Community Gardens Essay

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Community Gardens Community gardens is a movement that started off as an attempt to get back to rural beginning before evolving as a protest against present food corporations. Community gardens can date back all the way back to the 1930s', becoming more pronounced during the great depression, as some families tried to move against the urban sprawl but the movement was drowned out as farmers found themselves in poverty (Patterson). Nowadays, community gardens find their voice through starting gardens on government land, then making and producing their own food. Sometimes these gardens are grown with permissions, other times not so much which is why that version is aptly named "Guerilla gardening" (Solnit). The defining characteristics of this movement, are the members of a community all coming together to start a garden on a piece of land. Some cities are encouraging of this if the garden is started without permission, though on occasion will cave in to pressures from other corporations who want the land themselves. Although sometimes technically "squatting", community gardens often will serve as a way to feed lower income families, and even provides jobs (Archambault). Community gardens are a positive influence in the food world; this essay will explore how and why. These gardens, which are basically agricultural markets, serves as a way to find and serve food that has been directly cared for by its patrons, who are the same people that end up with a meal from these gardens. Rather than go to a supermarket and have no idea where any of the produce came from or how it was made, community gardens serve in its self reliance that a community can trust where its food sources are coming from. Its goals are to not only to protest against food corporations but to also find a way to increase employment and education in its members. Community gardens find a way

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