La Cosecha Community Garden, which blends art and food and is part of the HEAL Program, a diabetes self-management program for Spanish-speaking residents of Vancouver.
Lucy Jarosz’s research project, “How Local Food Systems Address Hunger” compares how hunger is addressed through community gardening and urban farming in Vancouver, British Columbia, and Seattle, Washington. Through a series of interviews with gardeners, urban farmers, food distribution and food banking directors, it examines the motivations and experiences of the people working to produce and distribute fresh, locally and organically grown produce to those who cannot afford to buy it. This comparative project investigates the emergence and development of urban gardening and farming projects designed to give food to those most vulnerable members of each community in order to identify the constraints and challenges local food systems face as the numbers of hungry people increase in each nation due to changes in social policy, the current economic crisis and the continued global and regional rise in food prices.
Lucy Jarosz is an Associate Professor in the Department of Geography. Her research centers upon food and agriculture, rural poverty and inequality, and rural development and environmental change. She was awarded a 2010-11 Faculty Research Grant from the Government of Canada for her project comparing local food systems in British Columbia and Washington.