ABSTRACT

‘Grow-your-own’ projects and community-based food self-provisioning (FSP) are nowadays regarded as vital components of alternative/local food systems (Balázs, 2012; Wiskerke and Viljoen, 2012 ). The growing popularity of community-based food self-provisioning has already attracted significant scholarship on various levels (national, regional, household, individual) on the topic, with the adoption of different perspectives (micro and macro) and disciplinary foci (Czegledy, 2002; Eyzaguirre and Bailey, 2009; Schmutz et al., 2014; De Hoop and Jehlička, 2017). This literature defines community-based food self-provisioning as the production and distribution of food by means other than buying and selling: in other words, a non-market distribution of local foods. It is accomplished primarily by gifting and bartering. It is informal, with no written agreements relating to the transactions. Beyond self-supply, barter and gifting of the surplus are central to FSP as practised by gardeners and non-farming households on private plots of land, fields or orchards (Jehlička and Smith, 2012).