Growing local:

Gardening for community food security, preliminary results

Authors

  • Janet Music Dalhousie University
  • Lisa Mullins
  • Sylvain Charlebois
  • Charlotte Large

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.15353/cfs-rcea.v10i2.582

Keywords:

Home food gardening; Covid-19; Canada; food security; local food; fresh food

Abstract

Home food gardening has seen a resurgence since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. This article presents the preliminary findings from the first 6 months of a 22-month home food gardening study in Nova Scotia, Canada. Participant home food gardeners were asked to log their weekly gardening activities and their household food expenses. Diary entries show how their home food production fostered community connections, occasioned new social interactions, and fed households. Diaries show that participants enjoyed growing food and felt a sense of accomplishment in their gardening. Growing food from seed is not an easy endeavour, especially in Nova Scotia: it is time consuming and often involves manual labour in addition to having expertise. Home food gardening presents an opportunity to impact household and community food security, albeit in specific ways. This is timely research, as the COVID-19 pandemic has brought household food supply into renewed focus for many Canadians.

Chinese Croquembouche, or pyramid of choux pastries, each dipped in chocolate

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Published

2023-07-10

How to Cite

Music, J., Mullins, L., Charlebois, S., & Large, C. (2023). Growing local:: Gardening for community food security, preliminary results. Canadian Food Studies La Revue Canadienne Des études Sur l’alimentation, 10(2), 102–119. https://doi.org/10.15353/cfs-rcea.v10i2.582

Issue

Vol. 10 No. 2 (2023): Transition, coherence, resilience and joy

Section

Research Articles

License

Copyright (c) 2023 Janet Music, Lisa Mullins, Sylvain Charlebois, Charlotte Large

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

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