Budapest, Hungary

National Context

Hungary’s socialist past is well reflected in its current local food trends. The country’s agricultural economy is largely comprised of small-scale farming, and traditional forms of local food networks, such as farmers markets, farm shops, farm-gate sales, and food festivals are prominent throughout the country. During the past ten years, other forms of LFS, such as food box delivery and exclusively organic markets have also emerged—primarily as a result of urban intellectuals’ initiatives. While these and other progressive forms of LFS are developing rapidly, they have yet to be significantly ingrained into Hungary’s major food supply chains.

Despite their small contribution to Budapest’s overall food supply, the recent rise of community gardens throughout the city reflects the nation-wide local food movement and a related social movement towards a reacceptance of community initiatives. Since the end of the communist rule in 1989, citizens throughout Hungary—including urban residents—have largely remained skeptical of community programs and cooperative activities. However, recent community garden initiatives reflect Budapest resident’s desire to revitalize neighborhoods through community food production spaces.

Research Intent

By studying Budapest’s growing network of community gardens, I aimed to determine how small-scale LFS may contribute to food security. Furthermore, given the broad range of individuals, local governments, other organizations involved in the creation and management of community gardens across the city, I sought to better understand how different stakeholders can work together to create a resilient local food system.

Budapest Community Gardens

Introduction

Budapest’s diverse array of community gardens conveys the different goals of the many potential local food stakeholders and shows that there is no ideal model to develop and sustain local food organizations. In the last five years, Budapest residents have developed approximately forty community gardens with development narratives and management systems that can be classified into one of four main categories: created and managed by the Contemporary Agriculture Centre (KÉK), by Városi Kertek Egysüle (VKE), by a grassroots organization, or by a local government or local community members. (See Appendix D for a table detailing all gardens studied, their governing organization, structures, goals, best practices, and challenges.)

KÉK & VKE

Together, the Contemporary Architecture Center (Kortárs Építészeti Központ, or KÉK) and Urban Garden Association (Városi Kertek Egyesület, or VKE), have created almost half of Budapest’s community gardens. KÉK and VKE are two nonprofit organizations that seek to increase community development and promote a cooperative community culture in Budapest, yet they have very different organizational structures and methods of community garden development.

The KÉK defines itself as “an independent architectural cultural centre operated by young Hungarian architects, artists and civilians,” yet its work as a well-resourced, established NGO extends to many different sectors and projects within Budapest. Its urban gardening program, established in 2012, has been developed through collaboration with five local governments, real estate companies, and other private companies, such as Telecom and the IBIS Aero hotel. There are currently two key KÉK employees plus one intern that manage day-to-day activities and ensure continued funding for each of KÉK’s current five gardens.

The goals of KÉK’s urban garden program are to provide a community space for its members and a learning experience for the broader Budapest community. KÉK hopes that its community gardens network will help disseminate “methods, tools, and desirable behaviours related to the sharing or circular economy.” Furthermore, the program leaders hope that the gardens’ educational activities will “contribute to the development of innovative, sustainable and inclusive economical and social environments on local level.” KÉK’s garden members pay a symbolic annual fee, and the gardens rely on KÉK’s continued access to external grants to remain financially viable.

KÉK’s dependence on outside sources for funding and land-use threatens some of their gardens’ long-term sustainability—in fact, two have already closed and one more is set to close by the end of 2017. Yet KÉK still views the gardens that are no longer in operation as successes: while they did not last many years, they still contributed to KÉK’s and other community stakeholders’ knowledge bases about how best to create a functional community garden and shared social space within Budapest.

Rosta Gabór, the founder of VKE, was first inspired to develop community gardens in Budapest after conducting research on U.S. Victory Gardens, which provided greater self-sufficiency to urban and suburban community members at home during World War II. After years developing community gardens in Budapest, Gabór does view the gardens as a functional space for members to grow high quality food, yet he believes that the gardens contribute to people’s quality of life more than their food security.

VKE assists in the development of community gardens by leading collaboration with local governments and district communities. Like KÉK, VKE actively seeks out potential new garden locations in Budapest but engages only the municipal government and local community members to instigate their development. The government then commissions VKE to construct the gardens and instigate community development; strengthening community relations is VKE’s primary goal.

Despite similarities in their development methods, Gabór does not believe KÉK’s community gardens are sustainable. He believes the insecure status of KÉK’s gardens—caused by their dependence on external organizations for support—restricts their community impact and prompts lower quality garden development. Thus, Gabór is particularly challenged to figure out how best to transfer garden leadership from himself to other community members. Gabór believes that a garden’s success is dependent on its long-term existence and integration into a community, so ensuring a seamless transfer of each garden to community leaders is critical for VKE’s success—and a framework for such is yet to be determined. Nevertheless, one of VKE’s gardens’ strengths is that they are embedded into the city’s infrastructure–they are “overlegal” in Gabór’s words–and thus experience minimal risk of displacement or discontinuation.

