Research & reports

Will Thompson · Plinth · United Kingdom

Published 12 June 2019, this piece estimates that UK charities spend around 15.8 million hours a year on grant monitoring reports, roughly £204 million in staff time. It assumes an average of 40 hours per grant, about 391,280 grants distributed per year and an average grant of around £50,000. Charities with at least one full-time-equivalent member of staff typically juggle five to ten different funders, each asking for similar information in different formats at different times, so the administrative load accumulates without producing learning. The estimate draws on interviews with ten people at small and medium charities reporting to six local authorities and more than fifty funders.

S. Alan Walters, Karen Stoelzle Midden · Agriculture · Global

Vegetable production on green roofs faces multiple challenges, resulting in minimal current activity despite its potential for urban agricultural sustainability. While intensive green roof systems are considered suitable for vegetable production, extensive systems with shallow-rooted crops like lettuce, kale, and radish show the greatest potential for sustained productivity due to building weight restrictions. Deeper-root crops like tomatoes require constant monitoring of fertility and moisture. Green roofs are not presented as a total solution for urban food provision.

Mark Paul · Journal of Agrarian Change · United States (Massachusetts)

This paper evaluates the livelihoods of Community-Supported Agriculture (CSA) farmers in the Connecticut River Valley of Massachusetts from their perspective. Results indicate that while CSA farmers earn more farm income than other U.S. farms on average, they still earn far below the median national income and generally fail to earn a living wage. Despite these economic findings, farmers stressed the importance of broader social, ecological, and economic benefits to farming. The study concludes that CSA has largely failed to provide adequate livelihoods for farmers to date.

Mitch Rose · Antipode · United States (Detroit)

This paper discusses the Detroit urban farming movement, conceptualizing the economy as an over-productive and wasteful system of energy exchange. It argues that the inefficient, redundant, and wasteful nature of urban farming in Detroit is an appropriation of potentialities within the general economy. The study highlights that diversity is not a result of positive relations but emerges from the prolific nature of the general economy.

Annie Svensson · · Sweden

This research investigated the economic sustainability of 14 Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) farms in Sweden through interviews. The study found that Swedish CSA farms had difficulties covering labor costs and suffered from inefficiency, indicating weak economic sustainability. The study did not identify specific approaches or business models that were more conducive to higher profitability.

Cristh Ellen Ferreira Pinheiro, Hélder dos Anjos Augusto, Cledinado Aparecido Dias, Fábio da Silva Gonçalves, Marcelo Oliveira · LA Referencia (Red Federada de Repositorios Institucionales de Publicaciones Científicas) · Brazil (São Paulo)

This study in Montes Claros, MG, Brazil, investigated the reality of urban farmers commercializing vegetable production to propose multidisciplinary extension and research actions. It identified agricultural production regions, the main functions of urban agriculture from the farmers' perspective, and the difficulties faced by these producers. The analysis highlighted the need for multidisciplinary approaches due to the identified demands, implying challenges in economic viability.

Jun‐Hong Chen, Zhifeng Gao, Lisha Zhang, Chen, Junhong, Gao, Zhifeng, Zhang, Lisha · 2018 Annual Meeting, February 2-6, 2018, Jacksonville, Florida · United States

This study applied quantitative methods to identify barriers that prohibit CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) participation or factors affecting unsubscribe from CSA membership. Based on 780 responses collected from a national consumer survey, only 6% of the total sample were current CSA members. The top two reasons for unsubscribing from CSA membership were preferring farmer's markets and not cooking at home. On the other hand, the top two important factors for participation in CSA were supporting local and family farms.

Pushpawani Ramaloo, Choong-Yeun Liong, Chamhuri Siwar, Anizan Isahak · · Malaysia

In the Taman Desa Damai community of Bukit Mertajam City, Penang State, Malaysia, in-depth interviews and observations were conducted with 15 community residents to investigate the influences of urban agriculture on social, economic, and environmental benefits. The study found that while community farming is significant in realizing the potential of the residential community, it faces obstacles to long-term sustainability.

