in order to understand the relationship between civic agriculture and the
community experience, it is first necessary to define what is meant when referring to
Lyson’s concept of civic agriculture. Once that parameter is established, it is helpful to
understand where civic agriculture falls in the evolution of literature related to dominant
and alternative food systems, as well as its application to describing ongoing phenomena.
In this section, I present a definition of civic agriculture, followed by an analysis of its
literary, theoretical, and practical roots. The purpose of this section is to elucidate the
utility of examining the concept and some of its implications.