Community Gardens, Food Insecurity, and Neoliberalism

Food insecurity in the U.S. is a devastating issue that ties into similar issues of food waste and obesity. The rate of food insecurity in Delaware County, Indiana alone ranges from 16% overall to 20% for children specifically (Feeding America 2018). Community gardens have been promoted in recent years as an effective means to locally combat food insecurity, close open loops in local food systems, and introduce a more balanced economy overall to the local area. Although community gardens can be part of a suite of solutions for addressing food insecurity in the U.S., they alone cannot fix food insecurity, particularly due to their potential to entrench neoliberal policy. Under neoliberal capitalism, citizens are encouraged to provide individually for their own welfare as the government spends its capital and energy on sustaining economic market growth and providing profits to business stakeholders. Under this model, then, community gardens are promoted as a means for citizens and nonprofits to provide for themselves and allows city and state governments to further reduce social welfare budgets. The success and stability of these gardens, however, relies on citizens’ own resources, knowledge, and skills, which can be difficult for low-income communities to sacrifice while trying to meet their own basic needs. Neoliberal capitalism also simultaneously conscripts community gardens as it promotes them, with governing institutions often perceiving them as temporary uses of currently vacant land, rather than permanent fixtures to inject nature and nutrients into low-income, low-access communities. Thus many U.S. families and communities cannot afford food, but political and economic institutions often do not consider it profitable or productive enough to provide food to these communities or to allow them to provide food for themselves. If one believes, as I do, that governments hold some responsibility for the welfare and safety of their citizens, forsaking that responsibility for capital gains and profits is a serious failing.