Hok Bun Ku, Yan Hairong · · China

China's food-security crisis, caused by unsustainable development, has diminished the country's farmland through large-scale land acquisitions, ecological restoration projects, agricultural structural adjustments, natural disasters, and pollution, among other factors. This chapter argues that local producers and consumers are not passively waiting for government policy changes but, organized by green social workers, are actively searching for alternatives to achieve self-sufficiency and food security through a new initiative called the "rural–urban alliance." Framed within the social economy perspective advocated by green social work as a way to rethink economic development and consider alternatives to capitalism, the rural–urban alliance and community-supported agriculture (CSA) are positioned as a potential new route for China's sustainable development that could change the pathway of economic development forms that cause inequality and undermine livelihoods. This is a proposed, forward-looking argument, however; the abstract does not report empirical evidence that CSA or the rural–urban alliance have actually mitigated the food-security crisis.

Michelle Glowa · · United States (San Francisco)

In the San Francisco region, highly competitive land markets increasingly force landowners to use properties for purposes other than gardening, despite the popularity of urban agriculture. This situation compels gardeners to develop strategies to gain and maintain land access, linking gardening to broader land politics and urban design. The chapter explores how gardeners influence space production and property institutions.

Abdullah, Abdullah, Gufran Darma Dirawan, Nurlita Pertiwi · Eprints (Universitas Negeri Makassar) · Indonesia (Makassar)

A study analyzing the sustainability level of urban farming in Makassar City, Indonesia, found that the overall urban farming sustainability index was 48.52%, indicating a "less sustainable" status. The ecological dimension was rated 42.66% as "less sustainable," while the economic dimension was 50.69% as "fairly sustainable."

Denes Dantas Vieira, Reimilde Gomes da Silva Amorim · EXTRAMUROS - Revista de Extensão da Univasf · Brazil (Juazeiro)

This study aimed to investigate the dilemmas of the social trajectory of the Povo Unido community garden in Juazeiro/BA, Brazil, located on the banks of the São Francisco River. This garden is known for its organic vegetable production and as one of the first groups focused on overcoming poverty and combating hunger in Brazil's semi-arid northeast. The research contributes to reflection based on social organization and organic food production.

Nerea Morán Alonso, Ícaro Obeso Muñiz, Agustín Hernández Aja, Felipe Fernández García · Moravian Geographical Reports · Spain

This paper analyzed the evolution of peri-urban agriculture in Spain's Madrid and Oviedo metropolitan areas to identify revitalization opportunities. Using aerial images and cartographic bases, the study found that peri-urban agriculture has suffered from urban occupation and internal changes in crops and agricultural uses, experiencing a process of decline. Innovative initiatives are explored as potential revitalization opportunities.

S. J. Ibitoye, U Shaibu, Firdaus Sale, Oroka Frank · International Journal of Agricultural and Veterinary Sciences · Nigeria (Kogi State)

This study assessed the influence of urban agriculture on household income in Kogi State, Nigeria, using data from 120 urban farmers. Urban agriculture was found to increase household income at a 90% confidence level. However, urban farmers faced significant constraints including inadequate capital (M=2.9), poor extension services (M=2.4), and high labor costs (M=2.2).

Sandy Smith‐Nonini · Anthropology in Action · United States

This article discusses lessons learned from Eco-Cycle, a social enterprise supporting sustainability education in central North Carolina, U.S.A., since 2011. Eco-Cycle faced the challenge that many social justice-oriented green initiatives emulating urban agriculture models are grant-dependent in early years and achieve economic sustainability with difficulty. However, this non-profit co-op of upcycler crafters and vintage vendors grew from the production and marketing of upcycled rain barrels, pursuing economic sustainability through a social enterprise approach.

