Food Self-Provisioning in Czechia: Beyond Coping Strategy of the Poor: A Response to Alber and Kohler’s ‘Informal Food Production in the Enlarged European Union’ (2008)

• Published in: Social indicators research Vol. 111; no. 1; pp. 219 - 234
• Main Authors: Jehlička, Petr, Kostelecký, Tomáš, Smith, Joe
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Dordrecht Springer 01-03-2013; Springer Netherlands; Springer Nature B.V
• Subjects: Academic Language; Agricultural Production; Case Studies; Conservation (Environment); Control variables; Coping; Coping strategies; Czech Republic; Eastern Europe; Economic behaviour. Consumption; Economic Progress; Economic sociology; Economically Disadvantaged; Environmental Policy; Europe; European Union; Food; Food availability; Food economics; Food production; Food security; Food Service; Food systems; Foodways; Foreign Countries; Health; Health Behavior; Health Care Services Policy; Households; Human Geography; Low income groups; Market economies; Microeconomics; Motivation; Narratives; Open Universities; Postcommunist Societies; Poverty; Public Health; Quality of Life Research; Slavic Languages; Social Change; Social Environment; Social group work; Social Indicators; Social Sciences; Socialism; Socialist economies; Sociology; Sociology of economy and development; Surveys; Sustainability; Sustainable food systems; Unemployment; Czech Republic; European Union; Europe; Coping strategy; Food self-provisioning; Informal food production; Post-socialism; Food systems; Czechia; Adaptative strategy; Food system; Post-communism; Food production; Coping; Informal Economics
• ISSN: 0303-8300; 1573-0921
• DOI: 10.1007/s11205-012-0001-4

Food systems are of increasing interest in both research and policy communities. Surveys of post-socialist countries of Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) show high rates of food self-provisioning. These practices have been explained in terms of being ‘coping strategies of the poor’. Alber and Kohler’s ‘Informal Food Production in the Enlarged European Union’ (2008) offers a prominent account of this argument, supported by quantitative data. However, evidence from our case study of food self-provisioning in one CEE state–Czechia–contradicts their findings. Newly commissioned survey data, as well as a fresh look at the data they were working from, demonstrate that rather than being motivated by poverty, these widespread practices serve as a hobby and as a way of accessing ‘healthy food’. With food self-provisioning becoming an increasingly prominent subject in advanced industrial countries, in terms of both health and environmental policy, we propose that much greater care is taken in researching and interpreting the reasons for differences in food systems. Our findings are that environmentally sustainable and healthy self-provisioning in Czechia is motivated by a range of reasons, and practised by a significant proportion of the population across all social groups. This conclusion questions linear narratives of progress that figure ‘western’ practices as advanced or complete or automatically desirable, and contributes in a modest way to a decentring of narratives of progress.