The public produce model of urban farming or community gardening differs in significant ways from the capitalist economy. These spaces may offer an alternative pro-social ethics at the point of production. Although spaces explored in this work exist far apart from one another geographically, they represent examples of what might be considered a form of utopian socialism operating in parallel to the economy at large, but they lack political representation. This study focuses on three food growing spaces in South-Eastern British Columbia, using Community Based Participatory Research (CBPR). Such spaces provide social and environmental benefits that markets often fail to address, and the people involved recognize this challenge. It is argued that financial precarity warrants development of consistent funding streams as part of a provincial health program to address food sovereignty, while helping mitigate devasting impacts of climate change and the atomization of the individual.
