There is a range of benefits that sprout from growing your own food at home regardless of whether you have acres of land or a windowsill to grow on. Supplement your homes food supply and start growing today.
Benefits of growing your own food:
1. Save money
You can slash the cost of your grocery bill by growing your own food at home. While it might not be realistic to grow all of your own food you can certainly supplement the contents of your fridge and pantry with home grown food. Additionally, with many plants you can use the seed from the previous growing season to grow a new batch, creating a self sustaining cycle without the need to buy anything.
2. Lower your impact
You can’t get much more local than your backyard! Home grown food has zero food miles and doesn’t require packaging. Transport and long-term storage is a significant contributor to global emissions, the shorter the distance the food needs to travel to get to your plate to lower the impact.
3. Know what’s in your food
Industrial agriculture utilises an array of chemicals in food production. Here in Australia over 8000 pesticides and veterinary products are registered for use. More than 80 of these are prohibited throughout Europe due to unacceptable environmental impacts and risks to human health. If you grow your own food you can control what goes into it and follow organic practices.
4. Improve your health
Gardening is a great way of getting some regular moderate physical exercise, it can also be fantastic for your mental health by reducing stress levels. Furthermore, its likely you’ll end up eating more fruits and vegetables if they are growing in your backyard, they’ll be much fresher too!
5. Social inclusion
Growing food at home and in the community can help enhance social inclusion. Costa Georgiadis (Gardening Australia, ABC) believes “Growing local produce grows local connections” by way of creating social pathways between people who might not otherwise interact socially.
6. Expand your food horizons
Typical large scale agriculture operations grow a handful of varieties that stand up to the rigors of travel and long term storage. When growing at home you can experiment with hundreds of different heritage varieties and find your favourites.
7. Connection to food production
The industrialisation of agriculture and continuing global urbanisation has left fewer of us maintaining any direct connection to farming or where our food comes from. This disconnect “would appear to have resulted in a loss of respect for food with resultant waste, declining support for rural communities and lower intakes in agricultural and food technology training programs” (PMSEIC, 2010).
Encouraging people to grow their own food or communicate directly with local producers at farmers markets may help restore a respect and understanding of food.
Haven’t done much gardening before? Not sure where to start? Checkout our Gettin’ Growing page for a quick guide to getting started growing your own food at home.
The Grow It’ Yo Self Campaign
Our campaign aims to support and encourage home, community and local food production. With a primary focus on getting more people to grow their own food at home, regardless of if they have acres of land or a windowsill to grow on.
Growing your own food can be extremely rewarding and doesn’t require acres of farmland. You can grow on a balcony, a rooftop or even a windowsill! So what are you waiting for? Start growing your own food today! And while you’re at it, get involved with the Grow It Yo’ Self campaign and help us get more people growing their own food.