Food access, food security and community gardens in Rockford, IL

ABSTRACT

Urban agriculture projects seek to ameliorate issues of food access and food security for people living in areas with low access to fresh foods, including food deserts. Within this discourse, community gardens have been promoted as vehicles to reclaim unused urban space, produce food locally and connect populations to their food sources and larger community. A variety of community garden models exist; in the Midwestern city of Rockford, Illinois, many community gardens grow food for donation to food pantries as part of a programme to benefit socioeconomically disadvantaged persons in the city. However, the ability of these gardens to involve neighbourhood participants and provide the social capital-related benefits attributed to community gardens in the literature is uncertain. Here we examine community gardens in Rockford, IL to assess the extent to which they contribute to residents’ ability to obtain fresh produce as well as other social benefits. Data for this project come from a combination of interviews with gardeners, focus groups with food pantry users and a survey of pantry users. We find that while non-gardening community members are benefitting from the increased produce that the gardens provide, they are not receiving all of the social and communal benefits associated with actively participating in a garden.

KEYWORDS:

• Community gardens
• food access
• food security
• urban agriculture
• social capital

Acknowledgements

Partial funding for this research came from a William Morris Davis Grant awarded through the NIU Department of Geography. Thanks to Drs. Thomas Pingel, Jim Wilson, and Kerry Ferris, of NIU, and Dr. Daniel Block of Chicago State University for their willingness to help and contribute ideas to this work. The significant field research involved in this paper was made possible in part by a number of key persons, including Cyndie Hall of NN, Barbara Flores, and Kim Adams-Bakke of the Rock River Valley Pantry.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCID

Walter W. Furness http://orcid.org/0000-0003-3266-8438

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Department of Geography, Northern Illinois University under a William Morris Davis Grant.