Quiet sustainability: Fertile lessons from Europe’s productive gardeners

Market and consumer perspectives have long dominated sustainability research and policy in the field of food. By contrast, this paper considers long-standing forms of food self-provisioning (FSP, meaning growing and sharing one's own food) that are extensively practised, carry environmental and social benefits, yet are little considered or acknowledged within sustainable food policy discourses or academic literatures. Empirically it focuses on food self-provisioning in post-socialist Central and Eastern Europe (CEE). Our argument is rooted in qualitative and quantitative data gathered over a period of seven years (2005–2011) on the extent and nature of, and motivations for, these forms of food provisioning in Poland and Czechia. It frames these practices in terms of the novel concept of 'quiet sustainability'.

The system changes in 1989–1990 that saw the end of state socialism in CEE and the initiation of what has widely been figured as a 'transition' coincided with a high-tide mark for discourses of

sustainable development within international politics. The UN Earth Summit of 1992 emphasised sustainable production and consumption as key areas for attention. This is hardly surprising: the sustainable development idiom evolved in the context of the far-reaching dominance within mainstream politics of globalization/market liberalisation/pro-growth approaches to political economy (Richardson, 1997). Hence the end of state socialism in CEE and the prominence of discourses of sustainable development within international political debates through the course of the 1990s were infused with market orthodoxies that framed policy problems in terms of the challenges of market failures and of incomplete information amongst market actors (Bernstein, 2000). The agendas of the UN World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD) of 2002 and the 2012 UN Conference on Sustainable Development (UN CSD, known as Rio+20) further embedded the framing of sustainability almost exclusively in terms of a market idiom (with sustainable production and consumption prominent themes of UN WSSD (UNEP) and greening the economy the most prominent theme in the run up to the UN CSD).

These prominent, often official, discourses tend to embed the notion that social science insights are late-phase contributions to a

linear process of 'analyse, diagnose, act'. They also tend to draw exclusively on a very limited field of the social sciences. For example Rockström, in a keynote speech to the UN sponsored Planet Under Pressure conference (2012) suggests that the 'great transition to a global sustainability' requires 'new integrated knowledge', but his reference points in the social sciences are exclusively, 'behaviour change and a new economics of global environmental change' (see also UK Science Minister's speech on the same occasion: Willetts, 2012).

One of the consequences of such 'official' discursive turns is that a blind spot has emerged at almost all levels of sustainability governance wherein sustainable practices evident at the meso level of the household (as discussed by Reid et al., 2010) and/or family and friendship networks have been given little or no prominence within formal processes, or indeed research agendas. Specifically, and in step with Reid et al., we believe that focussing on interactions within and between households in relation to systems of food self-provisioning is an important place to look for lessons about how to preserve and/or progress towards a more sustainable society. Their paper proposes that the focus should be not just on what sustainable practices are undertaken at the meso (household) level, but also why they are undertaken (Reid et al., 2010, 324).

Our intention is to see what can usefully be learnt about societal transformation around food systems by looking at a context and set of practices that display 'quiet sustainability'. This concept valorises sustainable practices that are exuberant, appealing and socially inclusive and that may derive from diverse development paths. We find it significant that the activities we consider in this paper are not labelled or valued as examples of sustainable development and hence conclude that the research and policy community should focus more closely on this and other instances of 'quiet sustainability' (further defined in Section 4). Our evidence suggests that these practices are already making significant contributions to environmental and social sustainability without explicitly seeking to do so, but they may require some degree of protection and nurturing in future. The geographical setting for the study is the source of this rather different approach to researching sustainability, and we view the work as contributing to the recent call to 'open up; to reveal and give voice to marginalized narratives and so enable pathways which [...] take greater account of multiple dimensions of incomplete knowledge and of sustainability' (Leach et al., 2010, 96).

