Community Food Gardens
Rescue Earth System
The main purpose of a Community Food Garden is to encourage and provide a means for sustainable food security for a community so that everybody has access to affordable, enough, safe and healthy food to meet their dietary needs to lead an active and healthy life.
Community Food Gardens
Building a Localised Regenerative Food System
The primary objective of the Community Food Gardens Initiative is to help communities to transition to consuming more healthy food, to localise their food production and eventually to fully integrate into a bioregional Regenerative Food System.
Community Food Gardens educate people on how to grow food and provide opportunity for people, especially in urban spaces, to engage with their food system
What are Community Food Gardens?
Community Food Gardens are places where people come together to grow a variety of vegetables, herbs, fruits and flowers. Community gardens are run by churches, neighbourhood associations, non-profit organizations, community agencies, clubs, private landowners, municipalities … just about anyone.
Community Food Gardens offer people and the community many benefits. They provide opportunities for both recreational gardening and food production, in underutilised spaces. Community gardens are also great for the environment. Food grown locally reduces greenhouse gases produced by long distance transportation of food.
Gardens also contribute to biodiversity of species and help to support populations of pollinators — especially when they are integrated with Permascapes. Additionally, community gardens bring people together and may help to reduce crime rates in the neighbourhood by increasing visibility and engaging citizens in positive initiatives
Community Food Gardens are visual and sensual proof-of-concept demonstration sites that awaken our primal food quality senses, inspire action, educate … and build community. Integrated with other Rescue Earth System Initiatives — Permascapes, Community Centres, Bioremediation LID Systems, Rain Garden LID Systems, Ecosystem Restoration, Community Walking Paths, etc. Community Food Gardens holistically connect food production and health to the local ecosystem, the weather … and life!
Community Food Gardens contribute to a healthy lifestyle by (1) providing fresh, safe, affordable food, (2) helping to relieve stress and increase sense of wellness, (3) getting people active, which improves overall physical health, (4) providing social opportunities that build a sense of community and belonging, (5) and giving people an opportunity to learn and share knowledge on gardening, nature, and cooking
Furthermore, volunteerism is a core value of the Rescue Earth System, and Community Food Gardens are no different. With NO paid workers, Community Food Garden volunteers are the community! Volunteers range from the unemployed and less skilled to highly skilled professionals. For example, we recently had an Orthopaedic Surgeon volunteering to build a Volunteer Camp, a Paediatrician volunteer to plant trees, and an Airline Pilot volunteer at a Food Garden.
The quality of the food we eat not only has an effect on our health, but the health of the land it was grown on and our effect on the people we interact with. Let food quality be an organizing principle as we work to build the reality we want to see. Disease suppressive soils are more likely to produce disease suppressive food and ultimately disease suppressive people. New science on the dynamics of epigenetics and micro RNA is really mind blowing.
Starting a Community Vegetable Garden – New Mexico State (pdf)
