Urban gardening in Ho Chi Minh City: class, food safety concerns, and the crisis of confidence in farming

Abstract

In recent years, the southern Vietnamese metropolis of Ho Chi Minh City has seen a proliferation of urban gardening, ranging from the minute home-growing of herbs and vegetables to commercial urban gardens. In this article, I argue that what underlies these phenomena is urbanites’ striving to control the food they consume in light of prevalent food safety concerns in Vietnam. Based on ethnographic research, the article demonstrates that urban food growing efforts are largely related to a widespread crisis of confidence in the food system in general and in farming specifically. People are particularly concerned with agrochemical contamination of food and its long-term health effects. Meanwhile, tensions exist between negative views of “unsafe” practices of unknown farmers and the simultaneous romanticization of rural life and of food acquired through personal rural connections. In the context of growing socio-economic inequalities in the late socialist country, the research also examines how urban gardening as an individualized and middle-class activity renders visible class differences in access to locally produced, “safe” food.