As Mark Whitehead explains in his review of sustainability and post-socialism 'a post-socialist perspective adds value to studies of sustainable development because it encourages us to think of the varied socio-cultural traditions that notions of sustainability can animate, and the different trajectories sustainable development policies may actually be on.' They also offer a chance to 'recognize that sustainable developments always reflect imperfect geographical fixes' (Whitehead, 2010, 1631). It is worth noting that we also follow Caroline Humphrey (2002) and Alison Stenning (2005) in viewing the labels post-socialism and transition as indicating not a progression towards an endpoint, but rather a signalling of diverse trajectories. Hence the prefix 'post' should be seen as an invitation to look at social phenomena related to sustainability in a fresh light, and crucially, in our case a positive light. Along with Kay et al. we are convinced of 'the possibilities of generating theory from within post-socialist studies' (2012, 56, emphasis in the original).

This inductive paper has developed through close attention to food self-provisioning and sharing practices. As such it is focused upon widespread 'actually existing sustainability' (Krueger and Agyeman, 2005; Smith and Jehlička, 2007) rather than their absence or exceptional status. Our interest is not in the future promise of transformations towards sustainability, or the projection of system changes that allow sustainability. Rather we focus on

the presence of what appear to be longstanding sustainable practices that the practitioners themselves, and the research and policy community, have not recognised or valorised in those terms.

Whereas in Western Europe and North America the research effort in this field has been invested in relatively sparse and exceptional cases (such as Transition Towns and other community initiatives, or the Slow Food movement) our interest is in widespread practices that appear to significantly reduce environmental impact, that are socially diverse and that seem also to bring community benefits. Hence, where Seyfang describes grassroots sustainability initiatives as 'embodiment of alternatives' (2011) and Davies suggests that they 'in terms of absolute numbers and size, represent a small sector' (2012, 197), we find ourselves considering what it means that so many people in Poland and Czechia are pursuing evidently sustainable food practices without feeling the need to identify them as such. Our findings offer a very direct response to Goodman et al.'s questions: 'where are those projects that are outside of neoliberal subjectivities and the commodifications of ethics/morality?' (2010, 1792).

Food systems are a prominent feature of policy and popular discourses about progress towards sustainability. The impacts associated with production, distribution and consumption and waste have all been identified as requiring urgent attention in western societies (see, for example, Foresight, 2011). Agro-industrial efficiency has long been seen within the food and agricultural sector as an important component of sustainable food systems, and the emerging concept of sustainable intensification is extending the reach of this notion. The UK Government's Foresight report on the Future of Food and Farming, which was tasked with considering future threats to the steady supply of food to British consumers, strongly asserted in its general conclusions that 'food security is best served by fair and fully functioning markets and not by policies to promote self-sufficiency' (2011, 19). However in parallel there have been recent efforts aimed at the promotion of FSP as a complementary, and in some people's eyes, alternative, form of sustainable production and consumption. Amongst other things, this has taken the form of urban food movements (Veen et al., 2012) and the revival of allotment policies in developed countries. One prominent index is the initiation of productive gardens at the White House, Buckingham Palace and Downing Street in the second half of the 2000s.

Alber and Kohler's (2008) Europe-wide study shows that, with a few exceptions, the proportion of the population in west European countries growing their own food only rarely exceeds 10% (though we would value more recent comparative data in this area). By contrast between 35 and 60% of the population in CEE countries grow some of their own food. These practices have been ignored or met with disdain by the environmental policy community in the region. This is clearly represented in a 2000 Czech government strategy document on rural development:

Ineffective self-provisioning habits (eggs, poultry, potatoes, vegetables, fruit) hang over from the past, which contributes to the relatively low purchasing power of the countryside (Ministerstvo pro místní rozvoj a Ministerstvo zemědělství 2000, 18).

Food self-provisioning, which provides households involved in this activity with a basic livelihood, can sometimes contribute to decline and exclusion (ibid, 43).

