The current popularity, in the West, of household food production is explained by health-, dietary- and sustainability-related benefits it brings to individuals and society. What is rarely mentioned is that only a small proportion of population is involved in this wholesome modern ‘hobby’. As the findings of Alber and Kohler’s (2008) Europe-wide research demonstrate, the proportion of the population in Western Europe growing their own food does not exceed 10%. In contrast, the phenomenon of wide-spread food self-provisioning (35-60%) in postsocialist countries is perceived in line with the usual depreciation of Eastern Europe which is supposed to provide counterpoint to the modernising and innovative West. Accordingly, East European food self-provisioning is conceptualised as evidence of de-modernisation, a survival strategy or an overhanging remnant of a pre-industrial era.

The paper will, first, challenge this narrative and seek to reverse the dominant perspective drawing on our recent research in Czechia. It will show that Czech food self-provisioning is a form of ‘actually existing sustainability’. While not being primarily motivated by environmental reasons, the emphasis placed on fresh and chemical-free produce makes the practice compatible with environmental sustainability. These practices support extensive networks in which most food growers share their produce, nurture community and family bonds and contribute to social cohesion and cooperation. Second, on the basis of three national surveys and a series of in-depth interviews conducted with food growers in Czechia, the paper seeks to identify factors explaining the large scale popularity of food self-provisioning including people’s motivations, infrastructural and organisational aspects of the phenomenon and know-how and considers the potential for the transfer of the phenomenon to new social contexts. The aim is to place food self-provisioning in the centre of academic and practitioner debates on the possibility of more exuberant, more appealing and socially more inclusive forms of sustainability.