{"id":111320,"key":"Community_action_food_projects","title":"Community action food projects","latest":{"id":1273306,"timestamp":"2026-09-16T13:22:14Z"},"content_model":"wikitext","license":{"url":"https://www.appropedia.org/Appropedia:Copyrights","title":"CC-BY-SA-4.0"},"source":"[[File:Community garden in Ottawa.jpg|thumb|Strathcona Heights Community Garden in Ottawa. Attribution: Tobi McIntyre]]\n\nThis article is a spin-off from CASwiki's [[Food activism]] page. Other spin-off articles include [[Food activism resources]] and [[Food news]].\n\n== Allotment gardening ==\n\n[[File:Zürich - Käferberg - Affoltern IMG 3194.JPG|thumb|Typical allotments on the Käferberg hill in Zürich, [[Switzerland]], Attribution: Roland zh]]\n\nThe Luxembourg-based Office International du Coin de Terre et des Jardins Familiaux, representing three million European allotment gardeners since 1926, describes the socio-cultural and economic functions of allotment gardens as offering an improved quality of life, an enjoyable and profitable hobby, relaxation, and contact with nature. For children, gardens offer places to play and to learn about nature, while for the unemployed, they offer a feeling of doing something useful as well as low-cost food. For the elderly and disabled, gardens offer an opportunity to meet people, to share in activity with like-minded people, and to experience activities like planting and harvesting. {{W|Allotment (gardening)}}\n\n== Alternate wetting and drying ==\n\n{{Newslist|keyword=Awd|year=2023}}\n\n{{Wikipedia excerpt|Alternate wetting and drying}}\n\n== Bioregional cookbook ==\n\n* How to write a cookbook for your bioregion\n\n{{Excerpt|How to write a cookbook for your bioregion}}\n\n''see also'': [[Bioregional cookbook]], [[Locally Delicious - The book]]\n\n== City farms ==\n\nCity farms are usually community-run projects in urban areas, which involve people interacting and working with animals and plants. They aim to improve community relationships and offer an awareness of agriculture and farming to people who live in built-up areas.\n\nThey vary in size from small plots on housing estates to larger farms that occupy a number of acres. It is estimated that more than three million people visit city farms each year and around half a million people work on them as volunteers. Although some city farms have paid employees, most rely heavily on volunteer labour, and some are run by volunteers alone. Others operate as partnerships with local authorities. {{W|City farm}}\n\n== Community fridge ==\n\n{{Wikipedia excerpt|Community fridge}}\n\n== Community gardening ==\n\n{{Excerpt|Community gardens}}\n\n<blockquote>\n\nWhat if some of the spaces we overlook every day could become places that feed, connect, and strengthen an entire community? Community gardens show how sustainability can begin right where people live. They transform shared or unused spaces into places where residents can grow fresh food, build relationships, and become active participants in improving their neighborhoods.\n\nThis practice resonates with me because access to fresh and affordable food can still be a challenge in many urban communities. Community gardens can help address that challenge while encouraging practices such as composting, water conservation, and responsible use of land. What makes this practice especially meaningful is that its benefits extend beyond the environment. It can create a sense of ownership, connection, and pride among residents.\n\nTo me, community gardening demonstrates that sustainability does not always require a massive project or major investment. Meaningful change can begin on a much smaller scale when people recognize the potential within their own neighborhoods. A community garden can turn an overlooked space into a resource that provides food, encourages environmental responsibility, brings neighbors together, and creates something future generations can continue to benefit from. It reminds us that communities do not always have to wait for change to come from somewhere else; residents can become part of creating that change themselves. Sometimes sustainability starts with a piece of land, a shared purpose, and people willing to grow something together. Mmbella26 (talk) 03:43, 27 August 2026 (UTC) [[Talk:Community gardens]]\n\n</blockquote>\n\nCommunity gardens provide fresh produce and plants as well as satisfying labor, neighborhood improvement, sense of community and connection to the environment. They are publicly functioning in terms of ownership, access, and management, as well as typically owned in trust by local governments or not for profit associations. {{W|Community gardening}}\n\n== Community-supported agriculture ==\n\n{{Excerpt|Community-supported agriculture}}\n\n== Community-supported fishery ==\n\nA community-supported fishery (CSF) is an alternative business model for selling fresh, locally sourced seafood. CSF programs, modeled after increasingly popular community-supported agriculture programs, offer members weekly shares of fresh seafood for a pre-paid membership fee. The first CSF program was started in Port Clyde, [[Maine]], in 2007, and similar CSF programs have since been started across the [[United States]] and in [[Europe]]. Community supported fisheries aim to promote a positive relationship between fishermen, consumers, and the ocean by providing high-quality, locally caught seafood to members. CSF programs began as a method to help marine ecosystems recover from the effects of overfishing while maintaining a thriving fishing community. {{W|Community-supported fishery}}\n\n== Food cooperative ==\n\nA food cooperative or food co-op is a food distribution outlet organized as a cooperative. Food cooperatives are usually consumers' cooperatives where the decisions regarding the production and distribution of its food is chosen by its members. Food cooperatives follow the 7 Cooperative Principles and typically offer natural foods. Since decisions about how to run a cooperative are not made by outside shareholders, cooperatives often exhibit a higher degree of social responsibility than their corporate analogues. {{W|Food cooperative}}\n\n== Forest gardens ==\n\n{{Excerpt|Forest