Such dismissive or purely instrumental framings of FSP in CEE are reflections of what Pasieka summarises as a 'mainstream'

position by, in the case of her study, the Polish policy elite (2012). She summarises an internal 'othering' of peasantry and the past, and a postcolonial mentality in elites 'detectable in their constant discontent with their own society and simplistic internalization of Western ideas' (73). Much research on FSP in CEE has also tended to frame these practices as backward, and contrasted them with western modernity. FSP is read as an index of path dependency, an economic coping strategy or as a faintly embarrassing cultural remnant. This perspective has developed over the course of more than a century of othering of Eastern Europe but has combined with a more recent western myth of the Russian 'urban peasant' (see, for example, Clarke et al., 2000). Influential research in public policy, development and economics (e.g. Rose and Tikhomirov, 1993; Seeth et al., 1998; Alber and Köhler, 2008) paralleled and nourished the policy and consultancy trend to understand high rates of FSP as a survival strategy of the poor. Alber and Köhler (2008) drawing on Rose and Tikhomirov's work (1993) used a Europe-wide survey of 27 countries to conclude that FSP was a coping strategy with direct descent from the socialist past.¹

Despite the dominance of economic and Western framed and focused accounts of appropriate development paths, more culturally informed approaches to understanding habits, practices and identities around food have been undertaken. These have tended to be based upon qualitative research, mostly undertaken by social anthropologists. These less deterministic approaches are showing results that contradict the previously accepted explanations, and have offered a basis for our own research.

Informal household economies including food self-provisioning and sharing of fruit and vegetables in CEE have drawn the attention of anthropological research both during (Gábor, 1979; Hann, 1980) and after the state socialist period (Šik, 1992; Skálník, 1993; Czegledy, 2002; Torsello, 2005; Acheson, 2007) and also of human geographers (e.g. Smith, 2002; Smith and Stenning, 2006; Smith and Rochovská, 2007; Shubin, 2010; Jehlička and Smith, 2011; Jehlička et al., 2012). Recurrent themes across the anthropological work in particular include an interest in the balance of altruism and self-interest, as well as the relationship between such practices and attitudes to egalitarianism and some deeply rooted moral norms. These include the stigmatisation of self-centredness and the promotion of mutual help and sharing. Torsello's (2005) research conducted in a rural Slovak village showed how food self-provisioning plays a role in creating and maintaining strong ties between kin members and friends by establishing mutuality, reciprocity, task sharing and trust. In similar vein Snajdr's (2008) research into the relationship between Slovak city dwellers and their access to gardens on the fringes of cities shows how, on these tiny garden plots, which were often within sight of a factory or along railroad tracks, they grew a variety of vegetables, fruits, and herbs [...] Most gardens included small domčeky or chaty (cabins) that were built by the owners. Gardens [...] were often quite elaborate, with trestles supporting grape vines, or rows of slender fruit trees so skilfully pruned that their curling branches formed a

virtual wall along the footpath. If a family did not own a garden plot themselves, they had access to one through relatives. Whether elaborate or bare bones, these private spaces were visited frequently, to tend to vegetables, have a family cook-out, or throw a small evening party. The garden was a sanctuary, if only for a few days, that provided relief from the city and from the system (ibid., 34–35).

Czegledy's interpretation of Hungarian food self-provisioning and sharing gives pleasure and commensality a more central role. The sharing of self-provisioned food and drink with guests and friends offers an opportunity to appreciate the time, effort and skills invested in growing and preparation. To share these goods is to enjoy a shared experience of qualities that shop-bought produce cannot offer (2002, 213). Czegledy suggests that such practices help to affirm cultural identity in the face of fast-paced changes in post socialist economies (ibid., 214).

We propose that these practices have far wider significance in pointing to some of the ways that sustainable practices might be valued and nurtured elsewhere. In order to explore these we have combined qualitative and quantitative techniques, and have invested in gathering time series and geographically plural data (two nations and a mix of urban, suburban and rural settings) but without intending a strictly comparative approach.

The work has been informed by scholarship from a range of disciplines, including work in history and anthropology, indeed previous findings coming out of our wider project have appeared variously in geography, environmental policy, history and statistics publications. Here we seek to demonstrate the senses in which these are sustainable practices and understand better how so many people continue to engage in them. We feel that this mixed methodology approach has been productive, and managed to sustain a critical edge while directly engaging with and contributing to policy discussions.

