The mysterious disappearance of allotments
Is English “community” as susceptible to crumbling as our soil?
Having been raised on Horrible Histories and Ladybird Books, the picture I conjure when I think of allotments is a quintessentially post-war vision: one of cloche hat-wearing, brown boot-donning, green-fingered planters pottering around an apple-pummeled plot in a bleak and smoggy city. It’s a comfortingly Blytonian image, and that’s perhaps exactly why the current waiting list for allotments in England has doubled since 2011 according to Greenpeace. With more than 170,000 people on council waiting lists, in some areas the stand-by has reached up to 15 years.
This wait time is in part due to delay in turn over with plots that aren’t being used properly, and partly due to a new wave of demand. The history of allotments goes back to the Anglo-Saxons, where acres of land belonging to villages would be stripped and peeled for residents to grow their crops, known as the open-field system.1 Allotments as we now know them stem from the General Enclosure Act of 1845 that forged ‘field gardens’ to be used by the landless poor. In 1908, local governments became obliged to provide allotted land for all people to cultivate their own fruit and veg, thus, we now all have a legal right to grow.
The ever shifting trends that surround food are certainly tiresome; from low-fat to low-sugar to all-you-can-eat bananas to cutting out all refined sugar; it seems diet culture and food fads are inextricably linked within the Western world. The latest trend is that of UPFs (ultra-processed-foods) which I’m hesitant to spend time on as it truly is an over-saturated area of journalism (pardon the pun). But what is worth acknowledging is that this draw to the Tim Spector, Chris van Tulleken sphere of purity comes out of an awareness to understand our current landscape. News outlets warning us to avoid imported fruit and veg due to health concerns from pesticide residue, the mainstream post-Brexit coverage of British farmer’s unethically low-pay and the surge in popularity for Oddboxes and supermarket’s ‘wonky veg’ have signposted the general population’s desire to forge a closer connection to where our produce actually comes from.
Going back to basics in this mid-century sort of way, when British farming was at its zenith (as post wartime farming subsidies and government grants became peacetime policy and the advances in agricultural technology, machinery and fertilisers lifted millions out of starvation) is all the rage and for good reason. We should go back to understanding how our meat is farmed, what grains and flowers affect taste and how after years of industrial (chemically focused - or more recognisably - ‘non-organic’) farming has left our soil in such a nutrient-thin state that it has generated an irreversible shift in UK crop and livestock production. Not to mention the accessibility to land - from budding farmers who simply cannot win a tenancy to first-time buyers forced into flats without even so much as a naturally lit windowsill - the availability of good quality plots are few and far between. Therefore, this small-scale yearning for town and city dwellers to have their own patch to produce low-cost, whole food, is an inevitable and critical thought.
Daniela Montalto, a Greenpeace UK forests campaigner, said that “allotment waiting lists demonstrate a huge desire from people to be part of the solution to our broken food system but without access to land, the many benefits of community food growing to people, nature and the climate are being stifled.”
This notion of community is particularly integral to the desire for allotments. Yes, growing our own produce for better taste and lower cost is certainly a chief reason, but as I mentioned, this Blytonian-desire for old-school community rumbles on beneath the earth. A recent Community Life Survey found that 11% of young people report chronic loneliness, compared to just 6% of the general population; undoubtedly spurred on by the pandemic; this suggests these feelings of isolation and despondency in cities are only increasing.2 What was once the village butchers or a town hall is now an allotment: there are barely any community-led spaces left in the digitally dominated 2020s. And having a space not only for connecting (we have enough independent coffee shops for this) but for productive initiative is imperative in our era of quiet-quitting and ‘lazy girl jobs’.
People like to feel valued, accomplished and affiliated whilst being rooted in their environment; forging ties to not only their green-fingered peers - but to their land. Fostering small-scale communities, learning the value of growing whole produce and shedding light on the fact that British farmers not only hold the history of our country's horticulture but the future of its health are just a few grains of good that campaigning for allotment availability does. And if that wasn’t your sign to re-watch Clarkson’s Farm, I don’t know what is.
Get the allotment attire, here:
