Research & reports

Maria Elena Peralta-Culcay, Hugo Alberto Cedillo-Tapia, Alfonso Suárez-Tapia · Dialnet (Universidad de la Rioja) · Ecuador (Cuenca)

This research characterized the technological use among small (500-1000 m2) and medium (1000-3000 m2) peri-urban horticultural producers in San Joaquín, Baños, and Sayausí, Cuenca, Ecuador, using a survey. The survey found that most production is sold in local markets, following an ancestral system with some additional technology. The identified technological efficiency was at a medium level (3 on a scale of 1 to 5), indicating a technological deficit.

Ramón Antonio Mosquera Mena, Yolvi Prada Millán · Universidad Nacional Abierta y a Distancia eBooks · Colombia

Urban and peri-urban agriculture in Colombia offers benefits such as alleviating food insecurity and creating jobs, but currently lacks government policies to support these processes. This paper contextualizes relevant experiences and technical tools for implementing agroecological orchards, emphasizing environmental and social sensitivity. It also notes that agricultural research in Colombia is still emerging, requiring more applied research for technological development to benefit communities and farmers.

Per-Anders Langendahl · Frontiers in Sustainable Cities · Global

This paper investigates the politics of smart farming expectations in urban environments, conducting exploratory case study research on early smart farming initiatives in Sweden. It explores the politics of knowledge claims at the project level and their performativity in envisioning more sustainable urban futures. The findings suggest that smart farming at the level of individual projects gives the appearance of change, but at the same time, it produces more of the same.

Olga Domené-Painenao, Francisco Herrera · Desenvolvimento e Meio Ambiente · Venezuela

In Venezuela, the Bolivarian Revolution since 1999 has seen the unfolding of harsh class and food system contradictions. While the Program Degree in Agroecology (PDA) at the Bolivarian University of Venezuela has trained over a thousand graduates who contribute to agroecological scaling and urban agriculture, the abstract highlights the persistent "harsh class and food system contradictions" within the country. This indicates ongoing equity challenges despite agroecological efforts.

Larissa Maas, Leila Amaral Gontijo · Saúde e Sociedade · Global

This case study investigated the cognitive demands and work complexity for urban organic farmers whose main economic activity is selling their products. The findings indicate that the cognitive load for these farmers is high, contributing to complex work. The study notes a lack of existing research on the cognitive load of organic urban agriculture workers, as it is still a nascent movement.

Sekolah Menengah Islam As-Syddiq, Simpang Renggam, Milah Zainal, M. Z. Rosmiza, Program Geografi, Pusat Kajian Pembangunan, Sosial dan Persekitaran, Fakulti Sains Sosial dan Kemanusiaan, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia · Malaysian Journal of Society and Space · Malaysia

This qualitative study explored human assets among 8 participants in community garden projects in Malaysia. While the government introduced community garden projects to improve urban residents' well-being, their success rate is reportedly low, with many projects expected to be unsuccessful. The study found that participants possessed human assets such as good health, physical strength, ability to seek agricultural inputs and information, strong religious practices, and resilience.

Pastory Salvatory Thomas, Wilbard Kombe, Aldo Lupala · Urban and Regional Planning · Tanzania

This qualitative study examined perceptions of urban agriculture among 60 urban farmers and officials in Arusha City, Tanzania, through interviews, observation, and literature review. Findings revealed that negative effects of urban agricultural activities influenced negative perceptions, which city officials seldom managed. While urban agriculture is acknowledged in policy, the critical effects of negative perceptions among stakeholders are considered less crucial in policy implications and formal governmental proclamations, despite their real-world impact.