We combined qualitative and quantitative methods to explore a series of questions about the degree to which food self-provisioning could be described as a sustainable practice. Researchers have stressed the hazards of unwittingly conflating certain spatial/structural characteristics, such as those associated with local and alternative food networks, and with environmentally or socially desirable outcomes (DuPuis and Goodman, 2005; Tregear, 2011). Hence we have framed the methodology and explored the data with the goal of revealing more about the environmental and social dimensions of FSP. Hence questionnaire and interview topics included the degree to which FSP is practised across social and demographic groups, the degree to which industrially produced fertilizers and pesticides are used, the kinds of transport required in attending to productive gardens and the degree of sharing that is practised.

The findings presented in this paper are based on several sets of data gathered in Czechia between 2005 and 2010 and in Poland in 2011. In 2005 we commissioned the Czech polling agency CVVM (Public Opinion Research Centre) to pose 13 questions formulated by us as a part of one of their regular national surveys. This first Czech polling was conducted between 21 and 28 February 2005. It was a standard CVVM survey using the quota sampling method. The agency worked with a panel of 241 interviewers who were geographically spread throughout the country, including both urban and rural locations. CVVM sent questionnaires to its 241 interviewers. Each of them conducted either four or five interviews with respondents who met the criteria set by the agency so that the resulting quota sample constituted a representative sample of the

Czech population. CVVM estimates that the response rate was between 50 and 60% (in terms of the proportion of people who met the representativeness criteria and agreed to be interviewed out of the total number of people approached by interviewers). These cannot be expressed with greater precision on account of this sampling technique: it is not recorded how many people approached by interviewers declined to be interviewed and/or did not meet the criteria (Vinoopal, 2009a). The quota sample of CVVM respondents must match characteristics of the Czech population over the age of 15 established by the 2001 national census in terms of gender, age, educational level, employment, job, and geographical distribution of respondents, which are annually updated by the Czech Statistical Office.

To guarantee the representativeness of their polls, CVVM aims at receiving at least 1000 questionnaires filled in by respondents. Their long-term experience is that to receive back the minimum of 1000 questionnaires, the agency needs to send out between 1150 and 1170 questionnaires as there is normally some shortfall of returned questionnaires due to unforeseen circumstances (Vinoopal, 2009b). In the case of our February 2005 survey the number of returned questionnaires was 1056 out of 1150 sent out to the interviewers. The questions covered a broad range of topics related to food consumption including where respondents purchase food, whether they grow their own fruit and vegetables, the percentage of specific types of fruits and vegetables consumed in their households accounted for by their own production and motivations for growing their food.

In 2010 we commissioned CVVM to carry out a shorter (6 questions) follow-up survey focused on the social and environmental sustainability dimensions of FSP in Czechia.² The respondents were asked to provide information about the motivations for growing food and about the ways they grow food, including what types of fertilisers and pesticides they use and how they travel to their gardens. Other questions aimed at establishing the extent of sharing of their harvest: whether – and with whom they share part of their produce, and what proportion of their harvest they give away. CVVM gathered the data in the same way (the quota sampling method) as in 2005, except that in this case the company sent out 1170 questionnaires out of which 1024 were returned. The polling was conducted between 30 August and 6 September 2010.

Seven months later, the Polish polling agency CBOS (Public Opinion Research Center) conducted the same six-question survey for us in Poland, following the same technique of data gathering as CVVM. The polling took place between 6 and 13 April 2011. The number of returned questionnaires was slightly higher than in the Czech case – 1192.

To uncover motivations, causalities and explanations for behaviour identified by these quantitative surveys we conducted or commissioned two rounds of in-depth semi-structured interviews in Czech households and one round of interviews in Poland; 35 interviews in total. The duration of the interviews ranged from 40 to 120 min. In Czechia we conducted 15 interviews between March and May 2005 and 10 interviews with a different set of respondents and partly in different locations in November and December 2010. As we knew from the quantitative surveys that food self-provisioning was common in both rural and urban areas, on both occasions we decided to select interviewees in three locations