Grundkert

A Grund, a grassroots community organization, established its first garden in Budapest’s eighth district in 2012. In the past five years, Grundkert has moved location twice (its current garden is correspondingly called “Grundk3rt”), and many of its members have changed. Nonetheless, the garden is still supported by its land-granting sponsor, FUTURA, and provides an active community space for its members to garden and socialize.

Grundk3rt’s successes are notable given its location in the most dense, poorest district in Budapest. Furthermore, the community-organized garden upholds a very democratic structure, and its leaders respond directly to its members’ needs. However, the volunteer garden coordinators do struggle to fulfill their many responsibilities—to manage the physical garden, coordinate memberships, and put on social events. Furthermore, Grundk3rt lacks a practical and ideological cohesiveness; when I asked two garden members about the garden’s goal, they stated that they had recently held a meeting to discuss that, but they forgot what the conclusion of that meeting was…. Nonetheless, they both emphasized how the garden has enhanced its members livelihoods by providing them with a space to connect with nature, engage meaningfully with other community members, and expand their cultural awareness.

Kelenkert

Kelenkert, a garden in Budapest’s eleventh district, represents another way community gardens in Budapest are created—through direct collaboration between a local district council and the community. Yet despite Kelenkert’s community involvement in its establishment, the local counselor, Ludányi Attila, was integral to garnering community and government support for the project.

In 2014, Attila recognized his district’s desire for more community activities and shared social spaces. So, he created a community group, which brainstormed what form of shared social space could foster the district’s community building. When the community group came up with the idea to start a community garden, the local council supported the idea, gave them the land, and gave them some money to cover initial startup costs. All yearly garden costs are covered by the membership fee, which is 2500 forint (approximately ten U.S. dollars) per year. Attila stated that the garden’s two greatest challenges are maintaining a socially cohesive community and meeting the garden’s budget. Right now, the garden’s community activities are contingent upon the volunteer efforts of one or two individual members. Yet while the budget is tight, Attila has not considered raising the rent price for the members because the current price is “what [they] need”—in order to promote the garden as a welcoming, community space.

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Challenges

All gardens I studied in Budapest struggle to maintain their positive community presence and impact overtime. Despite the excess of undeveloped land in Budapest, some gardens have difficulty securing their physical presence, and nearly all of the gardens struggle to uphold their community development goals and activities.

Gardens dependent on private organizations for land, like those founded by KÉK and A Grund, are vulnerable to their landowners’ changing development plans. Gardens sponsored by local governments, like a few KÉK gardens and the VKE gardens, have secure land tenure, yet they still may not have secure access to sufficient funding.

Furthermore, all gardens I visited faced the same challenge: maintaining the gardens as lively, social spaces for people to connect and share experiences. None of the gardens I visited had paid employees, and the responsibility to create community activities largely fell upon a few volunteers. When those volunteers were unable to unwilling to keep up with social activity scheduling or general garden communication, the gardens’ positive social impact diminished.

Community Gardens & Food Security

Community gardens in Budapest do not contribute a significant amount of food to the food system, and so by formal standards, they do not contribute to the city’s food security. Nevertheless, Budapest community gardens do increase garden members’ economic and physical access to healthy food on a smaller scale.

Fanni Bársony, a doctoral candidate at Corvinus University researches community gardens throughout Hungary. Bársony emphasized that while Budapest community gardens do not to produce large quantities food, they significantly increase people’s food literacy and quality of life. Their low membership costs provide people of various socioeconomic classes with an opportunity to make social connections, share quality time with their families, or simply get out of their hot apartments during the summer time.

Budapest’s community gardens also exemplify how LFS can catalyze infrastructural and ideological community development. Since the end of communism, Hungarians have been weary of cooperative activities, but over the past decade, the city’s community gardens have prompted the public’s and the government’s increased acceptance of community-based, cooperative activities.

Furthermore, local food activist, Tracey Wheatley, explained that community gardens’ successes have increased people’s faith in civil society to make tangible, positive change. Bársony explained how civil society in Hungary is “NGO-ized”: “what [Hungarians] consider civil society is all created by professional NGOs.” Both Wheatley and Bársony questioned the extent to which NGOs and other top-down forms of LFS can truly reflect citizens’ demands, desires, and culture; and community-based gardens may provide a “non-NGO-ized,” socially impactful alternative.

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Summary & Key Takeaways

The rapid development of community gardens in Budapest—a city that has recently experienced major cultural, political, and economic change—reveals challenges facing community-based local food organizations. Through interviews with community garden leaders, community garden researchers, food systems researchers, and economists, I learned about the factors necessary for community-based LFS to sustain themselves over time, along with the benefits and drawbacks of different forms of start-up leadership, financial support, and day-to-day management.

While community gardens in Budapest may not contribute a significant amount of food to the city’s food supply, they provide garden members with increased access to nutritious food and a lively social environment. They may also trigger broader community-based development and thereby impact residents’ physical, mental, and financial wellbeing. Ultimately, community gardens may provoke the city’s shift towards more positively viewed sharing economies, civil society, and a more sustainable food system, which urban residents and groups of residents actively inform.