‘Growing your own’: a multi-level modelling approach to understanding personal food growing trends and motivations in Europe

Growing food for personal and family consumption is a significant global activity, but one that has received insufficient academic attention, particularly in developed countries. This paper uses data from the European Quality of Life Survey (EQLS) to address three areas of particular concern: the prevalence of growing your own food and how this has changed over time; the individual and household context in which growing takes place; and whether those who grow their own food are happier than those who do not. Results showed that there was a marked increase in growing your own food in Europe, in the period 2003–2007. This increase is largely associated with poorer households and thus, possibly, economic hardship. In the UK however the increase in growing your own food is predominantly associated with older middle class households. Across Europe, whether causal or not, those who grew their own were happier than those who did not. The paper therefore concludes that claims about the gentrification of growing your own may be premature. Despite contrary evidence from the UK, the dominant motive across Europe appears to be primarily economic — to reduce household expenditure whilst ensuring a supply of fresh food

An unsustainable state: contrasting food practices and state policies in the Czech Republic

This paper brings together consideration of food policies and practices and of post-socialist transition to raise neglected questions about means of nurturing more sustainable food systems in the developed world. The last three decades have been marked by the growing salience of food as a political and scholarly concern. While market-based alternative food systems have been heralded for their potential to promote environmental sustainability, the benefits of non-market practices such as household food self-provisioning and barter have been assumed rather than being the focus of research. In the western context, both types of food consumption have positive connotations. Although food self-provisioning in European post-socialist societies is a more wide-spread practice than in western societies, it has been on the periphery of research. The existing literature has conceptualised them as ‘coping strategies’ or as a legacy of irregular supply of goods in the state socialist era. Drawing on empirical research in the Czech Republic, we are proposing a novel approach to the phenomenon of household food production in post-socialist societies as a practice compliant with principles of sustainability. First, we highlight the large extent and social inclusivity of food self-provisioning in Czech society to demonstrate how post-socialist societies are a repository of a rich set of sustainability-promoting consumption practices in relation to food systems. Second, we show that international and domestic policy actors in these societies have ignored these alternative, socially inclusive and environmentally effective practices in favour of far less effective market-based sustainability oriented food policy initiatives. The paper promotes a more integrated view of non-market and market approaches in the pursuit of more sustainable food systems

Autonomy, Erasure, and Persistence in the Urban Gardening Commons

Collective gardening spaces have existed across Lisbon, Portugal for decades. This article attends to the makeshift natures made by black migrants from Portugal’s former colonies, and the racial urban geography thrown into relief by the differing fortunes of white Portuguese community gardening spaces. Conceptualising urban gardens as commons-in-the-making, we explore subaltern urbanism and the emergence of autonomous gardening commons on the one hand, and the state erasure, overwriting or construction of top-down commons on the other. While showing that urban gardening forges commons of varying persistence, we also demonstrate the ways through which the commons are always closely entwined with processes of enclosure. We further argue that urban gardening commons are divergent and cannot be judged against any abstract ideal of the commons. In conclusion, we suggest that urban gardening commons do not have a “common” in common.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Ecosystem services of collectively managed urban gardens : exploring factors affecting synergies and trade-offs at the site level

Collective management of urban green space is being acknowledged and promoted. The need to understand productivity and potential trade-offs between co-occurring ecosystem services arising from collectively managed pockets of green space is pivotal to the design and promotion of both productive urban areas and effective stakeholder participation in their management. Quantitative assessments of ecosystem service production were obtained from detailed site surveys at ten examples of collectively managed urban gardens in Greater Manchester, UK. Correlation analyses demonstrated high levels of synergy between ecological (biodiversity) and social (learning and well-being) benefits related to such spaces. Trade-offs were highly mediated by site size and design, resulting in a tension between increasing site area and the co-management of ecosystem services. By highlighting synergies, trade-offs and the significance of site area, the results offer insight into the spatially sensitive nature of ecosystem services arising from multi-functional collectively managed urban gardens

User participation in urban green commons : exploring the links between access, voluntarism, biodiversity and well being

Polycentric governance and stakeholder participation in natural resource management have potential benefits for both human and environmental well-being. Researchers and decision-makers have attempted to conceptualise the ecological, social and political potential of such semi-formal approaches to urban green space management. However, few studies have quantified the actual benefits in terms of biodiversity and associated ecosystem service provision, or the factors that mediate levels of participation. The links between biodiversity potential, site access and user participation were explored in a case study comprising ten established examples of organised social-ecological initiatives in the inner-city area of Greater Manchester. At the micro-scale, the case study quantified the levels of community involvement (measured in volunteer hours month¯¹) in local green commons and the biodiversity potential (assessed using floristic and structural diversity as a surrogate) of the ten sites. Descriptive analysis identified that site spatial and design characteristics affected all three measures and subsequent correlational analyses revealed a high degree of synergy between site use and biodiversity. The study thereby provides quantitative evidence of the synergistic relationship between green space use and urban biodiversity and, importantly, the positive feedbacks which should result between volunteer input and the local generation of ecosystem services. The study provides support for the promotion of a highly decentralised, stakeholder-led stewardship of green space as a valid consideration in the management of urban ecosystem services

Considerations in the valuation of urban green space : accounting for user participation

Within the ecosys­tem ser­vices frame­work, val­u­a­tions of nat­ural cap­i­tal have pri­mar­ily taken a land­scape-scale ap­proach. The gen­er­a­tion of trans­fer­able mon­e­tary val­ues for in­di­vid­ual ecosys­tems has like­wise de­pended on as­sess­ments car­ried out at large spa­tial scales. Such meth­ods, how­ever, lack ad­e­quate re­gard for com­plex nat­ural habi­tats. This com­plex­ity is height­ened in ur­ban ar­eas where green spaces pro­vide mul­ti­ple ser­vices ac­cord­ing to use and par­tic­i­pa­tion. Hence, there is a need to ac­knowl­edge the unique value of ur­ban na­ture, and the so­cially-me­di­ated na­ture of its pro­duc­tiv­ity. This need was ad­dressed through a study of col­lec­tively man­aged green spaces in a north-west Eng­land conur­ba­tion (UK). Ninety-one sites were iden­ti­fied, fol­lowed by a case study of twelve sites as­sess­ing their value across four ecosys­tem ser­vices. A sub­se­quent pro­jec­tion of the value of stake­holder-led land man­age­ment was cal­cu­lated and com­pared to an ex­ist­ing ref­er­ence for the value of ur­ban green space from The Eco­nom­ics of Ecosys­tems and Bio­di­ver­sity data­base. The study found that col­lec­tively man­aged sites con­tribute con­sid­er­able added-value to ur­ban nat­ural cap­i­tal. In ad­di­tion, the work high­lights the short­com­ings of ap­ply­ing trans­fer­able val­ues to multi-func­tional habi­tat types, call­ing for a closer con­sid­er­a­tion of so­cial-eco­log­i­cal con­texts in the val­u­a­tion of ecosys­tem ser­vices