The grass is always greener on the other side; thanks to you! GIMBY – Grow it in My Back Yard Application Monica Pianosi De Montfort University, Leicester, UK
Anna Strzelecka De Montfort University, Leicester, UK
ABSTRACT: YOUR IDEA
At the same time it has been argued that social media can have a deep role in the democratisation of contemporary society, from the role they played in Obama’s election (Cohen 2008), to the Arab Spring (Orr 2011). Moreover, social media have been used by government and institutions to engage the public on various issues including sustainability, by activists to organise and mobilise protests (Gavin 2010), and are claimed to be able to reduce energy consumption in buildings (Bull et al. 2013). Many researchers have recognised the possibility of new media to allow greater democratic participation and to foster a new and more egalitarian participatory form of citizenship (Flew 2008).
Access to food is one of the most fundamental needs. However, people often do not think where the food is coming from and how many miles it had to travel to get to the store. Many people are at the same time concerned about the problem and would like to consume food produced locally. Nevertheless, many obstacles can be in the way: they have space to grow their own food, but have no time to do so; or have time, but no space to grow it, etc. A GIMBY “Grow it in My Back Yard” application is proposed as a solution. It helps to build and maintain neighbourly relationships, create a community for more sustainable food, and find people with similar aims and interest as your own. This application is designed to help build a community where people can help each other to grow food, offer a friendly advice, and a lot more.
Currently 28% of Italian population use a smartphones and this percentage is expected to rise in the next years (Google/MMA 2011). Smartphones are web-enabled and have access to social media, have a camera, and a global positioning (GPS) system. They are able to share data and to share it in an instant. Moreover countless applications (the ‘apps’) are available (Bull et al. 2013). Research also shows that smartphones are especially used in the search of local information, which lead in more than the 80% of cases to action (e.g. a purchase, a call) (Google/MMA 2011).
Categories and Subject Descriptors [Social and Behavioural Sciences]; [New technologies]
Keywords Sustainability, Urban Agriculture, Social Media, Food Production, Smart Phones.
The main aim of the project is to change the way in which people relate with food and to reduce the environmental impact of its production. This would be achieved through different objectives: - Reducing participants’ consumption of food coming from a long distance as well as food carbon footprint; - Reducing food waste and increasing the share of food, skills, and resources; - Enhancing the sense of community of participants; - Changing people’s attitudes and enhancing their sense of ecological citizenship through participation in the food network.
1. INTRODUCTION: AIMS AND BACKGROUND In contemporary society people increasingly depend on food from distant sources. The food we usually eat is being transported for long distance from producer to consumer (the ‘food miles’ concept (Paxton, 1994)) with increasing demand for ready and out-of-season produce. Cheap non-renewable fossil fuel makes intensive agriculture and long-distance transportation economically viable and has allowed food production and distribution to become global industries. Although, prices do not reflect the environmental and social cost of production and the food and agriculture systems account for 17-32% of total humaninduced greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) (Bellarby et al. 2008).
2. DESCRIPTION Grounding on the potentialities offered by social media we propose to design an app, Gimby (an acronym that recall the NIMBY groups, but wants to see positive action as opposed to unsupportive opposition), which creates a network of people who want to share their skills and resources for a more sustainable, local, and auto production of food based on crowdsourcing.
However, the function of food is more than just keeping us alive, hence cannot be only reduced to its technical aspects. Eating is not only the satisfaction of a need, but also about social, emotional, and economic expression (Garnett 2008). Often the social dimension of food production is neglected and people turn to supermarkets and quick-fix solutions for choices that have deeper than visible and obvious implications.
It is in fact frequent today that people who have the resources (e.g. garden space) do not have the skills and the time, but people who have the skills and the time do not have the physical resources. Therefore creating the connection between different actors can
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help empowering the local community and reducing the carbon footprint of the community itself. It can be the case for example of a single working mum, which has a large garden and wants to grow some vegetables but don’t have the skills or the time to do it by herself; however, there is the possibility that in her neighbourhood there is an unemployed or retired person that knows how to cultivate food and would like to be helpful and share the harvest. Or there might be a family already growing their food who had an over production of vegetable and is not able to use it all by itself and so it is happy to share it with neighbours or would like some help to create preserve at home.
expression (Seyfang 2006). Ecological citizenship is by many researchers seen as the way to approach the need of individual sustainable consumption, which is claimed by scientists and governments as the principal actor for a pro-environmental change in society (DEFRA 2003; Bell 2004; Dobson 2010). Therefore approaching a sustainable food production system can lead people, with the right means in place, towards pro-environmental attitudes that spread out of the food area and therefore be an instigator of a deeper change in engaged participants. Moreover, ecological citizenship recognize that humankind survival depends on the physical environment (Bell 2004). And what better way of nurturing this concept of the environment than home growing food or sharing skills and resources?