whose sizes would reflect this diversity. Therefore, in 2005 five interviews were conducted in the capital city Prague (over 1 million inhabitants), five in the Hradec Králové-Pardubice agglomeration (regional capitals with the combined population of nearly 200,000 inhabitants) and five in Polička (a rural town with population 9000). In 2010 four respondents were interviewed in Prague, four in a small town, Boskovice, (11,000 inhabitants) and two in a small village, Telecí (population 400). While we ourselves conducted the 2005 interviews (relying on our acquaintances living in the three locations to identify suitable respondents), in 2010 we hired a consultant to select and interview respondents in November and December. In 2011 we hired a consultant in Poland to do 10 interviews (again relying for identification of suitable respondents on her acquaintances and connections while meeting our request concerning growers' social diversity) asking identical questions to those posed in 2010 in Czechia. The Polish interviews were conducted between March and April 2011 in four locations. Three were conducted in the national capital Warsaw (1.7 million inhabitants), and the others were conducted in towns and a village in the north east of Poland: three in Ostróda (town with population 33,000), one in Szczutno (population 25,000) and three in Pietrzwałd (village with 250 inhabitants).

While these interviewees were not derived from a process of representative sampling, we aimed at the widest possible range of respondents in terms of age, income, educational level and employment. People with a diversity of backgrounds including the unemployed, pensioners, business people and a professional musician were selected for these interviews. All interviewees were from the ethnic majority groups – white Czechs and Poles.

It is worth pausing to explain our choice of national contexts for the research. Our initial 2005 research in Czechia yielded some really unexpected, and from the sustainability point of view, important, findings. To establish whether they were country-specific and applied to a relatively small country, or whether they had a wider currency, we decided to extend our empirical research to another and much larger post-socialist country – Poland. Despite similar recent histories the two neighbouring countries display considerable diversity in terms of some basic characteristics related to agriculture and food and the urban/rural structure of population. Czechia industrialised extensively in the nineteenth century and its farming and land uses reflect that industrialisation and consequent urbanisation and agricultural intensification as well as the legacy of collectivised agriculture during the socialist period. Today's Czechia, with its population of 10 million, has only 23,000 agricultural holdings with an average area of 152 ha per farm (by far the largest average farm size in the EU; Eurostat, 2011). Poland's industrialisation took place in the twentieth century. The structure of Polish agriculture differs from the Czech one: the average size of 1,506,000 holdings is 10 ha. Both countries are urbanised – although Poland has a higher proportion of rural population (39%) than Czechia (24%). Despite these significant historical and current differences in social and economic development, the results of the Polish FSP survey mostly confirmed our findings from Czechia. It is important to state that we did not intend this to be understood as a comparative study. We also chose these countries as case studies on account of language and research competencies within the team and its collaborators. While we did not seek formal comparison, we were concerned to gather data from more than one post socialist CEE country and from a range of settings (large urban; town; rural). We are planning in future work to expand our research and collaborations to cover other European countries, both with similar and different recent histories to the two in which we have been working so far. We are also interested in expanding the range of methods applied, including the use of food and garden diaries, in order to enrich certain elements of the data.

One of the reasons we consider FSP in CEE to be important is precisely the fact that practitioners of food self-provisioning do not tend to identify environment or sustainability concerns as significant reasons for pursuing these practices. In Poland in 2011, "by

Transport modes used to access gardens/plots.

Extent of food given away.

growing food with little impact on the environment I contribute to its protection" ranked as the 9th reason out of 9 options from which the respondents were asked to choose and in Czechia in 2010 it ranked as the 8th reason in terms of reasons identified by respondents questioned about their main motivations for self-provisioning.

It is for these reasons that our empirical research has led us to develop the concept of quiet sustainability. Quiet sustainability is defined by practices that result in beneficial environmental or social outcomes, that do not relate directly or indirectly to market transactions, and that are not represented by the practitioners as relating directly to environmental or sustainability goals. Cultures of sharing, repairing, gifting and bartering characterise quiet sustainability. Everyday practices that have low environmental impacts, but that have not been pursued for that reason, are also features of the concept.

