Food Self-Provisioning in Czechia: Beyond Coping Strategy of the Poor: A Response to Alber and Kohler’s ‘Informal Food Production in the Enlarged European Union’ (2008)

Food systems are of increasing interest in both research and policy communities. Surveys of post-socialist countries of Central
and Eastern Europe (CEE) show high rates of food self-provisioning. These practices have been explained in terms of being
‘coping strategies of the poor’. Alber and Kohler’s ‘Informal Food Production in the Enlarged European Union’ (2008) offers
a prominent account of this argument, supported by quantitative data. However, evidence from our case study of food self-provisioning
in one CEE state–Czechia–contradicts their findings. Newly commissioned survey data, as well as a fresh look at the data they
were working from, demonstrate that rather than being motivated by poverty, these widespread practices serve as a hobby and
as a way of accessing ‘healthy food’. With food self-provisioning becoming an increasingly prominent subject in advanced industrial
countries, in terms of both health and environmental policy, we propose that much greater care is taken in researching and
interpreting the reasons for differences in food systems. Our findings are that environmentally sustainable and healthy self-provisioning
in Czechia is motivated by a range of reasons, and practised by a significant proportion of the population across all social
groups. This conclusion questions linear narratives of progress that figure ‘western’ practices as advanced or complete or
automatically desirable, and contributes in a modest way to a decentring of narratives of progress.