Civic Agriculture: a Theoretical Approach between Community and Neodurkheimian Theories. The Experience
of Community Gardening. The crisis of conventional agriculture has highlighted the opportunities and the challenges
for developing a locally-based agriculture, leading to: a) re-locate part of locally based (in situ) agriculture in order to
increase self-sufficiency, differentiate production through specialization in gardens for vegetables, small fruits (berries)
and kitchen (eggs, poultry etc); b) avoid competition with conventional farming (mainly cereal production); c) reduce
transportation costs that became prohibitive; and d) promote direct sale to local people (farmer markets). After examining
the theoretical basis of the concepts of “ local communities” and of “civic agriculture”, we attempt to identify the
contradictions of both of them and to formulate a new concept of civic agriculture resulting from a synthesis of U.S. and
European experiences about community gardening.