In all of the quantitative surveys in 2005, 2010 and 2011, and also the respondents in the in-depth interviews emphasis is consistently placed on fresh and "healthy food" (Table 8). Qualitative interviews suggest that for many this means primarily food grown with no or limited use of pesticides and other industrially produced chemicals and which contain, as a result, the least possible residua of industrially produced chemicals. While this motivation is relevant to an assessment of environmental impact that is not the stated purpose: the qualitative interviews showed that their concern is with the state and quality of the food rather than the environmental impact of the food system per se:

We use no chemicals (i.e. neither fertilisers nor pesticides). For health reasons, so that we prevent transfer of chemicals into our organism (meaning human body) via the food chain; so, (we grow our own food) for this reason. (Interview, Boskovice, Cz, 20/11/2010b)

This research characterises Czech and Polish household food production as primarily a voluntary activity imbued with deep social and cultural meanings and associated with feelings of exuberance, joy and a sense of achievement rather than with constraints, necessity or a sense of obligation. Self-grown food allows the grower and consumer to experience the skill of the grower and the quality of their produce:

I have about 40 tomato bushes. These enormous raspberry-red ones and these enormous yellow ones are my favourite varieties. When the tomatoes are finished, for I keep them for quite a long time, I store the green ones under blankets and more than once they have lasted until December. They are amazing, you can't compare the taste with those of shop- bought tomatoes. The bought one looks like a tomato, but you have no idea what it is... (Interview, Warszawa, Pl, 18/4/2011)

The quiet sustainability of Europe's food self-provisioners, and the extensive networks of sharing that spur from their work is not a programme to be implemented, a future ambition for society or an exceptional contrast to the norm. Rather it is a quiet but purposeful parallel to the market economy of food. It inhabits family and friendship, work and neighbourhood networks, rather than seeking

to challenge or mimic economic institutions. This may go some way towards explaining why FSP in CEE has received so little attention from those scholars and activists who seek examples of sustainable food politics and ethics that do not "contribute to the production of neoliberal subjectivities" (Guthman, 2008, 1181).

The value, power and reach of these practices seem to lie precisely in the fact that they allow parallel and overlapping narratives about families, networks, competencies and relations with nature. They are not a replacement or an alternative to the market economy of food, or a response to its environmental or social failings, but rather a vivid demonstration that that is only part of life. For one Polish respondent the contrast between CEE experiences of food provisioning and those in the West was marked by a failure of those from the West (in this case the US) to understand these non-market motivations:

I'll tell you an interesting story...what year was it? Maybe '70, '80-something '85 or '86... Our friends had these visitors and they came to our allotment, and at the time the whole allotment was cultivated. And this guy came along, he was from the States, and he asks "what are you doing all this for?" and I say, "to eat well". Because for him it wasn't worth it if he could buy vegetables for a week for a dollar and a half or two, it's not worth the effort... you could say that for us it started to be a similar situation. But what do we eat then? Just chemicals and other stuff. (Interview, Ostróda, Pl, 26/3/2011)

In our view FSP in CEE is not simply an example of an alternative food network, in the sense of being a response to the contemporary agri-industrial food system. Indeed it implicitly asks provocative questions of that framing of food research agendas (for example Renting et al., 2003), and adds a further extension to the already demanding interdisciplinary research tasks relating to multifunctional agriculture outlined in Renting et al. (2009).

The UN system now enters its fourth decade of deliberation in the search for a rapprochement between environment, society and economy. One of the dominant framing devices, indeed the main means by which that circle is squared in international policy contexts, is the notion of sustainable development (WCED, 1987). We propose that at least some of the policy and political energy that is put into these processes is diverted into acknowledging, protecting and promoting practices that are sustainable in outcome, but don't seek or claim to be, and that happen apart from, sometimes in spite of, the economic sphere.

Quiet sustainability is practised all over the planet in a range of everyday practices that are most frequently followed in both post-socialist societies and the global South. Importantly they contribute to making societies more resilient to unsettling ecological and social changes but require no state funding and little in the way of market exchanges. Some cultures of sharing, repairing, gifting and bartering that characterise quiet sustainability may, as with practices around food self-provisioning in Poland and Czechia, prove to be robust in the face of dramatic social and economic changes. Others, however, may be more delicate and require recognition, nurturing and a degree of protection. This nurturing and protection of quiet sustainability in such key fields such as transport, food or energy use will often imply local, national or regional state action, if not spending. This will take forms such as planning controls, and the diversion of investment from one form of land use or infrastructure to another (e.g. gardening spaces protected or introduced in place of or as part of, retail, office or housing developments; walking and cycling provision in place or as part of road developments).

