Research & reports

Ana Paula Louzada, Ernesto Grillo Rabello, Yan Menezes Oliveira · Revista Interinstitucional Artes de Educar · Brazil

This study documents the collective construction experience of an agroecological garden by psychology students at the Federal University of Espírito Santo. The paper emphasizes the relevance of this practice in producing integral health and critiques the current context of Integrated World Capitalism, which separates humans from nature.

Georgeanne M. Artz, Linda Naeve, Artz, Georgeanne M., Naeve, Linda · AgEcon Search (University of Minnesota, USA) · United States (Iowa)

A study in Iowa indicated that small-scale farmers considering scaling up production face challenges balancing increased labor costs with the need for specialized machinery. The study collaborated with five groups of farmers who shared different pieces of machinery, developing sharing agreements. While the article provides an overview of the benefits and challenges of machinery sharing, the abstract does not state specific findings that machinery sharing resolved economic viability issues.

José Tobias Marks Machado, Jeferson Tonin, Evandro Pedro Schneider · SHILAP Revista de lepidopterología · Brazil

This study, conducted in two schools in Cerro Largo - RS, Brazil, during 2013, performed a post-implementation analysis of ecologically based school gardens introduced through a university extension program. Positive results included the proliferation of similar projects. However, significant difficulties were emphasized in integrating the school gardens with disciplinary education, attributed to existing conservatism in the educational context.

Danny Tarng · Journal of Agriculture Food Systems and Community Development · United States

This commentary discusses how nonprofit urban agriculture organizations, central to the U.S. food justice movement, can foster better allyship. It highlights that as the movement expands, the transformation of allies' privilege into empowerment at an organizational level is crucial for ongoing growth and success. The text provides insights into organizational policies and practices that can improve allyship.

Elizabete Cristina Ribeiro Silva, Alexandre Brasil Carvalho da Fonseca, Fernanda Pereira Dysarz, Ernani Jardim Reis · Alexandria Revista de Educação em Ciência e Tecnologia · Brazil

This research identifies parameters for school gardens in Brazil, analyzing various experiences and an urban public school case. The study correlates the health of students and farmers in agricultural activities, explicitly pointing out negligences in this regard. It argues that a healthy eating concept from school gardens requires an equally healthy production system, and attention to student safety can highlight farmers' working conditions, which is crucial for food and nutritional education.

Stephen R. Miller · · United States (Newark, New Jersey)

This article proposes a new approach to financing local food, viewing it as a finance problem similar to urban manufacturing, to scale up local food production. It explores the necessity of large-scale urban agriculture, focusing on vertical farms, and examines creative financing examples like AeroFarms in Newark, New Jersey. The paper suggests deploying existing and potential financing types, modeled on economic development agreements, to advance local food initiatives.

Laura Forbes · Digital Commons - CSUMB (California State University, Monterey Bay) · United States (California)

School gardens are common in elementary schools, but teachers find it challenging and unnecessary to incorporate them into their time and everyday curriculum due to time restrictions and the need to focus on required classroom curriculum. This capstone focuses on the beneficial factors students can receive by properly implementing the school garden into everyday curriculum and how teachers can successfully incorporate it. By creating a garden-based program and lesson plans that incorporate required subjects, teachers can spend the necessary time teaching required subjects while utilizing the school garden.

Silene Maciel dos Santos, Samuel Ferreira da Fonseca, Luiz Andrei Gonçalves Pereira · Dialnet (Universidad de la Rioja) · Brazil (Pirapora-MG)

This study analyzed the spatial distribution of urban agricultural activities in the Sagrada Família neighborhood, Pirapora-MG, Brazil, through a literature review. It examined urban agriculture practices, their socio-economic role, and the problems and challenges faced by urban agriculture actors in the neighborhood. The study concluded that the identified issues suggest urban agriculture as an emancipatory process.

Gabriel R. Valle · Aztlán A Journal of Chicano Studies · United States

This essay explores the self-valorization of work in community gardens to advance a grounded theory of time and value, which has been lacking in Chicana/o studies. Urban community gardens are pivotal to the environmental justice movement, with Chicana/os playing a central role. The essay proposes a revolutionary logic of labor through reframing time and value, aiming to reconnect community gardeners to the means of their own production and reproduction. By creating "gardens of sabotage," communities challenge capitalism by reclaiming the value of work and confronting orthodox notions of economy, work, citizenship, community, and time.

Sabine Lefkowitz · · United States (Portland)

This thesis examined the relationship between socioeconomic status (SES) and outdoor time in Portland, Oregon public elementary schools. The study found that higher SES elementary schools spend more time outdoors than low SES schools. This disparity amplifies existing disadvantages for children in high-poverty schools, suggesting an inequity in outdoor time provision.

