• Energy Research

This paper describes the development of care farming in the Netherlands, one of the pioneering countries in this sector, where care farming has developed into a very diverse sector, with some farmers focussing primarily on agricultural production and others more specifically on providing care services. Care farms are increasingly open to a diversity of participants. The sector has become professionalised with the establishment of strong regional organisations and a steady growth increase in revenues, providing employment opportunities and boosting the economy of rural areas. In this paper, we highlight two promising innovations in care farming: education for school dropouts and the establishment of social farming activities in cities. These innovations face the challenge of connecting not only the agricultural and care sectors, but also the educational sector and the urban context. Initiators face a number of challenges, like trying to embed their activities in the educational sector, a mismatch in regulations and a lack of legitimacy in the case of education on care farms, as well as problems gaining access to land and a lack of recognition in the case of social farming in urban areas. However, the prospects are promising in both cases, because they match the changing demands in Dutch society and are able to integrate social, ecological and economic benefits.

AbstractThis paper explores the concept of prosumption in the world of food. Prosumption is a combination of production and consumption: food prosumers are people who actively produce food for self‐consumption. Besides reflecting on sociological conceptualisations of prosumption, this exploratory study uses an online survey (N = 835) and semi‐structured interviews (N = 12) to examine prosumption empirically. Respondents, living in Almere, the Netherlands, have mostly personal and pragmatic reasons, such as the enjoyment of gardening and the pleasure of producing food, to engage in some form of prosumption. Respondents are hardly motivated by profound concerns about sustainability or a wish to create a ‘radical’ alternative food system. We argue, therefore, that a more pragmatic approach to the concept of prosumption in the field of food is more appropriate than sociological interpretations linking prosumption to such grand themes as power, capitalism and activism.

Het project Agropark Flevoland bouwt voort op de cradle-to-cradlegedachte. Het streven is regionale kringlopen te sluiten en de economische duurzaamheid te versterken. Cruciaal daarbij is hoe zo’n globale ambitie zich verbindt met de dynamiek in bestaande netwerken van ondernemers, overheden en burgers. In dit project hebben onderzoekers een rol hebben gespeeld in het maken van deze verbinding.

This paper explores the concept of prosumption in the world of food. Prosumption is a combination of production and consumption: food prosumers are people who actively produce food for self‐consumption. Besides reflecting on sociological conceptualisations of prosumption, this exploratory study uses an online survey (N = 835) and semi‐structured interviews (N = 12) to examine prosumption empirically. Respondents, living in Almere, the Netherlands, have mostly personal and pragmatic reasons, such as the enjoyment of gardening and the pleasure of producing food, to engage in some form of prosumption. Respondents are hardly motivated by profound concerns about sustainability or a wish to create a ‘radical’ alternative food system. We argue, therefore, that a more pragmatic approach to the concept of prosumption in the field of food is more appropriate than sociological interpretations linking prosumption to such grand themes as power, capitalism and activism.

Questions have arisen about the sustainability of the industrialised food system. Alternatives like urban agriculture have emerged to reduce the negative social, environmental and health impacts of industrial agriculture. Such new food supply chains can change the way that people acquire and process food. This study looks at high-tech indoor gardening practices in nursing homes for elderly people, studying four nursing homes in the Dutch city of Velp. We used both qualitative and quantitative approaches to collect data, using site visits, a survey amongst employees, and semi-structured interviewees with residents and decision makers. Inspired by social practice theory, we aimed to understand the transformation of existing practices, investigating how the gardens affect cooking and eating practices, and how their constitutive elements of meaning, material and competences enable these transformations. Our work shows that the indoor gardens resulted in an integration of gardening and the resulting harvest into cooking practices, which in turn transformed residents’ eating practices. Appreciation of the taste of fresh vegetables and appearance of the meal decorated by fresh vegetables, as well as observing the growth of plants and their use, holds value for the elderly residents. Employees welcome the possibility to serve healthier meals. The integration of indoor gardens in existing cooking practices is more successful when employees have gardening and/or cooking competences, when they enjoy cooking and when they do not already cook with fresh ingredients. The gardens are more easily integrated when they are easily accessible. The materiality of the gardens does not require fully equipped kitchens.

While urban gardening and food provisioning have become well-established subjects of academic inquiry, these practices are given different meanings depending on where they are performed. In this paper, we scrutinise different framings used in the literature on food self-provisioning in Eastern and Western Europe. In the Western context, food self-provisioning is often mentioned alongside other alternative food networks and implicitly framed as an activist practice. In comparison, food self-provisioning in Central and Eastern Europe has until recently been portrayed as a coping strategy motivated by economic needs and underdeveloped markets. Our research used two case studies of allotment gardening from both Western and Eastern Europe to investigate the legitimacy of the diverse framings these practices have received in the literature. Drawing on social practice theory, we examined the meanings of food self-provisioning for allotment gardeners in Czechia and the Netherlands, as well as the material manifestations of this practice. We conclude that, despite minor differences, allotment gardeners in both countries are essentially ‘doing the same thing.’ We thus argue that assuming differences based on different contexts is too simplistic, as are the binary categories of ‘activist alternative’ versus ‘economic need.’

This paper studies a Dutch meal sharing platform in order to understand what it means to engage in face-to-face sharing with strangers and what the performance of such transactions entails. I hypothesize that this meal sharing platform is a form of community self-organization, aiming to replace the anonymity of the food system by the creation of community relations through sharing. I used semistructured interviews, participant observations, and autoethnography to investigate the social aspects involved in this type of sharing. Focusing on rules of engagement, trust, exchange, and commodification, I argue that while first encounters in stranger food sharing may be awkward, people enter the transaction from a perspective of trust. While sharing meals through this platform is a form of true sharing and no direct reciprocity is required, consumers see their appreciation for the meals as a way to reciprocate. In that sense, positive reviews consolidate the relations between cook and consumer. Money also plays an important role in the transaction, enabling it to take place as it clarifies roles and responsibilities and shows genuine interest. However, commodification also means that users are looking for value for money, while simultaneously they expect the price to reflect the initiative’s “noncommercialness”. I conclude that there is a clear social element in this particular type of meal sharing that distinguishes it from more mainstream economic transactions. Being based on real connections, this particular performance of sharing is a way to socialize the economy, and to tackle local community problems.

Geïnspireerd door het project Agromere nemen de stad Almere en zijn regionale partners stadslandbouw als uitgangspunt voor het toekomstige Almere Oosterwold. Stadslandbouw sluit aan bij de verloren identiteit van de stad: The Garden City van Ebenezer Howard. Een analyse van hoe Agromere tot dit succes heeft geleid.