3.1 Summary

Gardens provide both income and savings, but their effects on the whole household or individual household members depend on many factors both within and beyond the household. To contribute to sustainable development, each garden or garden project needs to be adapted to the local social system and environment, and not based on the faulty assumptions of conventional economics. This demands an understanding of gardeners’ economic decision making and the forces that affect it. For example, while women are often the gardeners in the household, they may not have control over productive resources like land, or over income from marketing garden produce. Marketing and processing techniques can help to reduce gardeners’ risks and to increase benefits to the household. Forming cooperatives can spread risks and is often an appropriate way to organize market gardening. In many places indigenous or spontaneous social groups become the basis for successful marketing cooperatives.