The Primacy of Politics in Public Food Security Policies: The Case of Home Gardens

Abstract

Home gardens are often conceived as a panacea to contribute to the problem of food insecurity in poor rural and urban households. However, systematic reviews indicate weak evidence of significant impacts on families. This way, there has been an intense discussion about their effectiveness. This research aims to generate knowledge about the relevance of assuming food production in home gardens as an alternative to the home consumption. Two questions drive this paper: what number of home gardens, supported by three different government programs, persists? Moreover, what factors explain their permanence? Our sample constituted 261 beneficiaries, and the collection of data was through face-to-face field surveys and in situ visits to the vegetable garden granted. We show that less than 7.5% of gardens remain in right conditions after two years of establishment. The pleasure and need to produce, family involvement, urban/rural location, and the technology provided are determining factors for permanence. The results support the argument that the high rate of home gardens that fail is related to the primacy of politics in considering the problem of food security as a “lack of assets” to produce. Thus, this suggests that there is a weak link between the problem, policies, and the politics.

Introduction to the Special Issue “A Systemic Perspective on Urban Food Supply: Assessing Different Types of Urban Agriculture”

“…In fact, this study was the only one in this Special Issue implementing a transnational case study while focusing on Germany and New Zealand [25]. The significance of a lack of government support constraining the expansion and maintenance of UA was confirmed by Houessou et al [36] and Muñoz-Rodríguez et al [42]. In the case study of Houessou et al [36] in Benin, the authors highlight that in addition to an insecure access to urban land, restricted marked access and inequality issues, insufficient government support is hindering the expansion of UA in Benin [36].…”

“…It contains contributions on sociocultural [25,[29][30][31][32], commercial [33][34][35] and self-supply [36,37] UA types, along with studies focusing on either varying or mixed UA types [38][39][40][41]. Comparing the scope of the studies in terms of focusing on technology-or nature-based UA, the majority of the papers deal with nature-based forms of UA [25,[29][30][31]36,39,40,42], while only three papers investigate technology-oriented types of UA [33,35,37] (see Figure 1). All in all, the case studies cover towns and cities all over the world and address a wide range of various types of UA, its impact and implementation dimensions, research objectives, and methodologies reflecting the interdisciplinarity and international research of UA.…”

“…In total, seven papers in this Special Issue deal with drivers and constraints for implementing various types of UA. Hereby, the focus of three papers is on the social dimension [30,31,34]; two papers take into account a multidimensional [25,36], one a political [42], and a conceptual paper a systemic perspective [38].…”

“…By analyzing the effectiveness of different government programs and their factors supporting or constraining the persistence or abandonment of home gardens for strengthening food security in Mexico, the study by Muñoz-Rodríguez et al [42] shows that only a small percentage of rural and urban low-income families profit from producing their own vegetables through home gardens. Interestingly, in their study, urban home gardens had a higher probability of operational persistence when compared to rural home gardens.…”

Systemic Design for Food Self-Sufficiency in Urban Areas

“…This relegates a large part of society to having a high dependence on industrialized food or living under a continuous state of scarcity, which is why it is considered necessary to adopt comprehensive approaches that make it possible to generate strategies and synergies aimed at ensuring food self-sufficiency in urban areas [8]. For this purpose, the objectives to guide this work are (a) performing a literature review through Social Network Analysis (SNA) to identify the communities or areas of knowledge related to the analysis and development of agriculture in urban areas; (b) proposing a conceptual model based on the functions of the VSM that serves as a guide to rethink and organize relationships aimed at ensuring food sustainability, as well as the components related to food management, as recently highlighted by Muñoz-Rodríguez et al [9]. Notably, the proposed organizational structure seeks to benefit academics, civil organizations, and actors who have the decision-making power to implement changes in their communities.…”