Research & reports
Peer-reviewed research and reports on community urban agriculture, food education, composting, welfare and more.
Theme
Critical findings
68 results(2 / 3)
Food aid and neoliberalism: an alliance built on shared interests?
2022Maddy Power · Policy Press eBooks · United Kingdom
In the UK, food banks and other food aid providers expanded significantly in parallel with welfare reforms and benefit cuts initiated after 2010. This contemporary phenomenon occurred within a historical context of long-standing community-based responses to poverty and hunger in the UK.
Equity & displacementWelfareCommunityPolicyThe spatial distribution of urban community gardens and their associated socio-economic status in Tehran, Iran
2022Sina Razzaghi Asl, Anahita Azadgar · Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems · Iran (Tehran)
A study in Tehran, Iran, mapped the spatial distribution and socio-economic attributes of 26 urban community gardens using semi-structured interviews, qualitative analysis, and secondary data from the 2020 Tehran statistical yearbook. The findings revealed a geographical distribution imbalance, with most gardens located in the southern part of the city. Community gardens were mainly placed in areas with lower average land prices, lower median household income, and higher education graduates, indicating an uneven distribution that favors socio-economically disadvantaged areas.
Equity & displacementCommunityFood sovereignty & justiceWelfareEconomicsFeminism and the Urban Practice: Three Lines of Analysis
2022Larissa Siqueira Chaves, Giovanna Simokado Magalhães, Soraya Nór · LA Referencia (Red Federada de Repositorios Institucionales de Publicaciones Científicas) · Brazil
This article reflected on the potential of feminism in urban development as a practice of counter-hegemonic architectures. Through a cartography of central Florianópolis, it was shown that only ten streets in the city center were named after women, revealing that patriarchal patterns are fixed in the territory. Women in urban agriculture are presented as individual and collective body-territories that construct a counter-hegemonic praxis in urban spaces and social movements, politically building alternatives that foster care, reproduction of life, reconnection with nature, protection of popular traditions, as well as gender issues and the right to the city.
Equity & displacementCommunityFood sovereignty & justicePolicyWelfareThe urban poor: profile and constraints affecting their participation in allotment gardens
2022Mawuna Donald Houessou, B.G.J.S. Sonneveld, Augustin K. N. Aoudji, Fréjus THOTO, D. J. Snelder, Anselme Adégbidi, Tjard de Cock Buning · Development in Practice · Benin
A survey of 88 urban poor individuals in Benin investigated their profiles and constraints affecting participation in allotment gardens. Findings revealed low educational and income levels, overcrowded and unsanitary housing, and limited access to social services and health facilities among the participants. Furthermore, 76% of them experienced food insecurity, and engaging them in allotment gardens was constrained by requirements for farming skills, financial capital, and safety issues.
Equity & displacementWelfareCommunityEconomicsFood sovereignty & justiceWage Labor and Social Inequality in Kinshasa’s Informal Economy: A Class Analysis
2022Héritier Mesa · Cahiers d études africaines · Congo (Kinshasa)
This article explores social trajectories and inequality dynamics among informal workers in Kinshasa, focusing on labor relations within the informal economy. Drawing from ethnographic data on street bread, second-hand clothing, and urban agriculture, the study finds that limited access to capital constrains many workers to sell their labor power with weakened bargaining power, revealing unequal social positionalities.
Equity & displacementEconomicsWelfareHousehold Dietary Patterns and Food Security Challenges in Peri-Urban South Africa: A Reflection of High Unemployment in the Wake of Rising Food Prices
2022Gamuchirai Chakona · · South Africa
A study surveyed 314 randomly selected households in four peri-urban settlements in South Africa to assess dietary diversity and food security. Findings revealed generally low dietary diversity and high levels of food insecurity across all sites, with male-headed households experiencing worse conditions than female-headed households. Food insecurity was linked to high poverty, unemployment, and low education levels.
