Food supply

Improves food security - By making small and growing contributions to food supply in cities, you can buffer yourself against times when food supply from industrialised farming will drop significantly due to degraded farm land, uneconomical farming and lack of water.

Contribute to a change in farming methods - By reducing your consumption of the products of chemical farming and eating local you will encourage organic farming in your local area and your city.

Gives you more control over your food supply - By growing some of your own food or buying locally grown food, you can be confident you know where it has come from and how it is grown. You are making a responsible democratic gesture.

Encourage bio-diversity - By growing your own and eating organically grown food,you are encouraging bio-diversity in seeds and you can avoid GE food. The multi-nationals controlling industrialised farming are systematically reducing bio-diversity so they can control seed stocks.

Community development

Strengthen your community engagement - By growing food, you are likely to interact with others to gain knowledge and share experience. This human connection around a healthy positive pursuit will bring joy to your life.

Support local economy - Eating organically from local farms and growing some of your own food supports businesses and people in your local economy, instead of supporting multinational companies

Educating children - Growing food at home sets great example to your children on: how to care for the environment, how food is grown and what healthy food means. These are invaluable lessons in their development which will benefit society as they become adults.

Money

Save money - Growing your own food is an inexpensive past time with the greatest input being your labour. So you may say your time is money and if you seek to eat food grown in a healthy way, it is much more cost effective than buying it.

Fund your movement to organic food consumption - A common argument for not eating organic food is that it costs more the regular fruit and vegetables. By supplementing your supply of fruit and vegetables with home grown, the cost of eating all organic is not so noticeable

Additional income - When you get proficient at growing food, you will have surplus in season, even from a backyard garden. You can give this away to friends or generate some extra income by selling it. The Cityfood Growers Food Garden Market is designed to assist you with this.

Motivation

Do you have enough time? - This is the common objection with taking on any new initiative in life. Food gardening takes time, it not as easy as getting in the car and driving to the supermarket. So your decision is a matter of weighing up your priorities.

Will you maintain your passion? - Learning how to garden productively takes patience and an openness to observe and learn. Creating soil which is productive is an art. While you are learning your skill, the plants will suffer from bugs. Perseverance is vital and access to knowledge and support. This knowledge and support can be sourced from many places. At Cityfood Growers, support of our members to be more effective city living food growers is our primary purpose.

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