Addressing Food Insecurity Through Gardening: An Agent-Based Modeling Approach

Food deserts are regions lacking access to fresh, affordable, and healthy food, leading to an increased risk of food insecurity and poor health outcomes for residents. The underlying causes of food deserts, including poverty, a lack of transportation infrastructure, and racism, are complex and interconnected. As a consequence, solutions are neither straightforward nor simple, and attempts at alleviating food deserts have yielded mixed results. For example, home gardening is a low-cost intervention that can increase residents’ access to fresh food; however, convincing residents to garden can be challenging. The objective of the research described in this paper is to determine how to design a home gardening program that residents are willing to adopt and maintain, with a goal of increased food security for the community and elimination of food desert status. An agent-based model was created to evaluate the dynamic effects of social interactions and targeted interventions by community organizers on residents’ decisions to grow food at their homes. Preliminary experimentation with the model examined the impacts of resident hardship, organizer strategy, neighbor influence, and initial number of gardens in the community on overall adoption over time. Results suggest that organizers who employ a global strategy in targeting potential participants, rather than localizing their search, will be more successful, particularly when resident hardship is low and there are already gardens in the community prior to the intervention. Moreover, having just a few gardens in the community initially can significantly increase adoption, even when residents are experiencing high levels of hardship.