Equity & displacementFood sovereignty & justiceWelfarePeri-urban agricultureEconomicsFull Issue
2022Contingent Horizons · Contingent Horizons The York University Student Journal of Anthropology · Canada (Winnipeg)
This paper uses the Rainbow Community Garden in Winnipeg as a case study to discuss the benefits and challenges of community gardening for new immigrant and refugee families. Through a literature review and interviews with gardeners, the study emphasizes the role of food and community gardens in facilitating cross-cultural interactions, providing culturally appropriate food, and expressing cultural identity. The main conclusion is that for new immigrant and refugee participation, a garden is not only physical soil but also an important place for practicing culture and engaging in meaningful cross-cultural interaction beneficial for adjusting to a new life in Canada.
Equity & displacementCommunityWelfareFood sovereignty & justiceFood educationRefugee Community Gardens and the Politics of Self-Help
2021Cecilia M. Tsu · Amerasia Journal · United States
This article examines community gardens established for refugees from Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos in the United States during the 1980s. It argues that refugee gardeners perceived a significant disconnect between their rural lives in Southeast Asia and the role of vegetable growing in the U.S., despite advocates emphasizing continuity with their past. The gardens provided a measure of economic empowerment, but highlighted the disjuncture in their resettlement experience.
Equity & displacementCommunityWelfareEconomicsFood sovereignty & justiceTerritorializing the Urban-Rural Border in Medellín, Colombia: Socio-Ecological Assemblages and Disruptions
2020Colleen 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.
Equity & displacementUrban–rural linkageCommunityPolicyWelfareBuilding racial bridges? Social capital among community gardeners in US food deserts
2020Jennifer Jettner, Mary Secret · International Journal of Social Welfare · United States
This study examined the relationship between race and racial diversity on social capital in community gardens located in food deserts in the southeastern USA. Cross-level regression models were performed on a sample of 52 gardeners from 10 community gardens, analyzing their “sense of community” and the “number of resources” obtainable from fellow gardeners. Results indicated that community gardens are excellent vehicles for promoting one’s sense of community regardless of race or garden’s racial composition, but they were less likely to increase the number of resources. Accessing a greater number of resources took longer and more effort, and increased perceptions of racial diversity had a negative relationship with the number of resources.
Equity & displacementCommunityWelfareThe affordable housing, transportation, and food nexus: Community gardens and healthy affordable living in Calgary
2020Miho Lowan‐Trudeau, Noel Keough, Joshua Wong, Sara Haidey · Canadian Geographies / Géographies canadiennes · Canada (Calgary)
This study, examining community gardens in Calgary, aimed to determine the socio-economic demographics of neighborhoods supporting community gardens and their proximity to active transportation and public transit. GIS visualization and quantitative analyses were used to investigate relationships between demographic variables and transportation accessibility. Findings showed that community garden neighborhoods are located in areas with significantly fewer visible minorities, higher levels of educational attainment, and more attached dwellings like apartments and townhomes. This study suggests potential inequities in the proliferation of public community gardens based on socio-economic factors beyond economic capital.
Equity & displacementCommunityHealthWelfareEconomicsFraming Food Access: Do Community Gardens Inadvertently Reproduce Inequality?
2020Katie L. Butterfield, A. Susana Ramírez · Health Education & Behavior · United States (Minnesota)
A quantitative content analysis was conducted on descriptions, missions, and goals provided by 411 community garden managers across Minnesota. Six frames were consistently present, including "greater good" and "community orientation," which were the most common. The findings suggest that the prevalent "greater good" frame may inadvertently reproduce inequality by alienating food-insecure populations, similar to other alternative food programs.
Equity & displacementCommunityHealthWelfareFarming While Black: Soul Fire Farms Practical Guide To Liberation on the Land by Leah Penniman and Karen Washington
2020C. K. Cartagena · Southeastern geographer · United States
This paper reviews "Farming While Black: Soul Fire Farms Practical Guide To Liberation on the Land" by Leah Penniman and Karen Washington. The book serves as a step-by-step guide for Black farmers, detailing historical struggles and solutions against oppression and racial discrimination in the farming sector, including cases like Pigford v. Glickman and the over-policing of Ron Finley's property. It offers instruction on obtaining land and resources, farm business plans, land restoration, crop planning, preserving harvests, raising animals, urban farming, and movement building. The book acknowledges obstacles faced by Black farmers and aims to provide a reference for sustaining productive farmland and activism to achieve land autonomy.
