Land for the People: Allotments

Friday, August 15, 2008 by Jeremy Dore - Categories: gardening allotments
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This week has been designated ‘National Allotments Week’ here in the UK and it’s also the 100th year since the 1908 ‘Small Holdings and Allotment Act’ was passed in parliament, requiring local government to provide allotments for people where there was demand.  (For those readers who live elsewhere in the world, allotments are areas of land owned by the local government or parish in the UK and rented out cheaply as small plots for growing fruit and vegetables.)  In recent years there has been a huge resurgence of interest in allotments and we’ve seen lots of people planning them using GrowVeg.com.  The motivation for people taking up an allotment may be different from the beginning of the last century but I believe that the upsurge in interest is here to stay as more and more people want to grow their own food again.

The tradition of allotment provision started around the time of the industrial revolution when thousands of people moved to the rapidly expanding cities.  Allotments were originally seen as a way of ensuring that the “landless poor” could grow food, presumably to prevent hunger and civil unrest.  Allotment use rose dramatically during the first world war when food blockades were in place, then through the recession of the 1930s and again during the second world war. Many families took up the challenge to ‘dig for victory’ to help supplement meagre rationing.  In fact, by the end of the second world war there were more than 1.4 million allotments plots in the UK and even parks and public spaces were being used to meet the demand and eliminate dependence on food being shipped in to the country.  These allotments were incredibly efficient in terms of land use with an estimated 1.3 million tonnes of produce coming from them (see the article on Allotment.org.uk for details).

Once rationing stopped, allotment use fell and eventually areas were sold off to developers to raise money for local councils.  With a brief resurgence in the 1970s following the self-sufficiency movement, the number of allotments plots had fallen to under 300,000 by the millennium.  But since then the tide has definitely turned and in almost all areas of the country demand for allotments is well in excess of the number available.  The shortage is particularly apparent in cities – last year 4300 people were on allotment waiting lists in London - but even in suburban areas such as mine there are 10 year waiting lists and this is despite many councils now giving out half-sized plots.  Although the 1908 Allotments Act requires allotments to be provided where there is demand, the problem is that there is no time-scale defined in law.

The sudden resurgence in interest in allotments is due to many factors.  Allotments are no longer seen as the reserve of elderly men, finding an excuse to escape from the house to do a bit of gardening.  Whole families are taking on allotments, realising the importance of getting in touch with the source of healthy food.  Organic food is expensive and has often been shipped or flown in from around the world, so growing your own makes a lot of sense.  And to top it all, food prices are increasing rapidly, and will continue to do so given our ludicrous system of food production that means that my local supermarket is still flying in green beans from Kenya in the height of our summer.  At their best, allotments provide great opportunities for communities to come together, with experienced gardeners naturally mentoring ‘newbies’ and plot holders swapping excess seeds and harvests among themselves.

It’s no surprise then that allotments are becoming a hot political issue: a parliamentary bill to force developers to make provision for allotments was prepared earlier this year but unfortunately ran out of time.  I particularly liked the emphasis of the bill: it stipulated that the need for allotments in an area must be taken into account when approving planning applications for large developments.  This could lead to what I consider the best solution: provision of mini allotment sites in housing areas.  It is much easier to tend an allotment when it is a short walk away, rather than the other side of town and it’s better for the environment too as people are less tempted to drive there.  So, I have emailed Tony Baldry MP who proposed the bill, asking whether he sees a way in which it could be re-introduced.  I’ll let you know what response I get!

One thing is for certain, as food prices soar and world economic growth slows under the ever increasing oil prices the shortage of growing spaces is only going to get worse unless something is done soon.  We need to start re-localising food production and spreading the knowledge of how to do it.  One hundred years on, people still need cheap land to grow their own food and the traditional allotment is a great place to start.

[For anyone in an area where there are difficulties obtaining an allotment, the website of the SWCAA has some good resources on how to take action. For general reabout allotments. For general resources on a variety of allotment related resources, see the National Society of Allotment and Leisure Gardeners' Website.]