An AnnoTATEd STudEnT RESEARCHEd ARgumEnT 205the Journal of Public Health Policy and the Journal of Nutrition
Education and show the interrelatedness of nutritional access
and availability to healthy personal choices. While these trends
toward healthful lifestyles and gardening have been gaining
ground slowly in the United States, when food insecurity and
poverty take their toll, cities are finding that urban agriculture
is an increasingly attractive and profitable alternative.
American communities have shown that creativity and
collaboration can be quite effective at reversing food inse
curity. The Garden Project of the Greater Lansing Food Bank has
successfully combined gardening and Midwest access to local
farms to bring food security to urban residents and senior citi-
zens. Their eighteen community gardens and volunteers provide
fresh fruits and vegetables year-round to low-income families,
food pantries, the elderly, and social service organizations. Com-
pletely bypassing the commercial market, the Garden Project has
trained 500 families to grow their own food in backyard plots
so that they can always have healthy food in the midst of the
city (Brown and Carter 1). The gardens are supplemented by a
process known as “gleaning,” in which volunteers harvest extra
crops from local farmers that would otherwise go to waste, and
deliver it to residents of subsidized housing (“Gleaning”). In
2008 alone, the Garden Project actively involved 2,500 individ-
ual gardeners and was able to provide over 250,000 pounds of
produce from gleaning alone, plus the yields of the community
plots that were used directly by the gardeners (“GLFB Facts”).
This Lansing coalition serves over 5,000 individuals per month,
yet only 4,400 reside under the poverty line in the LaSalle
Square area (City-Data.com). If half of the inhabitants of LaSalle
Square became engaged in the gardening effort, a similar col-
laboration could meet the needs of the region, and greater par-
ticipation could yield an excess.
Similar efforts have demonstrated not only that inner-
city food production is achievable but also that it can be cost-
effective and self-sufficient, unlike a food bank. Frustrated by
the inner-city downturn she describes as “an overgrown dog
toilet,” industrious London entrepreneur Julie Brown created a
community gardening company aimed at providing unmecha-She synthesizes
different sources
to make her point.Paul 7121307_GRE_5344_Ch7_151_210.indd 205 11/19/14 1:59 PM