Enhancing food security

Beach on Pabbay, Outer Hebrides. (Photographer: Steve Addy. © James Hutton Institute)

The Community Empowerment (Scotland) Act 2015 requires every local authority to prepare a food growing strategy for its region to identify areas that could be used to grow food, and to describe how community growing, especially in areas which experience socio-economic disadvantage, can be increased. This statutory legislation shows how interest in food growing and urban agriculture has been increasing in recent years.

The benefits of food growing for individual and community health and wellbeing are well documented. Less well understood is the role that food growing can potentially play in enhancing food security at macro (community and region) and micro (household and family) levels.

Social researchers from the James Hutton Institute have been looking at food growing and community food hubs to better understand the relationships between food growing, urban food systems and enhanced food security. The research also examines the role of food growing and food-projects to address social issues including loneliness, isolation, mental and physical health, climate change and community cohesion.
The research is part of the Scottish Government’s Strategic Research Programme (2016-2021) [1] where it forms part of Work Package 3.3: Food Security.

This page will be used to share research outputs from the work.
If you would like further information on this research or on any content on this page, please contact Liz Dinnie [2].

Written outputs
Enquiry into local food growing Summary [3]

Local food growing and household food security [4]

Public perceptions on locally grown food [5]

Presentations

It's not really about food ...  [6] International Association People-Environment Studies, Rome, 2018

Food growing, food justice and sustainability [7]  Royal Geographic Society, Cardiff, 2018

A food systems approach to tackling food poverty [8]  Royal Society for the Arts, Aberdeen, 2019

Food growing and sustainable food systems  [9] British Sociological Association Food Study Group Conference, Prato, 2019

Urban food production and just food systems  [10] Food Geographies Working Group, How to make a just food future, Sheffield, 2019

Useful links

Aberdeen Food Growing Strategy Aberdeen Food Growing strategy [11]

Aberdeen Sustainable Food City Partnership Granite City Good Food [12]