Geneviève S. Metson, Elena M. Bennett · PLoS ONE · Canada (Montreal)

This study quantified the role of urban agriculture (UA) in phosphorus (P) cycling in Montreal, Canada, using existing data and surveys of local UA practitioners. In 2012, Montreal imported 3.5 Gg of P in food, with 2.63 Gg accumulating in landfills, 0.36 Gg discharged to local waters, and only 0.09 Gg recycled through composting. UA was found to be only a small sub-system in the city's overall P cycle, contributing just 0.44% of the P consumed as food. Although recycling rates within the UA system are high, the land area dedicated to UA is too small to accommodate all P waste produced on the island.

B.M. Mercado-Borrayo, Silke Cram Heydrich, Irma Rosas‐Pérez, Manuel Hernández Quiroz, Claudia Ponce De León Hill · International Journal of Phytoremediation · Mexico

In a natural wetland in the Mexico City Metropolitan Area — a major supplier of crops and flowers whose canals hold high concentrations of organochlorine (OC) and organophosphorus (OP) pesticides — bioaccumulation of these pesticides was studied in water hyacinth (Eichhornia crassipes), a plant considered a plague but suggested in the literature to have phytoremediation potential. In vivo bioaccumulation differences for OC pesticides were largely explained by their log Kow, while all OP pesticides showed bioaccumulation regardless of log Kow, and the higher bioaccumulation factors of some accumulated OC pesticides could not be explained by log Kow alone, suggesting passive transport into the plant. Translocation ratios showed water hyacinth to be an accumulating plant with phytoremediation potential for all the organophosphorus pesticides studied and some organochlorine pesticides, and an equation for free water surface wetlands with floating macrophytes showed pesticide removal by the wetland with room for improvement through better management.

Lydia G. Marquez‐Bravo, Dean B. Briggs, Hannah A. Shayler, Murray B. McBride, Donna Lopp, Edie B. Stone, Gretchen Ferenz, Kenneth G. Bogdan, R. G. Mitchell, Henry M. Spliethoff · Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry · United States (New York City)

A study analyzed 69 soil samples from 20 community gardens in New York City for 23 polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) and black carbon, sampling both non-growing areas and vegetable-growing beds, including beds with and without visible PAH sources, at each garden. The sum of the US EPA's 16 priority PAHs reached up to 150 mg/kg, with a median of 5.4 mg/kg and mean of 14.2 mg/kg, similar to levels previously reported for urban areas in the northeastern United States. Isomer ratios indicated petroleum, coal and wood combustion as the main sources, and PAH concentrations were significantly and positively associated with black carbon and modeled air PAH concentrations, suggesting a link between historical atmospheric deposition and current soil PAH levels. Median PAH concentration in non-bed areas (7.4 mg/kg) was higher than in beds from the same gardens (4.0 mg/kg) and significantly higher than in beds without visible PAH sources (3.5 mg/kg); beds in gardens with records of soil amendments had 58% lower median PAH concentration than beds in gardens without such records, suggesting that gardening practices in beds without visible sources contribute to reducing soil PAH concentrations.

Ricardo da Silva Claudio, Souto de Sousa J uacute nior Francisco, Ismael de Souza Francisco, da Silva Dias Nildo, Nogueira de Sousa Neto Osvaldo, Cruz Portela Jeane, Cl aacute udia Medeiros Souza Ana, Christina Nascimento Porto Vania · African Journal of Agricultural Research · Brazil

A participatory action-research project in a community garden in Bom Jesus, Campo Grande, Rio Grande do Norte, Brazil, tested irrigating organic vegetables (coriander, chive, tomato, rocket) with reject brine from a water desalination/treatment station. All species irrigated with the saline waste water showed yield losses of 25.30% to 26.7% compared with conventional fresh-water irrigation, though some biomass was still produced, and the project changed residents' views on disposing of and reusing the saline waste.

Melissa N. Poulsen, Marie L. Spiker, Peter J. Winch · Journal of Agriculture Food Systems and Community Development · United States (Baltimore)

This study explored the perceived importance of community buy-in for urban farming, along with its barriers, facilitators, and strategies, through participant observation at urban farms and interviews with urban farmers, neighborhood leaders, residents, and key stakeholders in Baltimore, Maryland. Findings revealed that residents' unfamiliarity with urban farming, concerns about negative neighborhood impacts, and perceptions of urban farms as "outsider projects" were barriers to buy-in. Strategies for gaining buy-in were shown to follow three main phases: gaining entry into a neighborhood, introducing the urban farm idea, and engaging the neighborhood.

