Who Really Participates in United States Urban Agriculture?

MILWAUKEE, Sept. 29, 2020 /PRNewswire-PRWeb/ -- The Research and Markets website says that due to the global pandemic, there is a new trend toward gardening for many households. Early on during the COVID-19 lockdowns, people turned towards gardening for their food security or food self-sufficiency, a phenomemon that harks back to the Victory Gardens this country saw in wartime.

Marc F. Bellemare and Vaneesha Dusoruth, from the University of Minnesota, look into who practices urban agriculture in a new article published in Applied Economic Perspectives & Policy aptly titled "Who Participates in Urban Agriculture? An Empirical Analysis."

Bellemare says, "Urban agriculture seems to be a luxury good. In layperson's terms, urban agriculture really is more of a hobby that is practiced by people who have the means to do so, either in terms of being able to afford to take the time off, in terms of knowledge, or in terms of having the requisite amount of space to practice it. So the usual policy prescription that the poor should practice urban agriculture because it would improve their diets is off-target, quite literally."

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ABOUT AAEA: Established in 1910, the Agricultural & Applied Economics Association (AAEA) is the leading professional association for agricultural and applied economists, with 2,500 members in more than 60 countries. Members of the AAEA work in academic or government institutions as well as in industry and not-for-profit organizations, and engage in a variety of research, teaching, and outreach activities in the areas of agriculture, the environment, food, health, and international development. The AAEA publishes two journals, the American Journal of Agricultural Economics and Applied Economic Perspectives & Policy, as well as the online magazine Choices and the online open access publication series Applied Economics Teaching Resources. To learn more, visit http://www.aaea.org.

SOURCE Agricultural & Applied Economics Association