Seeds and the city: a review of municipal home food gardening programs in Canada in response to the COVID-19 pandemic

Janet Music; Lisa Mullins; Sylvain Charlebois; Charlotte Large; Kydra Mayhew

doi:10.1057/s41599-022-01301-6

Seeds and the city: a review of municipal home food gardening programs in Canada in response to the COVID-19 pandemic

Humanit Soc Sci Commun. 2022;9(1):273. doi: 10.1057/s41599-022-01301-6. Epub 2022 Aug 17.

Authors

Janet Music¹, Lisa Mullins², Sylvain Charlebois³, Charlotte Large², Kydra Mayhew²

Affiliations

¹ Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, Dalhousie University, Halifax, NS Canada.
² Faculty of Management, Dalhousie University, Halifax, NS Canada.
³ Agri-Food Analytics Lab, Dalhousie University, Halifax, NS Canada.

Abstract

In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic in Canada, home food gardening articles have saturated popular media outlets. Home food gardening is more popular than ever, and community gardens and community greenhouses are at capacity with long waiting lists for plots. Several local governments across the country are also participating in the food gardening craze. This study compares 19 municipal urban home food gardening programs that ran in 2020. These municipalities provided program participants with free gardening supplies and instructions on how to grow food at home. This study reveals a complicated relationship among municipalities, food gardening programs and household and community food security. The study also determines that the social and emotional challenges brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic are somewhat alleviated through gardening. Ultimately, municipalities are limited in their policy capacities to adequately move the needle on food insecurity in Canada.

Keywords: Geography; Social policy.