Brent F. Kim, Melissa N. Poulsen, Jared D. Margulies, Katie L. Dix, Anne Palmer, Keeve E. Nachman · PLoS ONE · United States (Baltimore, Maryland)

This study characterized urban community gardeners' knowledge and perceptions of soil contaminant risks in Baltimore, Maryland, United States, through surveys with 70 gardeners from 15 gardens and interviews with 18 key informants. It found low levels of concern and inconsistent knowledge regarding heavy metal and organic chemical contaminants among gardeners. Furthermore, barriers to investigating garden site history and conducting soil tests, along with limited knowledge of best practices for reducing exposure, were identified.

Laura-Anne Minkoff-Zern · Antipode · United States

Research on farmworker food insecurity in the USA points out that food assistance providers often treat farmworkers' inability to afford healthy food as a lack of knowledge, reinforcing racialized assumptions that people of color do not know "good" food. This study argues that food security and healthy eating are not a matter of consumers making healthy "choices," but rather a matter of class-based and racial differences within the food system.

Rachel Surls, Gail Feenstra, Sheila Golden, Ryan E. Galt, Shermain Hardesty, Claire Napawan, Cheryl Wilen · Renewable Agriculture and Food Systems · United States (California)

Urban agriculture (UA) in California has been slower to gain momentum compared to other urban states, partly due to limited availability of relevant information and technical assistance for urban farmers and municipal decision-makers. A University of California Cooperative Extension project is developing web-based educational resources based on a needs assessment, which includes a literature review, an internal survey of personnel, and community interviews. Preliminary findings indicate challenges in supporting urban farming due to resource constraints and information gaps.

Margot J. Pollans · Pace Digital Repository (Pace University) · United States

This article examines the various roles law plays in the cultivation of urban agriculture. It argues that despite growing enthusiasm for urban agriculture, serious equity and ecological concerns exist within the forms of modern urban agriculture, recommending that careful strategic planning should align the implementation of available legal tools to address these concerns.

Duncan Hilchey · Journal of Agriculture Food Systems and Community Development · United States

A study in the late 1990s investigated small-scale grower cooperatives in the northeastern United States, which had annual sales of US$5 million or less. It found many barriers to growth, including managers' difficulties in balancing diverse member interests, meeting buyer standards, and operating in a high-cost, low-price business. The Northeast Federation of Family-Farm Cooperatives (NEFFCO), a proposed support group, did not last beyond its grant period, indicating challenges in sustaining such initiatives.

Kit Yieng Chan, Michelle Chan, Oi Yan Chan, Thomas Y.K. Chan, Tsz Mei Chan, Sharon B. Chang, Kenrick Chau, Tarik Chelali · cIRcle (University of British Columbia) · Canada

Research at the University of British Columbia (UBC), Canada, investigated whether rooftop gardens could reduce greenhouse gas emissions and food transportation carbon emissions. While edible landscapes could potentially assist with climate goals, they require careful selection of crops, buildings, and resources. Preliminary calculations indicated that rooftop and community gardens would do very little to reduce the UBC campus's dependency on imported food.

Maggie Caroline McGriff · Journal of the Arkansas Academy of Science · United States

This study investigated whether three elementary school garden club programs influenced students' attitudes and behaviors regarding fruit and vegetable consumption. Quantitative analysis using pretest and posttest questionnaires found non-significant results, indicating no significant effect on participants' perceptions of fruit and vegetable consumption. Qualitative analysis of participant interviews also showed mostly non-significant changes in healthy eating, although participants reported positive experiences in other aspects like respect for nature and enjoyment of activities.

Tim Cashion, I. Forbes, Irena Knežević · · Canada

This preliminary study in Nova Scotia, Canada, explored the initiation and sustainability of community food initiatives through in-depth interviews with coordinators. The research identified that these initiatives are in a precarious state due to reliance on volunteers, land ownership issues, and a lack of consistent funding. Despite these challenges, they persist through community support and coordinator dedication.

Andrew Zitcer · Antipode · United States (Philadelphia)

This article explored the paradox of exclusivity in consumer food cooperatives in the United States, focusing on two food co-ops in Philadelphia, PA. The study found that exclusivity manifests in the co-ops' sales, business practices, and marketing, inadvertently excluding certain practices and people. This paradox hinders co-ops from fully realizing their transformative social and economic potential.

LaShonda M. Stewart, Steven A. Miller, R. W. Hildreth, Maja V. Wright-Phillips · New Political Science · United States (Chicago)

A preliminary analysis of Chicago's 49th Ward, the first participatory budgeting experiment in the United States, examined whether it resulted in different budgetary priorities and met social justice outcomes. Citizens chose projects classified as low priority by research literature, and while there was no clear pattern of projects only in affluent areas, geographic clustering was evident. Select areas received projects like community gardens, while others were limited to infrastructure repairs, indicating mixed social justice outcomes.