How can home and community gardens support food self-sufficiency in Hawai’i?

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How can home and community gardens support food self-sufficiency in Hawai’i? By addressing scholarship from global, American and Pacific perspectives, this annotated bibliography includes research that the extent to which the home and community garden can be a fruitful means to support urban and regional food self-sufficiency movements. More often than not, home and community garden movements are utilized by developing (as seen in some of the global/pacific-focused research) and lower socio-economic communities (as seen in the American research) to support larger food security movements, and to counter health concerns and unequal distribution of food . Missing from the research is the use of home and community gardens by mainstream populations and those of higher socio-economic status. Arguably, for home and community gardens to be utilized on a level that impacts urban/regional food self-sufficiency, they will have to be harnessed by the majority, and not just relegated to initiatives for the lower-socio-economic, often marginalized, communities.

Not considered here, but equally pervasive in the literature, are the home and community garden as a repository of biological diversity and ecological sustainability; and the incorporation of gardens in school curriculum, particularly as a strategy to address nutritional and dietary issues among youth.

Annotated Bibliography and Articles attached.