Gimby will therefore allow the following actions: a) Show users tagging them according to what they are offering. E.g. a land space which can be turned into a vegetable garden, the auto and over production of fruits or vegetable which can be shared, the skills of gardening, or home composting, or home preserving, etc.; b) Connect people that are offering something with people that are looking for that service or products. Results can be sorted e.g. by distance, land space available, price of the service or products, etc.); c) Inform about planting and harvesting times for garden vegetables and/or fruits with guidelines for best space usage. The app can suggest the best species to be harvested according to season and geographical position. Moreover, in light of the crowdsourcing nature of the project a comment section will be added, so that users can add their suggestions, give advices, or ask for help from other. d) Inform about ways to preserve food or to extend its life. As in point (c), a comment section will be added, so that in addition to the suggestions of developers, updated regularly, a database of resources can be created with the help of users. e) Offer user profiles geographically located. Each user can advertise himself; e.g. their abilities, land they have to offer, etc., and other users can leave their comments there; This app will enable the creation of a food network where people are able to see not only small local producers, but also the resources and the people that are willing to help.
Acknowledgments: The authors would like to thank De Montfort University for the resources offered to develop the proposal. The idea of applying social media to pro-environmental behaviour-change has been developed during a PhD degree at DMU thanks to the supervision of Dr. R. Bull and Prof. M. Rieser. We also thank M. Tarantini for her insightful comments on an early version of this proposal.
5. REFERENCES Bell, D.R. (2004) Creating Green Citizens? Political Liberalism and Environmental Education. Journal of Philosophy of Education, 38, 37–53. Bellarby, J., Foereid, B., Hastings, A. & Smith, P. (2008) Cool Farming: Climate Impacts of Agriculture and Mitigation Potential. Amsterdam. Bull, R., Irvine, K., Fleming, P. & Rieser, M. (2013) Are people the problem or the solution? A critical look at the rise of the smart/intelligent building and the role of ICT enabled engagement. ECEE 2013 Summer study on energy efficiency Toulon, France.! Cohen, R. (2008) The Obama Connection. The New York Times.
3. APPLICATION AND RESULTS
DEFRA. (2003) Chancing Patterns: UK Government Framework for Sustainable Consumption and Production. London.
This application is designed to help making more sustainable choices in everyday life. It can be used on all smartphones as well as all operating systems used on laptops, desktops, or tablets. Each user has a profile that can be synchronised with all devices that the app is used on.
Dobson, A. (2010) Environmental! Citizenship and Proenvironmental Behaviour. Rapid Research and Evidence Review. London. Flew, T. (2008) Participatory Media Cultures. New Media. An Introduction, 3rd Edition 106–125. Oxford University Press, Oxford.
Cultivation of plants does not have to be difficult! This app makes it simple. It helps to build and maintain neighbourly relationships, create a community for more sustainable food, and find people with similar aims and interest as your own. It is designed to save time and money as well as help the environment.
Garnett, T. (2008) Cooking up a Storm. Food, Greenhouse Gas Emissions and Our Changing Climate. Gavin, N.T. (2010) Pressure Group Direct Action on Climate Change: The Role of the Media and the Web in Britain - A Case Study. The British Journal of Politics and International Relations, 12, 459–475.
4. CONCLUDING REMARKS The home production of food is here illustrated as a response to reduce the environmental impact of the food supply chain; however, it is unsure that this solution can have an important role in reducing GHG emissions of the sector. What is interesting although is the positive effects that are expected to be related to this kind of intervention. Participation in local food network has been proven to promote ecological citizenship, to develop informed, educated community around food and therefore to nurture a new ecological ethic and provide the means for its
Orr, A. (2011) Revolution 2.0: Wael Ghonim Thanks Mark Zuckenberg for His Part in The Egyptian Revolution. Technocrati.com. Paxton, A. (1994) The Food Miles Report: The Dangers of Longdistance Food Transport. London. Seyfang, J. (2006) Ecological citizenship and sustainable consumption: Examining local organic food networks. Journal of Rural Studies, 22, 383–395
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