Can Community Gardens Improve Food Banks and Food Centers? Lessons from two Southwestern Ontario cases

This thesis examines the efforts of the Local Community Food Center in Stratford, Ontario and the Women’s Rural Resource Center in Strathroy, Ontario to establish community gardening programs. The research centers on qualitative interviews with 9 key informants and 16 participants conducted from June to August of 2019, as well as participant observation in the gardens and the day-to-day operations of the institutions. The primary aim of this research was to understand how relationships between food banks, food centers, and community gardens function, and how community gardens can affect the food choices of regular users of food banks and food centers. It also explores the motivations for establishing and joining the community gardens, how participants view food from the community gardens, and why some participants are more engaged in community gardening than others. The analysis also considers the perceived health benefits of engagement in community gardens, as well as some of the limitations of community gardens for the organizations, garden participants, and food bank and food center users. A central conclusion is that while the volume of production from community gardens is not at a scale that can have significant impacts on the food security of participants, there are some significant positive individual and communal health benefits that are worthy of attention and suggest reasons why food banks and food centers should consider building these relationships wherever possible