Reasons or motivations for FSP.

The balance for policy communities to strike here is delicate if it seeks to intervene in outcomes at the meso-level. Specifically in relation to food policy, FSP in CEE may in part be so extensive across time and across social groups precisely because it represents a sphere of life that is wilfully independent of states and markets. However there are supportive measures that can underpin and allow expansion of these practices. These might include: planning policies that protect and promote spaces for productive gardening; taxation relief on productive gardening equipment and seed and positive media and policy representations of these practices by influential public figures. More radical steps would include consideration of the relationship between economies of time within households and communities and the extent to which FSP can be sustained. That may lead to debate of the length of the working week (as proposed by Coote et al., 2010), but also prompts wider thinking about the 'time' of sustainability (Bastian, 2012), and raises questions about the sustainability or otherwise of whole social and economic systems. These are measures whose significance in terms of environmental and social sustainability and resilience may be far greater in post-socialist regions and the global South, where, for example, sustainable FSP practices are more widespread than in western Europe and north America where prominent political figures are seeking to support their reintroduction.

Political and policy action that seeks to understand, protect and expand the practices and spaces of quiet sustainability may serve not just to progress internationally agreed sustainable development objectives, but also to revise them in important ways. Quiet sustainability is by its nature co-produced. It questions the rhetoric of dramatic and difficult transitions to sustainability that the formal discourses surrounding sustainable development have promoted since the Brundtland Report (1987). Such revisions to the dominant technocratic framings of the concept of sustainable development draw upon the existing knowledge and experience of everyday life. Indeed clear public acknowledgement and support of sustainable daily practices (walking and cycling; sharing goods and services rather than universal ownership, and in our case study, food self-provisioning and sharing) could serve to transform public perceptions of environmental change issues and the nature and scale of the policy and political challenges they generate.

People who grow, consume and share their own food in Poland and Czechia associate the practice with joy, exuberance, generosity, care and skill. Theirs is not a fulfilment of environmental obligations, an attempt to achieve "resilience", or a response to limits, but the daily practice of a satisfying life. In other words: it is not just that the journey to sustainability is less difficult than is sometimes presented – large sections of humanity may already be on it without feeling the need to proclaim the fact loudly.

We wish to thank Jiří Vinopal for advice concerning the construction of the Czech national survey questionnaires, CVVM in Prague for conducting the 2005 and 2010 surveys and Tomáš Kostelecký for assistance with the analysis of the survey results and for conducting some of the Czech interviews. We also thank Zofia Boni for conducting the qualitative interviews and CBOS in Warsaw for undertaking the quantitative survey in Poland, and Renata Tyszczuk and Monika Wojciechowska for assisting with translation. We thank interviewees in Poland and Czechia for sharing their views with us. We gratefully acknowledge research funding support from the Open University's Department of Geography and OpenSpace research centre as well as from the Czech Science Foundation via grant No. 404/10/0521, entitled "Environmental Values, Beliefs and Behavior in the Czech Republic in Historical and International Perspective". Earlier or related versions of this paper

were presented at the conference "Consumer Culture: between aesthetics, social division and ecological activism" held at Palacky University, Olomouc, Czech Republic, 7–9 October 2010, at the 24th Congress of the European Society for Rural Sociology held in Małczyce, Chania, Greece, 22–25 August 2011, at the Royal Geographical Society-Institute of British Geographers annual conference in London, 31 August – 2 September 2011 and at the "Agriculture in an Urbanizing Society" conference held in Wageningen, Netherlands, 1–4 April 2012 and the XIII World Congress of Rural Sociology held in Lisbon, Portugal, 29 July–4 August 2012. The authors wish to thank participants for their comments. We are also very grateful for the great care and attention offered by the editor and reviewers. They have greatly improved this paper.