Sara L. Lyons · DigitalCommons (California Polytechnic State University) · United States

The University of Maine Black Bear Food Guild is an entirely student-run Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) operation that offers student learning and work opportunities. Despite providing various benefits, the Black Bear Food Guild requires financial support to expand its program and ensure its sustained success, indicating a critical need for funding to maintain its future viability.

Diana Mincytė, Karin Dobernig · Environment and Planning A Economy and Space · North America

This article examines manual work in urban farming within alternative food networks in the Northeastern United States, based on ethnographic fieldwork and 40 interviews. The analysis reveals that while manual work counters alienation, it also reproduces consumer society institutions and reinforces neoliberal values like productivity and self-improvement. Urban farms function as "experiential production" sites, where the farming experience is continuously commodified despite re-embedding in community and environment.

Alfred Wong, Alan Hallsworth · Kobra (Universitätsbibliothek Kassel) · Canada (Vancouver)

This paper examines urban/community gardening in Vancouver, Canada, from the perspective of basic farming realities such as growing season and land availability. It was found that securing low-cost land within dense urban limits, insufficient ambient temperature and water supply during the growing season, and contemporary societal structures pose significant obstacles to community gardening producing affordable food. Overcoming these fundamental hurdles carries significant negative environmental and economic consequences.

Joshua Zeunert · UNSWorks (University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia) · Australia

Urban public green spaces typically require external budgets for maintenance, with most projects costing municipal authorities more money than they generate, making them economically unproductive. For instance, the Adelaide Parklands annually costs AU$9 million for maintenance while generating less than AU$1 million in income. Maintenance spending on public green spaces in the USA, UK, and Australia has been declining, a trend accelerated since the 2008 global financial crisis.

Hiran Roy, C. Michael Hall, Paul W. Ballantine · · Global

This excerpt is the introduction to a chapter on barriers facing hospitality businesses' use of local food; it covers only the background on rising North American and European consumer demand for local food, driven by desire for fresh food access, support for local farmers and communities, and concerns over trust, locality, transparency, animal welfare and food safety, alongside the post-1990s growth of farmers' markets, food box programs and community-supported agriculture. The specific economic barriers and constraints named in the chapter's title are not described within this excerpted text.

Rose Tardiff · Syracuse University Libraries (Syracuse University) · United States

The Salt City Harvest Farm (SCHF) in Kirkville, NY, is an all-volunteer project with limited capacity and concerns about long-term sustainability, despite providing benefits to New American participants. Research identified challenges and suggested organizational improvements, including clearly defining roles and integrating New Americans into decision-making. The study found that the SCHF would best suit participants' interests by remaining a place for growing their own food rather than transitioning to an incubator model.

Martin Dyer, Richard M. Mills, Beatrice Conradie, Jenifer Piesse · Open University of Cape Town (University of Cape Town) · South Africa (Cape Town)

This paper investigates the efficiency relationships between inputs and outputs of urban micro-farms in two Cape Town townships, Nyanga and Khayelitsha. Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) applied to 33 producers supplying a social enterprise box scheme revealed an average overall efficiency of 72.4%. Overall efficiency was negatively correlated with land holdings and the use of compost and seedlings, indicating efficiency losses with greater input quantities. Furthermore, it was not shown that mulching or operator experience increases profitability.

Claire L. McCarty, Pamela Dixon · Journal of case studies · Global

A case study on the West Central Food Hub Producers' Co-op reveals that the group decided not to proceed with starting the Food Hub Co-op. The decision was made because the costs for management, infrastructure, and delivery would far outweigh the co-op's profitability, leading to its discontinuation.

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.

Sara Parme · Educational Media Reviews Online · Global

The documentary film "Plant This Movie" (2014, 83 min) explores our relationship with food and the wasted space and resource of the 21st-century lawn. This film, one of many similar documentaries on urban farming, proposes learning from and improving upon past mistakes of the Green Movement. It notes that many agricultural nonprofits, including one highlighted, fail due to lack of funding, and while it suggests sustainability efforts should be run like a business, only a fraction of the film is dedicated to this aspect.