In an era of escalating global uncertainties – from fragile supply chains and climate volatility to corporate dominance of the food system – community food production offers a practical, empowering, and inclusive solution. Localised growing initiatives deliver greater security, affordability, well-being, and social renewal. This article draws on Professor Tim Lang’s influential “Just in Case” report and Scotland’s Community Wealth Building legislation to highlight why communities should urgently expand their role in food production.
Resilience in an uncertain world
Professor Tim Lang’s 2025 report, Just in Case: 7 Steps to Narrow the UK Civil Food Resilience Gap, presents a sobering analysis. The UK’s highly efficient but brittle “just-in-time” food system leaves the population exposed to disruptions from extreme weather, geopolitical tensions, energy crises, or supply failures. Lang calls for a shift to a “just-in-case” approach: building buffers, diversifying sources, strengthening local capacity, and preparing civil society for shocks.
Community food production is central to this vision. Gardens, allotments, community orchards, and small-scale market gardens create distributed, resilient supplies of fresh food that do not depend on long-distance logistics. Scotland’s councils already support growing initiatives. Expanding these provides immediate buffers in crises while reducing everyday reliance on vulnerable global chains. Climate change makes this even more critical: regenerative local methods could improve soil health, biodiversity, and adaptability to erratic weather.
Controlling costs and cutting council expenses
Local production helps control the price of essentials by shortening supply chains and reducing intermediaries. For local councils, integrating community growing schemes with public procurement – enabled by Scotland’s new legislation – offers direct savings on food for schools, care homes, and community facilities, while keeping money circulating in the regional economy.
Working productively with nature yields powerful physical and mental rewards. Gardening provides functional exercise, encourages better nutrition, reduces stress and anxiety, improves mood, and fosters a sense of accomplishment and connection.
A particularly valuable aspect is its potential to support NEETs – young people Not in Education, Employment, or Training. Horticulture is not ‘rocket science.’ Many tasks are accessible and deliver quick, visible results. This easy-access work provides structure, purpose, practical skills, teamwork, and a healthy work/life balance through outdoor activity and seasonal rhythms. It can serve as a stepping stone to further opportunities in green sectors while addressing youth disengagement and building long-term community resilience.
Planning for growing space in new developments
Planning departments should make community food production a core consideration in every new housing development application. Planners should mandate or strongly incentivise the inclusion of productive green spaces – allotments, community gardens, edible landscaping, rooftop gardens, or peri-urban growing areas – as standard requirements. This would embed resilience and health benefits into the built environment from the outset.
Community food production is just the tip of the iceberg. True local sovereignty extends far beyond food to energy and heating, house-building and construction, water management, waste recycling, and other utilities. The same principles of democratic control, local ownership, and resilience can create genuine, place-based prosperity across essential services.
At its heart, this movement is about reclaiming sovereignty. Scotland’s Community Wealth Building (Scotland) Act 2026 provides a powerful framework by requiring public bodies to prioritise local procurement, community enterprises, and the retention of wealth within regional economies.
A call to action
Now is the time for everyone – residents, community groups, parents, and concerned citizens – to put real pressure on local councillors to enact these changes. With local council elections less than a year away, communities have powerful leverage. Support councillors who champion community food production, integrated planning policies, and genuine local wealth building. Where councillors show indifference or inertia, local people should seriously consider standing as independent candidates to drive these vital changes themselves.
Scotland has the evidence, the legislation, and the urgent need. The question is whether we will act. By expanding community food growing, embedding it in planning, and extending the sovereignty principle across other essentials, we can build healthier, more resilient, and more self-reliant communities for the future.
