Research & reports

Mkwela Hawa · Journal of Geography and Regional Planning · Tanzania

This study used a qualitative approach to examine land injustices faced by urban farmers in Mbweni-Mpiji, a sub-urban area of Dar es Salaam City, Tanzania. Findings indicated that farmers experience constant pressure from land insecurity, inferior land rights, informal land access, stiff competition from other land users, degrading land quality, and a continuous decrease in agricultural land size. These factors negatively impact the daily livelihoods, including food security, social status, and income, of those entirely dependent on urban farming.

Salvatore Engel‐Di Mauro, George Martin · · Global

This chapter examines the global relationship between food growing and capitalism over 500 years, identifying three profit-seeking formats: mercantilism, industrialism, and global financialization. It argues that capitalism has led to a de-industrialization of cities and a commodification of agricultural products by corporate megafarms, contributing to green gentrification in urban redevelopment. This has incited a food resistance trend, leading to the emergence of community gardens and farms.

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.

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.

Adrián H. Hearn, Thaís Mauad, Chris Williams, Luís Fernando Amato‐Lourenço, Guilherme Reis Ranieri · Journal of Urbanism International Research on Placemaking and Urban Sustainability · Australia (Melbourne)

This article analyzed the phenomenon of urban agriculture promotion by real estate developers and community associations in Melbourne and São Paulo. Developers of upmarket condominiums advertise urban agriculture as a purchasable commodity, but the gentrifying effects of these developments deepen rather than alleviate social and environmental ills. In contrast, community projects in four case studies emphasized urban agriculture's ability to confront the long-term neglect of land, employment, and environment.

Emmanuel 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.

Efrat Eizenberg · Manchester University Press eBooks · Global

This concluding chapter reviews the literature on urban gardening, outlining both enthusiastic approaches that focus on its transformative potential and critical approaches that analyze it as greenwash or a strategy of neoliberal development. The chapter discusses how the book's chapters address this gap in understanding urban gardening and the resolutions and new directions they offer. It states that urban gardening is sometimes analyzed as a form of greenwash and a strategy of neoliberal development.

Lucy Rose Wright, Ross Fraser Young · Manchester University Press eBooks · Global

This chapter introduces the concept of political gardening, contextualizing its rise within neoliberal processes and academic interest in urban gardening. It conflates political gardening with injustice, drawing on Rawls' theory of social justice. The chapter uses case study examples to define political gardening as a six-stage iterative process that participants undergo to address injustices and become engaged, democratized citizens.

Lucy Rose Wright, Ross Fraser Young · Manchester University Press eBooks · Global

A chapter introducing the concept of political gardening. It begins by situating the re-evaluation of "everyday space" within neoliberal processes of privatization, devolution and entrepreneurialism, then connects the rise of academic interest in urban gardening with the movement's political dimension. Drawing on Rawls' theory of social justice, it conflates political gardening with injustice, uses case studies to unpack that process of addressing injustice across six iterative stages, and arrives at a definition of political gardening as both a term and a process through which participants become "democratized" citizens.

Salvatore Engel‐Di Mauro · Gender Place & Culture · Global

This study discusses two concerns regarding urban community gardens' political potential, suggesting caution. It notes that the community in urban community gardens can be reactionary and capitalism-friendly, potentially impeding the collectivization of social reproduction if it remains largely women's work. Additionally, urban gardeners, primarily women, people of color, and the elderly, may face exposure to toxic substances and increased care work needs due to health effects.

Kwaku Obosu-Mensah · · Ghana (Accra)

This study examines the influence of social inequality on urban agriculture in Accra, Ghana, focusing on land ownership and cultivation practices. It found that urban residents born or raised in other regions of Ghana are more likely to be middle/upper class, own urban land, and engage in enclosed cultivation. A disadvantage of enclosed cultivation is associated with water supply.

Virginia Webb · New Zealand sociology · New Zealand (Palmerston North)

This research in a Palmerston North, New Zealand community garden examined the struggle over norms and power relations, specifically regarding tobacco cultivation. It found that the garden hierarchy's reluctance to accommodate alternative perspectives on tobacco cultivation revealed a troubling politics of race and class. This reluctance meant the garden's potential to disrupt social hierarchies was unrealized, highlighting how health notions can become a basis for social control.

Christa 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.

Georgia Pollard, Philip Roetman, James Ward · Kobra (Universitätsbibliothek Kassel) · Australia (South Australia)

While urban agriculture is seen as a sustainable approach to improving food security, there is a significant knowledge gap regarding the financial accessibility of urban food production for all households. If urban agriculture remains primarily a middle-class discretionary activity, its role in city-wide food security improvement will be limited. This paper demonstrates that citizen science offers an effective approach to investigate the inputs (labor, costs, water use) and outputs (produce yields, value) of urban food gardens, using the Edible Gardens project in South Australia as an example.

