ABSTRACT
Importance of local food is increasingly visible and is realized in communities’ daily life. A local food movement from grassroot up to a global scale is already happening. Havana, Cuba, is a leading example of growing food locally on any available urban spaces such as balconies, backyards, and empty lots in achieving self-reliance in the event of a severe food shortage (Organic Vision 2011). Buchmann’s (2009) study supports that Cuban home gardens act as community’s important land resource for providing householders’ food demand and socioecological resilience. In 1999, allotment gardens in London produced 232,000 tons of fruits and vegetables supplying 18% of the population’s daily intake as per the World Health Organization (WHO) recommendations (Garnett 1999). Spatial hierarchy of spaces for growing local food could include different typologies of spaces: urban farms, home gardens, community and allotment gardens, school gardens, green roofs, street gardens, and others (Ghosh 2013). These spaces differ in their ownership patterns, participation and capacity building, production potential, quality and amount of produce, locational aspects, health contributions, and therapeutic supports (Ghosh 2010). As an alternative food production system, open land areas locked in millions of private and public outdoor spaces if put to productive uses could signicantly improve global food security and public health (Ghosh 2010). Vegetables could be easily grown in these smaller spaces within urban-built environments close to home. Vegetables intake as an important part of our daily diet could reduce the occurrence of cardiovascular diseases, micronutrient deciencies, obesity, diabetes, and cerebrovascular disease, and lower the risks of some cancers to 30%–40% (WHO 1990 and WCRF 1997 as quoted in Pederson and Robertson [2001]).
