Civic agriculture in the local communities: U.S. agro-industrial districts and European experience. 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.