gardens}}\n\n== Garden sharing ==\n\n{{Excerpt|Yardsharing|paragraphs=1}}\n\n'''Garden sharing''' is a local food and urban farming arrangement where a landowner allows a gardener access to land, typically a front or back yard, in order to grow food. This may be an informal, one-to-one relationship, but numerous Web-based projects exist to facilitate matchmaking. In some cases, garden sharing projects are launched as a way to shorten community garden waiting lists that are common in many cities. {{W|Garden sharing}}\n\n== Gleaning or Food rescue ==\n\nGleaning is the act of collecting leftover crops from farmers' fields after they have been commercially harvested or on fields where it is not economically profitable to harvest. Some ancient cultures promoted gleaning as an early form of a welfare system. {{W|Gleaning}}\n\nFood rescue, also called food recovery, is the practice of safely retrieving edible food that would otherwise go to waste, and distributing it to those in need. Organizations that encourage food recovery, food rescue, sharing, gleaning and similar waste-avoidance schemes come under the umbrella of food banks, food pantries or soup kitchens. {{W|Food rescue}}\n\n== Guerrilla gardening ==\n\n{{Excerpt|Guerrilla gardening}}\n\n== Incredible Edible Town ==\n\n{{Excerpt|How to set up an Incredible Edible Town}}\n\n== Organise food events ==\n\nExamples include:\n\n* Celebratory feasts such as harvest festivals or just social gatherings centred around a meal: a potluck, bring and share food, or a potlatch, see [[United States#Free stuff]]\n* Free Compost Give Away Day\n* Solar Cookout, for example Sustainable NE Seattle's [http://web.archive.org/web/20160414203904/http://sustainableneseattle.ning.com/events/second-annual-solar-cookout Second Annual Solar Cookout!]\n\n== Regenerative agriculture ==\n\n{{Video\n| video = 6vQW8Tl_KLc\n| title = 'From the Ground Up – Regenerative Agriculture'\n| authors = festival21, Jul 28, 2019\n}}\n\n{{Wikipedia excerpt|Regenerative agriculture}}\n\n== School-community kitchens ==\n\nSchool-Community Kitchens Concept Paper, [https://www.ecoliteracy.org/downloads/school-community-kitchens Center for Ecoliteracy]\n\n== Seed library ==\n\n{{Video|t8-VoWYQs5k}}\n\n[[File:Openforbusiness.jpg|424px|thumb|The Seed Library of [[Los Angeles]]. Attribution: Kathryn Brown]]\n\nA seed library is an institution that lends or shares seed. It is distinguished from a seedbank in that the main purpose is not to store or hold germplasm or seeds against possible destruction, but to disseminate them to the public which preserves the shared plant varieties through propagation and further sharing of seed. Seed libraries usually maintain their collections through donations from members, but may also operate as pure charity operations intent on serving gardeners and farmers. A common attribute of many seed libraries is to preserve agricultural [[biodiversity]] by focusing on rare, local, and heirloom seed varieties. {{W|Seed library}}\n\n'''External links'''\n\n* [https://seedalliance.org/ Organic Seed Alliance]\n* [https://seedlibraries.org/ the seed library social network]\n* [https://seedlibraries.net/ seedlibraries.net]\n* [https://seedlibraries.weebly.com/sister-libraries.html Sister Libraries], worldwide seed lending libraries listings\n\n== Seed swap ==\n\nSeed swaps can be arranged online or by mail, especially when participants are spread out geographically. Some events are organized as part of an educational effort, where visitors are taught gardening and growing skills and how to preserve an area's cultural heritage and [[biodiversity]]. {{W|Seed swap}}\n\n== Seedy Sunday ==\n\nSeedy Sunday or Seedy Saturday is a catchphrase used for seed swap events that bring the public together with seed savers, to maintain and develop the open pollinated and heritage crop cultivars that are a resource in a community. In some communities the event is a gardening show or may feature local chefs using the heritage plants and seeds. The titles Seedy Saturday and Seedy Sunday are dedicated to the public domain by the event founder Sharon Rempel..''[citation needed]''\n\nThe heart of a Seedy Sunday or Seedy Saturday event is the swapping and sale of seeds or other propagation material for public-domain plant cultivars that that have been preserved or developed by individuals or families. These may not require high-input agriculture, and are variously described as landraces, folk varieties, farmer varieties and heritage seed. Sharing information about the social, cultural and culinary aspects of the seed is an important part of heritage seed saving around the world. Providing education about techniques for seed-saving, small-scale agriculture and horticulture, and about local, national and international laws that affect public-domain crop plants can also be an important part of the event. {{W|Seedy Sunday}}\n\n== Other community action projects ==\n\n''see also'': [[Food activism resources#How to's|How to's]]\n\n* Abundance schemes to collect and share food using bicycle trailers\n* Community allotments\n* Community Farm Land Trusts\n* Community greenhouse, ''eg see [[Food news#2013]]''\n* Community harvest related events, eg community apple juicing\n* Community orchards\n* Farmers markets, set one up or support most local ones\n* Bulk buy schemes\n* Fruit tree mapping\n* Gardening clubs, eg for specific types of gardening: organic, [[permaculture]], etc.\n* Gardening match up service\n* Healthy eating initiatives\n* [[Food activism#Local Foodshed Mapping|Local Foodshed Mapping]]\n* Local recipe collections\n* Seed saving and sharing\n* Sharing cooking skills, for example with younger people or younger parents\n* Slow food initiatives\n* Support wider initiatives such as Meat Free Mondays\n* Visit an organic farm\n\n{{Basic needs footer}}\n\n'''See also''': [[Food security]], [[Food Sovereignty]], [[Portal:Food and agriculture]], [[Agroecology]], [[Biodiversity]], [[Ethical consumerism]], [[Free stuff]], [[Localism]], [[Sharing]], [[Community land trust]]\n\n{{Localtopic}}\n\n{{CASwiki footer}}\n\n{{Page data\n| keywords = Community action project\n}}\n\n[[Category:Community action project]]\n[[Category:Food]]"}