Equity & displacementFood sovereignty & justiceWelfarePolicyCommunityReconciliation and Resistance from the Ground Up: The Power of Affect in Chicago’s Community Gardens
2020Olivia Lee · Johns Hopkins University eBooks · United States (Chicago)
This study, drawing on affect theory, examines community gardens in Chicago's low-income, primarily Black South Side neighborhoods. It argues that while these gardens offer a spatial break from violence, they appear unable to fully counteract the ongoing marginalization by race and socioeconomic status. The gardens represent a quiet, nascent resistance against neoliberal injustices through intimate human-nature interaction.
Equity & displacementCommunityWelfareHealthFood sovereignty & justiceExcluded by design: informality versus tactical urbanism in the redevelopment of Detroit neighborhoods
2020Lisa Berglund · · United States (Detroit)
This paper analyzes media coverage of informal practices like street vending, murals, and urban agriculture in Detroit's redeveloping neighborhoods. It reveals that while these practices are appropriated by developers and new, affluent arrivals as entrepreneurial and necessary for redevelopment, they are treated fundamentally differently from the informal practices of long-standing, marginalized residents, which are often condemned as illegal. This inconsistency highlights how legal frameworks are manipulated to exclude long-standing residents from the city's "renaissance."
Equity & displacementCommunityPolicyWelfareThe Role of Urban Agriculture in Alleviating Poverty Facing Women in Tanzania: A Review
2019Emmanuel Patroba Mhache, Elna Lyamuya · Huria Journal of the Open University of Tanzania · Tanzania (Dar es Salaam)
This review paper examined the role of urban agriculture in alleviating poverty for women in the Dar es Salaam Region, Tanzania. It found that women's participation in urban agriculture contributes to food security, increases household income (average net income Tshs 58,356.2 per month), offers employment, and reduces poverty. However, numerous bottlenecks hinder women's involvement in urban agriculture, including poor markets, water shortage, land shortage, seed unavailability, lack of capital, lack of government support, crude working tools, lack of water pumping machines for irrigation, poor storage facilities, and lack of agricultural extension services.
Equity & displacementWelfareEconomicsBiodiversityClimate changePolicyUrban gardening and the quest for just uses of space in Europe
2019Chiara Certomà, Martin Sondermann, Susan Noori · Manchester University Press eBooks · Europe
This chapter critically analyzes the relationship between urban gardening and socio-spatial justice, exploring whether and how urban gardening practices can tackle social and spatial injustices. Urban gardening points out less visible sides of urban governance and planning, unveiling different forms of power, dominance, and resistance to the unequal distribution of benefits and burdens in space. The analysis questions the contradictions in the constitution of urban spaces and their capability to mitigate material, political, and social exclusions, unfairness, and inequalities.
Equity & displacementCommunityPolicyWelfareFood sovereignty & justiceFood production and gender relations in multifunctional landscapes: a literature review
2019Lisa Westholm, Madelene Ostwald · Agroforestry Systems · Africa, Asia, Latin America
This literature review of 104 scientific articles across Africa, Asia, and Latin America examined food production and gender relations in multifunctional land use systems. The review found that the specific role of landscape multifunctionality for women's food security opportunities is rarely explicitly studied. It also showed that products controlled by women are often secondary and far from markets, risking neglect by policymakers, and efforts to increase their value may adversely affect women's empowerment if powerful actors appropriate benefits.
Equity & displacementWelfareFood sovereignty & justiceEconomicsPolicyWomen's agricultural practices and their effects on soil nutrient content in the Nyalenda urban gardens of Kisumu, Kenya
2019Nicolette Tamara Jonkman, Esmee D. Kooijman, Karsten Kalbitz, Nicky Pouw, Boris Jansen · SOIL · Kenya (Kisumu)
This study in Nyalenda urban gardens, Kisumu, Kenya, investigated how female farmers' knowledge and practices influence soil nutrient status. Soil analysis revealed that intercropped fields had significantly lower total soil nutrients than fields with only manure, despite cowpeas theoretically increasing soil N. Female farmers' knowledge was limited to practical and sensory aspects, and intercropping did not increase soil nutrient content due to socioeconomic factors like poverty.
