Food Supply and Urban Gardening in the Time of Covid-19

Abstract

The pandemic caused by Covid-19 has highlighted the vulnerability of the agrifood system. The urgent need to supply fresh food has arisen everywhere. Lockdown slowed down the fresh vegetables supply in the long distance distribution chains. In addition, the total confinement occurred in many countries left the people not only distressed, but also in the need to divert daily spare time to a new home gardening vitalization. During the pandemic, sales in local and street markets declined dramatically, while most purchases became concentrated in supermarkets. This fact has increased the risk of crowdedness and thus contamination or regulated entrances in the supermarkets, or left communities in small towns with limited access to food supply due to the lack of big grocery stores. Gardening can increase opportunities for local and fresh food availability. Scaling-up local food production becomes important to increase resilience of communities. The pandemic may represent an important opportunity to enhance a new era of gardening with modern technology along with traditional systems.

Keywords

• home food production
• lockdown
• pandemic
• urban horticulture.