Derived from our research project literature review…
Community gardens can serve as a cost-effective way to acquire more nutritional food. But the economic impacts mostly align with activities of urban farms. Urban or Market farms will often locally distribute food through CSA or markets and through those sales they can employ gardeners and farmers.
Quantitative measures
The benefit measures for Economic impacts in most studies we’ve seen revolve around measures of turnover and revenue but also of the relative effort to grow that produce and the percentage of food sold that comes from locally grown sources. Further indicators around job readiness, creation and upskilling provide useful indicators for the incremental benefits of urban farms to a local community.
In a world facing the overwhelming challenges that come with climate change we can imagine a day where greenhouse gas emission mitigation, in the form of carbon credits, will become a tradable item for community gardens involved in the art of composting. See the carbon calculator tool further into this site for more information.
Qualitative measures
We don’t feature any qualitative benefits from an economic perspective in our study though we expect perception of resilience and personal development, as well as the various qualitative benefits of locally grown produce, for those involved could be collected through one on one interviews.
References
- Wakefeild, S., Yeudall, F., Taron, C., Reynolds, J., & Skinner, A. (2007). Growing Urban Health: Community Gardening in South-East Toronto. Oxford University Press.
To explore these impacts areas and measures in more detail look to the full Literature Review report further on this site.