Growing Greens in Cities for Healthy Lives and Spaces: The Case of Community Gardens in Chicago, Illinois Imparted to Philippine Situation

Abstract

Community gardening is a movement founded in the cultivation of crops reminiscent of home as food and those with healing properties alongside with the preservation of the environment to ensure health and socio-economic development. The movement allows accessibility of food directly to urban and peri-urban communities to pull off a healthy lifestyle that starts with pesticide-free vegetables and supply of affordable crops of their preference amidst an imbalance situation of race, ethnicity, economic resources, and of disruptive situations like the covid pandemic. The shared work and access to harvest among its members and volunteers also result in an enhanced solidarity that leads to participation and fairer decision-making akin to food sovereignty. The 15 community gardens visited, documented and described, and their leaders interviewed. The study show the utmost importance of ‘saving own seeds’ because of the dominance and practice of growing traditional crops (heirlooms) which are inbred lines or open pollinated varieties (OPVs). Their conservation is of prime concern for ensuring diversity, mitigating the adverse effects of climate change, and ensuring health and nutrition as these are grown organically which results to better tasting vegetables (and of meat, in few gardens). Other relevant insights are reorienting mindset specifically commitment, walking the talk, and users’ perspective like the youth; crafting a manual outlining the minimum requirements of gardens (i.e. clean water and soil analysis); heeding to clustering and consolidation of the entire value chain; and educating health workers on promoting a community of practice in their service facilities and area coverages.