Jason Byrne · · Global

Research on urban greenspace, including parks, gardens, and green infrastructure, consistently demonstrates that marginalized and vulnerable communities have less access to these areas. This chapter overviews environmental injustice research on urban greenspace, examining debates and challenges for researchers and policymakers, and highlighting issues like climate injustice and food insecurity related to environmental inequality.

Joshua Sbicca · Digital Collections of Colorado (Colorado State University) · Global

An article examining food as an entry point into the politics and processes of gentrification, discussed with reference to cities globally rather than a single case. Where traditional explanations of gentrification hinge on either political-economy or cultural drivers, the article shows the relationship between the two to argue that food gentrification is multifaceted, changing a neighborhood's class and ethnoracial demographics, foodscapes and foodways, and housing. It states that poor communities in cities around the world can experience harmful effects of food-driven gentrification, such as developers using urban agriculture to attract new residents and increase property values. It also describes food itself as being gentrified in two ways: for communities marginalized by race or ethnicity, culturally important foods become "cool," unaffordable and dispossessed from them, while the upscaling of food retail displaces former bars, cafes, restaurants, grocery stores and gardens. The article closes with a brief discussion of social movement strategies and policy approaches to prevent these harmful effects.

Michael Carolan · · Global

This chapter examines how gender, race, and ethnicity are theorized and studied within agri-food scholarship. It notes that Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) schemes and farmers' markets, even when intended for low-income minority groups, often serve affluent, educated European American consumers. Additionally, women in rural Ethiopia face significant problems in food security due to their social status and higher dependence on agriculture for survival compared to men.

Jennifer L. Barron · Local Environment · Global

This paper explored how neoliberal processes of privatization, state entrepreneurialism, and devolution intersect with community gardens. It argued that certain characteristics and orientations of gardens are more conducive to resisting neoliberalism. These include cultivating producer, citizen, and activist subjectivities, elevating the use value of shared lived space, advancing spatial justice through community access to non-privatized space, and promoting food justice through non-commodified means of obtaining food.

Eric Holt-Giménez · Journal of Agriculture Food Systems and Community Development · Global

This paper argues that the modern food system, shaped by 30 years of neoliberal globalization, has led to unprecedented global inequality, disproportionately affecting people of color. Despite the emergence of a U.S. food movement focusing on various components like urban agriculture, the underlying structures of the corporate food regime continue to control the context of these alternatives, hindering systemic change.

Benno Gammerl, Rainer Herrn · sub\urban zeitschrift für kritische stadtforschung · Global

This article outlines the theoretical, empirical, and political potential of the tension between affective disruptions of ordered structures and the emotional processing of power-infused spatial relations. It uses urban gardening practices and gentrification debates as examples to demonstrate how analyzing dynamic interactions between spaces and feelings can foster a critical perspective on urbanity, particularly regarding issues of equity. The study focuses on the ambivalent dynamics and effects of emotional-spatial processes.

Jenny Sjöblom · · Sweden

This study describes the origin and development of Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) in Sweden, identifying and interviewing organizations and entrepreneurs. While CSA is nascent but growing, with prerequisites for expansion in both rural and urban areas, the study notes implications regarding its accessibility to the broader population that require further exploration.

Kylie Markow, Sue Booth, Stephanie Savio, John Coveney · Nutrition & Dietetics · Global

This study compared perspectives of low socioeconomic individuals and food system representatives regarding access to community-based food systems. Focus groups with low socioeconomic individuals and interviews with food system representatives revealed that affordability, convenience, and knowledge were barriers. While representatives acknowledged these barriers, their understanding of importance differed, and views were divided on strategies, especially concerning affordability. A disconnect exists between the two groups' views on improving access for disadvantaged groups.

James Farmer, Charles Chancellor, Jennifer Meta Robinson, Stephanie T. West, Melissa S. Weddell · Journal of Leisure Research · Global

This study collected data from 712 individuals regarding participation in local food systems, including farmers' markets and CSA programs. Findings revealed a significant association between participants and privilege variables, suggesting that despite promotion, barriers exclude many from engaging in these agrileisure opportunities.

Jonathan Crush · · Global

Cities in the global South face a deepening crisis of food inaccessibility, characterized by food poverty, hunger, and malnutrition. This urban crisis is largely invisible to policy and research communities, with less attention given to urban food security than in the 1990s. Urban agriculture is the only aspect of urban food security receiving significant attention, though it is improbably seen as the key to achieving food security in these cities.

Christina Jochum · · Argentina (Buenos Aires)

This study examined the social inclusion potential of urban agriculture, focusing on six community gardens in Buenos Aires, Argentina. It analyzed how urban community gardens can promote social inclusion and identified limiting factors. The research found that urban community gardens in Buenos Aires remain an informal strategy, unrecognized by political authorities. The positive impacts of communal gardening on participants and the community are limited by this lack of recognition and often by associated lack of land use rights.