The benefits of home-grown produce
If you’ve ever lived next door to a family from Italy or Greece, you probably noticed a big difference between their backyards (or balconies) and your own. Where yours might have had lawn (or decorative pot plants), theirs was devoted to fruit and vegetables.
When Italian and Greek families led the post-WW2 migration wave, they brought a habit from home – growing your own food.
It was partly motivated by the desire for flavours from home. Typical backyard crops like eggplant, okra and zucchini were rare in Australia before the 1950s.
Later migrants from Vietnam, Philippines, India and China introduced more foods that have become staples of the Australian diet.
Diversity of ingredients isn’t the only reason to choose to grow your own food. Replacing lawns with food gardens in Australia provides significant health and well-being benefits.
Gardening involves physical exercise like weeding and tilling, which improves physical fitness. It also promotes relaxation and happiness and has benefits for mental health.
Growing your own fruit and vegetables means you can have access to pesticide-free, nutrient-rich food, which can help fight obesity and other diet-related diseases.
It can reduce food waste. People who start growing their own food often develop a greater appreciation for it. It’s less likely to be thrown out.
Environmentally, growing your own food reduces your carbon footprint.
You reduce freight and fuel. Growing food locally eliminates the extensive energy used for transporting produce from farms to markets and supermarkets, reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
Home growers generally use fewer pesticides than big farms. Home gardens tend to be more biodiverse and smaller-scale, making it easier to use natural pest control methods and reduce the overall use of chemical herbicides and fungicides. This biodiversity provides habitats and food sources for pollinators and beneficial insects, contributing to a healthier local ecosystem.
Growing your own food can save money on grocery bills, especially for expensive items like capsicums. With Australian families under ever-increasing cost-of-living stress, a home veggie patch helps relieve financial stress.
Gardening can be a shared activity, connecting people to their communities and fostering social engagement. Accommodation provided for migrants to Australia often have communal vegetable gardens. People from diverse cultures share their produce (and recipes) with each other.
At IIF, our farmers follow many of the principles of home farmers – biodiversity, heirloom and unusual varieties, less reliance on pesticides, and a food-to-table approach to food production. In the few years IIF has been going, we have partnered with farmers introducing new foods, and others committed to growing traditional varieties with love and care.
You can support our farmers by joining the IIF Co-operative. You can read about the benefits here.
