‘Growing your own’: A multi-level modelling approach to understanding personal food growing trends and motivations in Europe
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Issue Date
2015-01-09Subjects
gentrificationhappiness
independence
sufficiency
Subject Categories::F810 Environmental Geography
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Growing food for personal and family consumption is a significant global activity, but one that has received insufficient academic attention, particularly in developed countries. This paper uses data from the European Quality of Life Survey (EQLS) to address three areas of particular concern: the prevalence of growing your own food and how this has changed over time; the individual and household context in which growing takes place; and whether those who grow their own food are happier than those who do not. Results showed that there was a marked increase in growing your own food in Europe, in the period 2003–2007. This increase is largely associated with poorer households and thus, possibly, economic hardship. In the UK however the increase in growing your own food is predominantly associated with older middle class households. Across Europe, whether causal or not, those who grew their own were happier than those who did not. The paper therefore concludes that claims about the gentrification of growing your own may be premature. Despite contrary evidence from the UK, the dominant motive across Europe appears to be primarily economic — to reduce household expenditure whilst ensuring a supply of fresh food.Citation
Church A, Mitchell R, Ravenscroft N, Stapleton L (2015) '‘Growing your own’: A multi-level modelling approach to understanding personal food growing trends and motivations in Europe', Ecological Economics, 110 (), pp.71-80.Journal
Ecological EconomicsAdditional Links
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0921800914003693Type
ArticleLanguage
enISSN
0921-8009Sponsors
K Arts and Humanities Research Council (grant numbers AH/E50292X/1 and AH/J006866/1)ae974a485f413a2113503eed53cd6c53
10.1016/j.ecolecon.2014.12.002
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