Home and Garden Sees Rise in Sales Due to Coronavirus as Consumers Use Time at Home to Complete Improvement Projects
Using survey data on 882 Montreal residents, we find that those who practice urban agriculture are more educated, and more likely to be homeowners and to report an income in the highest income bracket. This is consistent with urban agriculture being a luxury good.
Research and Markets
Apr 02, 2020
The Research and Markets website says that due to the global pandemic, there is a new trend toward gardening for many households.
Hardware stores are seeing unprecedented demand for tools and hardware supplies as consumers in self-isolation use the time to complete home improvement projects. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic more and more people are staying at home in order to protect themselves. This has created a surge in interest in DIY and gardening as consumers find new ways to improve their living space and keep themselves entertained in self-isolation.
Early on during the COVID-19 lockdowns, people turned towards gardening for their food security or food self-sufficiency, a phenomemon that harks back to the Victory Gardens this country saw in wartime.
Marc F. Bellemare and Vaneesha Dusoruth, from the University of Minnesota, look into who practices urban agriculture in a new article published in Applied Economic Perspectives & Policy aptly titled “Who Participates in Urban Agriculture? An Empirical Analysis.”
Bellemare says, “Urban agriculture seems to be a luxury good. In layperson’s terms, urban agriculture really is more of a hobby that is practiced by people who have the means to do so, either in terms of being able to afford to take the time off, in terms of knowledge, or in terms of having the requisite amount of space to practice it. So the usual policy prescription that the poor should practice urban agriculture because it would improve their diets is off-target, quite literally.”
Abstract
A few highly publicized food supply chain disruptions early in the COVID?19 pandemic were interpreted by some as evidence of a “broken” food system. One solution often brought in response to that perceived brokenness is urban agriculture. The literature, however, has sidestepped a key question: Who practices urban agriculture? Using survey data on 882 Montreal residents, we find that those who practice urban agriculture are more educated, and more likely to be homeowners and to report an income in the highest income bracket. This is consistent with urban agriculture being a luxury good.