Anna Barra Caracciolo, Valentina Terenzi · Microorganisms · Global

A review of the rhizosphere as a microhabitat of intense chemical dialogue between plants and microorganisms covers synergistic interactions that can enhance plant function and productivity, including responses to stress conditions such as heavy metal (HM) contamination, alongside the risks such contamination poses. Where heavy metals are present in agricultural soils, there is a risk of metal uptake by edible plants leading to bioaccumulation in humans and animals with detrimental health consequences, and plant productivity itself can be negatively affected; many bacteria have defensive mechanisms for resisting heavy metals and can improve plant responses to HM stress, but achieving such beneficial rhizosphere interactions is described as hard to attain in agroecosystems managed with traditional practices that focus on maximizing crop yield.

Nur Surayya Mohd Saudi, Mohd Nor Yahaya, Muzafar Shah Habibullah, Baharom Abdul Hamid, Muhammad Amirul Azlan, Mohd Haizam Mohd Saudi · Turkish Online Journal of Qualitative Inquiry · Malaysia

A study on Malaysia's Movement Control Order (MCO) noted the extension may effectively contain the pandemic's spread but is expected to have a devastating impact on food security, and proposed urban farming as a means of generating household income and food security for the low-income B40 group. Econometric modeling of the effect of lockdown measures and COVID-19 on selected vegetable prices found that not all vegetables reacted uniformly to lockdown measures; price increases were associated with reduced household purchases and income, denying people access to food security. While the substitutability of vegetables allowed some switching to cheaper options, the study states that higher food prices themselves deny people access to food security.

Kit Prendergast, Amelie M. Vanderstock, Heather Neilly, Catherine E. Ross, Vanessa Pirotta, Patrick Tegart · Austral Ecology · Australia

A reflection on a citizen science project in which five early-career and PhD female researchers guided school-age children across five schools to build artificial flowers, install them on school ovals, and record over repeated 10-minute observations how flower colour (yellow vs. blue) and configuration (isolated, clumped adjacent, clumped mixed-colour, clumped single-colour) affected the number and taxa of visiting insects. The project achieved a low-cost, engaging format and exposure to female STEM role models, but the authors report constraints including having to run it in a season made suboptimal by fixed school curricula, confounding of results caused by the children's own observations, and an inability to verify the collected data.

Carolina Baldini, Mariana Edith Marasas, Andrea Alejandra Drozd · Journal of Environmental Planning and Management · Colombia

A land-cover change study (Journal of Environmental Planning and Management, 2021) applied a supervised classification of Landsat satellite imagery from 1986, 1996, 2005, and 2015 to Argentina's largest peri-urban horticultural region in South America. Between 1986 and 2015, open-field horticulture extent decreased by 51.47%, while greenhouse area increased by 2652.83%, high-density urbanization expanded by 111.58%, and low-density urbanization increased only between 1986 and 2005—expansion that came at the expense of natural grassland, herbaceous parks, and livestock land. The authors conclude this reflects a regional process of urban growth and productive intensification that has caused losses of open-field horticultural areas and produced a non-equitable distribution of remaining semi-natural areas, and they call for territorial planning that prioritizes ecologically resilient, semi-natural land cover.

Olga Romanova, Sarah Taylor Lovell · Urban Agriculture & Regional Food Systems · Global

This review assesses the capacity of woody species (trees and shrubs) used in urban food forests to accumulate polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), heavy metals (HMs), and metalloids, given limited existing literature on food-safety risk in urban fruit- and nut-producing trees compared with annual crops. General trends identified were (a) lower risk of HM and PAH accumulation in woody species than in vegetables, and (b) less accumulation in the fruit of woody species than in other parts of the same species. However, these trends are not always consistent, and accumulation depends on factors such as the concentration of a given contaminant in the environment, contaminant type, and species or variety. The review states there is a critical need for more research on the safety of growing edible fruits and nuts on trees and shrubs in contaminated urban environments.

