Interactive Media Tools for Sustainable Food Production

EasyChair Preprint 11979

Abstract

Gardening is a transformative activity with various health benefits, contributing to immediate and long-term mental and physical health improvements. Home gardens contribute to biodiversity maintenance, identity and community preservation and food production. They also serve as an efficient substrate for the transmission of collective memory related to gardening practices, although they are vulnerable to periods of turbulence or crisis. The disappearance of local and tacit knowledge related to agriculture within urban landscapes has led to an 'extinction of experience' in human-nature interaction. This collective 'forgetting' poses a significant threat, especially in times of major crises, contributing to potential urban food shortages. To address this issue, interactive media tools emerge as powerful educational platforms capable of fostering knowledge sharing and learning about sustainable food production, nutrition, and ecological systems. This work aims to study and prototype an interactive media tool to support the dissemination of sustainable farming techniques. It seeks to leverage engagement with such tools to facilitate the sharing of best practices and foster intergenerational learning, ultimately contributing to improved community cohesion and collective action in urban areas. By promoting awareness and understanding of horticultural processes, interactive media has the potential to inspire more individuals to participate in distributed food production, contributing to a more resilient and sustainable urban food system.

Keyphrases: Home gardens, Resilience, intergenerational learning, sustainable urban food systems

@booklet{EasyChair:11979,
  author    = {Catarina Correia and Mara Dionísio},
  title     = {Interactive Media Tools for Sustainable Food Production},
  howpublished = {EasyChair Preprint 11979},
  year      = {EasyChair, 2024}}