Thirty million agroforesters : Russia's family gardens
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Today, over 30 million Russian households engage in food gardening and collectively produce over half of Russia's agricultural output, using less than 6 [percent] of agricultural land in the country. The small size of plots allocated for household production (typically 0.06 ha for urban and 0.25 ha for rural households) promoted extremely intensive growing practices and wide integration of perennial crops (especially fruit-bearing shrubs and trees) with annual crops. This resulted in the proliferation of highly diverse, multi-layer gardens. Our study of economic, agricultural, social, and cultural characteristics of family gardens in the Vladimir region (central part of European Russia) included an in-depth survey of 1,500 households. It confirmed gardens' most important contribution to the household and regional economy, with 95 [percent] of households either tending their own garden or benefiting from the gardens of others. These highly diverse, predominantly organic operations include, on average, 13 different vegetable crops and 7 different perennial fruit, nut, and berry crops grown on the same small plots, which can be seen as micro-scale agroforestry systems. It was also found that participation in food gardening does not decrease with growing income, which attests to the important social and cultural dimensions of the practice. The gardeners, who share strong agrarian ethics, see in working the land a symbol of self-reliance, a family space, an opportunity for social interaction and contact with living nature, and a continuation of a millennial tradition of living in union with Mother Earth.