Aamir Mehmood Shah, Gengyuan Liu, Fanxin Meng, Qing Yang, Jingyan Xue, Stefano Dumontet, Renato Passaro, Marco Casazza · Energies · Global

This review article examines knowledge gaps regarding small-scale urban green-blue infrastructure (GBI) from the perspective of the food-energy-water (FEW) nexus, focusing on the literature on urban ecosystem services (positive effects) and dis-services (negative effects) associated with different GBI typologies. It found that GBI can contribute environmentally, socially, and economically to FEW security and urban sustainability, but that these positive effects must be weighed against ecosystem dis-service tradeoffs: urban food production is commonly connected with heavy water and energy consumption, particularly under dry climate conditions, and is sometimes linked to excessive use of manure, pesticides, or fertilizers that can pose risks to water quality and local insect survival, or to enhanced mosquito breeding from irrigation. The review also found that few nexus modeling techniques have been discussed in terms of their benefits, drawbacks, and applications.

Johanna Lochner, Marco Rieckmann, Marcel Robischon · Sustainability · Global

A study of Virtual School Garden Exchanges (VSGEs)—which link local gardening with global thinking by having elementary and secondary school students in different parts of the world exchange information about their school gardens and related topics via digital media—focused on educators' perspectives and the learning outcomes they observed, given ongoing controversy over whether VSGEs are suitable for Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) and whether they produce the learning outcomes educators expect. The researchers conducted 20 semi-structured interviews with VSGE educators, analyzed abductively and qualitatively. Results showed substantial overlap between observed and expected learning outcomes and ESD aims, but the data also revealed that learners engaging with international peers were affected by stereotypes and norms in varying ways: on one hand, VSGEs can lead to "Othering," which is not congruent with either ESD or the expected learning outcomes; on the other, they can inspire Transformative Learning that contributes to ESD aims. The study concludes that VSGEs hold potential for ESD depending on a complex interplay of factors, but are not guaranteed to constitute good ESD practice.

Maha Deeb, Peter M. Groffman, Manuel Blouin, Sara Perl Egendorf, Alan Vergnes, Viacheslav Vasenev, Donna L. Cao, Daniel C. I. Walsh, Tatiana Morin, Geoffroy Séré · SOIL · Global

This review examines the use of Constructed Technosols (CTs), mixtures of organic and mineral waste, for green infrastructure (GI) in urban spaces. While CTs have high potential to provide multiple soil functions and contribute to urban greening, urban soils are often physically, chemically, or biologically unsuitable for GI features. The analysis suggests that the composition and structure of CTs should be adapted to available wastes and by-products, as well as future land use and environmental conditions, highlighting the need for careful design to overcome existing limitations.

Laura Wynne, Laure‐Elise Ruoso, Dana Cordell, Brent Jacobs · Australian Geographer · Australia (Sydney)

This paper investigates metropolitan-level strategic planning documents in Sydney, Australia, using a Foucauldian governmentality approach, to understand how they relate to peri-urban agriculture. The analysis reveals that prevailing rationalities, including the global city, compact city, and sustainability agenda, frame the urbanization of peri-urban agricultural lands as necessary and inevitable. Consequently, peri-urban areas are not considered to have unique planning needs but are instead imagined as latent spaces for future housing and job development, integrating agriculture only when it aligns with the 'global city' narrative.

Phoebe Lickwar, Roxi Thoren · · Denmark

The Nærum Allotment Gardens in Denmark are publicly owned and privately leased and managed. A national Allotment Garden Association provides gardeners with a forum to counter the inherent vulnerability of these allotments to land use change. This structure indicates a persistent vulnerability of the gardens to changes in land use.

Paule Olivia Akotto, Dorothée Boccanfuso, Marie-Ève Yergeau · Cahiers de recherche · Global

This exploratory review synthesizes 35 reports and articles published between 1980 and 2019 to assess the potential of urban and peri-urban agriculture (UPA) to build resilience against poverty, food insecurity, and environmental challenges in developing countries. The review found that UPA creates one job for every 50 to 100 individuals, but these jobs are generally seasonal, and market access remains a significant constraint for farmers.