Equity & displacementCommunityHealthWelfareOrganic cycleA feminist political ecology of food justice in Iowa
2019Carrie Chennault · Iowa State University Digital Repository (Iowa State University) · United States
This three-year feminist ethnographic study examined the Growing Together Iowa community donation gardening and food rescue program, focusing on its institutional and community partners. The research aimed to understand how solutions to food insecurity emerge from social relations and socio-historical contexts. Findings demonstrated that uneven power relations permeate even well-intended efforts to address food insecurity within such initiatives.
Equity & displacementCommunityFood sovereignty & justiceWelfarePolicyEconomicsBrownfields to Greenfields: Environmental Justice Versus Environmental Gentrification
2018Juliana Maantay, Andrew Maroko · International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health · United States (New York City)
This study examined whether proximity to community gardens in less affluent neighborhoods is associated with an increased likelihood of gentrification, using Brooklyn, New York as a case study. Employing GIS and spatial analysis, the results suggest that proximity to community gardens is associated with significant increases in per capita income over a five-year period. This indicates that environmental improvements, such as community gardens, may paradoxically spur gentrification and the displacement of existing lower-income residents, raising concerns for environmental justice.
Equity & displacementCommunityEconomicsPolicyWelfareLow-income adults’ perceptions of farmers’ markets and community-supported agriculture programmes
2017Elizabeth W. Cotter, Carla Teixeira, Annessa Bontrager, Kasharena Horton, Deyanira Soriano · Public Health Nutrition · United States (Washington, DC)
This study conducted focus groups with 28 adults in three affordable housing communities in Washington, D.C., USA, to understand low-income adults' attitudes towards participating in farmers' markets, community-supported agriculture (CSA), and nutrition education programming. The results revealed that adults living in urban, affordable housing communities desire access to healthy foods but are limited by cost. Programs could have a higher likelihood of success if they accept benefits like SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program), are heavily marketed, and incorporate culturally relevant nutrition education components.
Equity & displacementCSA & TeikeiWelfareEconomicsCommunityFood educationImpact of Urban Expansion on the Livelihood of Peri- Urban Agricultural Community: Case of Wolaita Sodo Town, Southern Ethiopia
2017Paulos Lukas · Journals & Books Hosting (International Knowledge Sharing Platform) · Ethiopia
This study investigated the effects of urban expansion on the livelihood of 100 dislocated farming households in Wolaita Sodo, Southern Ethiopia, using household surveys, group discussions, and interviews. The findings indicate that the implemented expansion program was not participatory, marginalized the farming community, and excluded youth and women from compensation schemes. The dislocation program was not rehabilitative and negatively affected the livelihood of the dislocated farming community.
Equity & displacementPeri-urban agricultureEconomicsWelfareViele Orte überall: Care-Logik in alternativen Projekten und Potentiale von Gegenmacht
2017Christa Wichterich · Feministische Studien · Global
This essay explores the transformative potential of caring and commoning in alternative projects such as community agriculture and urban gardening. While these self-organized experiments develop caring practices towards nature and humans, their transformative impact on society is limited. This limitation stems from unintended mechanisms of social or racist exclusion, or from appropriation by the municipality or the state.
Equity & displacementCommunityFood sovereignty & justiceWelfarePolicyCommunity gardens: Exploring race, racial diversity and social capital in urban food deserts
2017Jennifer Jettner · VCU Scholars Compass (Virginia Commonwealth University) · United States
A mixed-methods approach examined race, racial diversity, and social capital in community gardens located in Southern urban food deserts in the United States. Results indicated that while gardeners were racially diverse across the sample, most community gardens were racially segregated, and the majority of gardeners appeared middle-class. Community gardens showed limited potential to advance social justice and indirectly enhanced community food security, primarily through the efforts of people of color, rather than directly benefiting food-insecure gardeners.
Equity & displacementCommunityFood sovereignty & justiceWelfare