents myriad layers of benefits that gardening yields.Our participatory methods included conducting extensive case studies with five CBOs over five years; quantifying food harvests with 33 gardeners in Laramie, Wyoming, and surveying them about other gardening outcomes (20 responded); and conducting feasibility studies for assessing health impacts of gardening with two of the five CBOs, both in Wyoming.Analyses of these diverse data yielded four categories of gardening benefits: (1) improving health; (2) producing quality food in nutritionally meaningful quantities; (3) providing cultural services; and (4) fostering healing and transformation.Examining these results together illustrates a breadth of health, food, and cultural ecosystem services, and social change yields of home and community food gardening in these communities. It also points to the need to support CBOs in enabling household food production and to future research questions about what CBO strategies most enhance access to and benefits of gardening, especially in communities most hurt by racism and/or insufficient access to fresh food.
Highlights
Food gardening has become a mainstay of community-based food security, food justice and even obesity prevention initiatives in the United States (Gatto, Martinez, Spruijt-Metz, & Davis, 2017; Gonzalez, Potteiger, Bellows, Weissman, & Mees, 2016; Lawson, 2005; Saul & Curtis, 2013; Zanko, Hill, Estabrooks, Niewolny, & Zoellner, 2014)
This work originated with Food Dignity, a five-year action-research project about food system sustainability and security strategies employed by five food justice communitybased organizations (CBOs) in the U.S These CBO partners were Blue Mountain Associates (BMA) on Wind River Indian Reservation; Feeding Laramie Valley (FLV) in Laramie, Wyoming; Whole Community Project (WCP) in Ithaca, New York; East New York Farms! (ENYF) in Brooklyn, New York; and Dig Deep Farms (DDF) in the unincorporated areas of Ashland and Cherryland in the San Francisco Bay area of California
By examining the gardening outcome results from the mix of research methods described above, I identified four categories of benefits from food gardening: (1) improving individual health; (2) producing healthy food; (3) providing cultural ecosystem services in recreation, culture and social networks; and (4) fostering healing and transformation
Summary
Food gardening has become a mainstay of community-based food security, food justice and even obesity prevention initiatives in the United States (Gatto, Martinez, Spruijt-Metz, & Davis, 2017; Gonzalez, Potteiger, Bellows, Weissman, & Mees, 2016; Lawson, 2005; Saul & Curtis, 2013; Zanko, Hill, Estabrooks, Niewolny, & Zoellner, 2014). A National Gardening Association study found that household gardening increased by 17% over five years (2008– 2013), including by 38% among lower-income households (≤US$35,000). Given the 63% increase in gardening among millennials, public interest in gardening seems unlikely to abate soon (National Gardening Association, 2014). This paper briefly reviews the evidence base about the benefits of food gardening. It shares results from research generated over five years via a wide range of mixed and participatory methods with five U.S food-justice oriented, communitybased organizations (CBOs), to answer the following research question: what was the range, quality and quantity of gardening outcomes in these communities, with support from these five CBOs?
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