Jeffrey Gilbert, Christina Chauvenet, Brett C. Sheppard, Molly De Marco · Journal of Agriculture Food Systems and Community Development · Global

This study investigated leadership styles and volunteer engagement in community gardens through interviews with 13 garden managers and six focus groups with 48 volunteers. Findings revealed that managers struggled to recruit and retain volunteers capable of maintaining gardens. Garden managers exhibited either collaborative or directive leadership styles, both of which were acknowledged and appreciated by participants.

Azizan Marzuki, Ahmad Sahir Jais · PLANNING MALAYSIA · Malaysia

This qualitative exploratory review, based on a Systematic Literature Review of secondary data, investigated the connection between urban sprawl and its impact on agricultural productivity and food security in Malaysia. The study found that urbanization did affect Malaysia's food security self-sufficiency level, particularly for land-intensive food products like vegetables and livestock, due to the conversion of agricultural lands.

Colleen Hammelman, Alexis Saenz-Montoya · Journal of Latin American geography · Colombia (Medellín)

In Medellín, Colombia, large infrastructure projects by the local government, intended to transform the city, have contributed to a neoliberal sustainability agenda. Data from community meetings (2015-2017) with displaced people engaged in subsistence urban agriculture revealed that these projects exclude marginalized residents from newly valued "natural" commons. This territorialization strategy controls peripheral spaces by including approved actors while dispossessing less powerful residents of their right to the city.

Fatin Natasya Shuhaimi, Nursuriati Jamil, Raseeda Hamzah · Bulletin of Electrical Engineering and Informatics · Global

This study proposed and evaluated two Internet of Things (IoT)-based smart farming system designs for personal use in residential apartments, focusing on humidity and temperature monitoring. After comparing sensor readings (DHT 11 and DHT 22) over three days against actual environmental values, and assessing implementation costs and power consumption, the findings regarding accuracy and costs were inconclusive.

Tanmoy Roy Tusher, Md. Eusuf Sarker, Sumaya Nasrin, Tapos Kormoker, Ram Proshad, Md. Saiful Islam, Shamim Al Mamun, A. R. M. Tareq · Toxin Reviews · Bangladesh

This study investigated toxic metal and PAH contamination in rooftop soils and vegetables (red amaranth, spinach) in urban and peri-urban Bangladesh. Urban rooftop soil and vegetables were highly contaminated with toxic metals and PAHs compared to peri-urban samples. Lead (Pb) and cadmium (Cd) concentrations in urban vegetables exceeded safe limits. However, health risk indices indicated that the levels of toxic metals and PAHs in urban rooftop vegetables would not pose carcinogenic or non-carcinogenic health risks for adults and children, deeming them safe for consumption.

Steven C. Deller, David Lamie, Maureen Stickel · · Global

This review provides a critical analysis of current research on local and regional food networks, including urban farming projects. It reveals that many presumptions of the local food movement remain largely untested, and much of the current research lacks strong theoretical grounding and quantitative rigor. The review emphasizes the importance for practitioners to distinguish between objective, research-based information and speculative, advocacy-oriented analysis.

Fabien Ilunga Mpanga, Michel Shengo Lutandula⃰ · The Global Environmental Engineers · Democratic Republic of Congo (Lubumbashi)

A study conducted in the Kasungami district of Lubumbashi, Democratic Republic of Congo, investigated the link between the use of polluted waters in urban agriculture and heavy metal contamination in soil and cultivated vegetables (amaranths, broccolis). Physicochemical and mineral analyses of water, soil, and plant samples revealed that heavy metals, except cobalt, were present in the water used for urban agriculture at concentrations below quality standards, but the soil contained heavy metals at phytotoxic concentrations. Only broccolis were contaminated with lead, while amaranths had heavy metals below quality standards. These findings suggest that urban agriculture in large agglomerations of the DRC could endanger consumers' health.