Urban Agriculture as Resistance: A Case of Community Gardening

<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:107%;font-family:&quot;Times New Roman&quot;,serif">Capitalistagricultural production, ecological crisis, and concerns about food securityand sustainability have created various responses. Urban agriculture is amongthe responses to the metabolic rift, to the extent that engaging in farming andgardening in urban contexts challenges both the rural-urban divide and thealienation of human from nature. In addition, the practices of urbanagriculture are not limited to ensuring access to food or pursuing moreenvironment-friendly but still market-oriented farming methods; but alsoinvolve radical forms like reclaiming the commons, establishing solidarityamong the community, collective labouring followed by collective consumption,seed sharing, restoring the use value of the products, breaking the commoditychains, and ensuring responsiveness to the local dynamics, thereby contributingalso to bottom-up resistance mechanisms.<o:p></o:p></span> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:107%;font-family:&quot;Times New Roman&quot;,serif">Neoliberalismdeepens the impact of capitalist production on environment in the Global South,due to the pace of changing social relations. As consequences of neoliberaltransformation of agriculture and enormous investments in the constructionsector, rapid and unplanned urbanization affect the current images of cities inTurkey. Under these processes, Batikent, a district of the capital Ankara, oncedesigned as a project against negative results of unplanned urbanization withits emphasis on urban cooperativism and green spaces, ironically turned into aconcrete jungle, with green increasingly locked in the mushrooming gatedcommunities. <o:p></o:p></span> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:107%;font-family:&quot;Times New Roman&quot;,serif">Asopposite to this image, there is Ilkyerlesim Neighbourhood Garden, an exampleof urban agriculture initiatives. By focusing on the experiences of peopleinvolved in this case, this paper questions the relationship between urbanagriculture practices and metabolic rift, neoliberalism, and a possiblealternative for market relations. The data has been collected throughparticipant observation and in-depth interviews during the farming season of2024.&nbsp;<o:p></o:p></span>