Research & reports

Manoj Misra · Culture Agriculture Food and Environment · Canada

A qualitative study of Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) participants in the greater Edmonton region of Canada examined how this local food initiative promotes ecological citizenship. The study concluded that discursive and structural limitations prevent the Edmonton CSA community from achieving meaningful diversity and addressing social justice concerns within its realm.

Pekka Ilmari Niskanen · Ruukku Studies in Artistic Research · Global

This paper examines three gardens—a Sahrawi sandoponic garden in Algerian refugee camps, a Helsinki Sandoponic Garden, and the Jardin Truillot in Paris—as sites for community gathering and addressing trauma. The Helsinki garden, a project by PHOSfate, highlights injustices faced by the Sahrawi population and the Baltic Sea, linking refugee status to phosphate mining and eutrophication. The study argues that recognizing injustice is central to the activism in these gardens and related practices.

Amy Russell, Ziqi Li, Mingshu Wang · International Journal of Applied Earth Observation and Geoinformation · United Kingdom (Glasgow)

This study investigated the distribution of urban agriculture in Glasgow, Scotland, UK, finding that existing projects are mostly centrally located, covering 36% of the total population (approximately 635,000) within a 10-minute walk. A positive correlation was found between walking travel time to the nearest urban agriculture project and food desert status, indicating access disparity. Using the Maximal Covering Location Problem model, the research identified that a minimum of 15 new urban agriculture projects on vacant and derelict land could increase population coverage to 49% and equalize access disparity to a statistically non-significant level.

Guilherme Raj, Giuseppe Feola, Hens Runhaar · Agriculture and Human Values · Portugal

This comparative case study of three Community-Supported Agriculture (CSA) initiatives in Portugal analyzed how power shapes transformations to postcapitalist work relations. Results showed that while CSA creates non-alienated, non-monetized, and care-filled postcapitalist work relations, they insufficiently unmake unbalanced power relations established in capitalist work relations. The selected CSA initiatives could benefit from actively deconstructing internal hierarchies, decentralizing decision-making power from farm owners, and addressing oppressive power relations ossified in their local and cultural context when establishing postcapitalist work relations.

Natalie Call, Elizabeth Silber, E. Binney Girdler · Journal of Agriculture Food Systems and Community Development · United States

This GIS-based study of Kalamazoo, Michigan, analyzed how accessibility to different types of food access points — full-service grocery stores, farmers markets, community gardens, food pantries, and convenience stores — differed between low-income and higher-income census tracts. All full-service grocery stores were accessible via bus routes, but 11% of residents in low-income areas lacked adequate access, living beyond the 0.25-mile walkable distance to bus routes. "Positive" access points such as community gardens, food pantries, and farmers markets were found to be concentrated in areas that already had grocery store access, whereas "negative" access points — convenience and dollar stores, which provide lower-quality, highly processed food — filled the access gap in lower-income areas instead. More than twice as many low-income residents had walkable access to convenience stores as higher-income residents, with 81% of those convenience stores located within low-income tracts.

Lukas Egli, Judith Rüschhoff, Joerg A. Priess · Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems · Global

A systematic review of quantitative empirical research on the sustainability effects of community-supported agriculture (CSA) covered 39 studies. Fewer than 30% of the studies assessed ecological sustainability aspects, but where CSA farms were compared to reference systems, they mostly performed better on resource use efficiency and greenhouse gas emissions. Most studies assessed social aspects; many showed that CSA still fails to reach low-income households, so members do not represent the average population, while CSA membership was associated with improved health and sustainability behavior. Economic variables were assessed in more than half of the studies, but knowledge of CSA's relative economic performance remains scarce, though early studies indicate high economic viability. The review calls for more research on ecological aspects specifically, comparisons across farming and marketing systems, and integration of knowledge from theses and practical sources in multiple languages.

Caroline Verfuerth, Angelina Sanderson Bellamy, Barbora Adlerová, Amy Dutton · Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems · United Kingdom

Failures of the current food system are described as sitting at the core of multiple overlapping crises, shaping both consumption choices and food production, with low-income households disproportionately affected—their food security and access to healthy, sustainable food impacted as a result. Community-supported agriculture (CSA) is framed as a bottom-up response toward agri-food system transformation, an alternative food system built on locally sold, agroecologically grown food rooted in social values, and, alongside other food citizenship movements and alternative food networks (AFNs), driven by a vision of a democratic, socially and economically just, environmentally sustainable food system. Yet low-income households are underrepresented in the CSA community. This paper reports findings from a co-produced intervention between the research team, four CSA farms in Wales, United Kingdom, and two food aid partners, seeking ways to improve CSA membership accessibility for food-insecure households: 38 households received a weekly vegetable bag for two to four months, and 16 household members were interviewed at the project's start and at the end of the harvest season. Using a food well-being framework, the study found that CSA membership holistically improved food well-being by strengthening producer-consumer relationships, increasing availability of healthy foods, helping people care for their own and their families' well-being, and building place-based food capability and literacy—results the authors use to support calls for prioritizing food well-being interventions to benefit financially excluded, food-insecure households within localized AFNs.

Lorien Nesbitt, Daniel L. Sax, Jessica Quinton, Leila M. Harris, Camilo Ordóñez Barona, Cecil Konijnendijk · Ecology and Society 28(4): art29 · Canada (Metro Vancouver, Greater Toronto Area)

An online survey of 51 urban greening practitioners in Metro Vancouver and the Greater Toronto Area. Most respondents defined green gentrification as the displacement of vulnerable residents caused by new or improved green space that attracts wealthy in-movers and raises property values. The largest group identified greening itself as the main driver of green gentrification, while a minority saw greening as a secondary factor alongside other systemic drivers. Practitioners cited multiple barriers to addressing it - limited institutional capacity, limited access to data and information, policy or mandate restrictions, and a lack of engagement tools - showing a gap between practitioners' concern and what they can act on in their day-to-day work.

Jordan Ashby, Clarissa Libertelli · Institute for Local Self-Reliance (ILSR) · United States

Just after NYC announced expansion of mandatory residential organics collection by 2024, the mayor's office eliminated funding for the city's community composting program. The article identifies three failures reflecting national trends: government 'composting' programs that actually rely on anaerobic digestion, centralized processing that concentrates environmental burdens in vulnerable neighborhoods, and mandatory government programs undercutting community composters' viability.

Jena Brooker · Planet Detroit (via BridgeDetroit) · United States

Hantz Woodlands, a large-scale tree farm on Detroit's east side, acquired roughly 2,600 parcels and still holds about 2,000. It bought an initial 1,550 parcels for $540,000 and later resold about 10% of its holdings for $9.5 million — nearly nine times its original cost — while paying only $7,035 of the $33,110 it owes in blight-violation fines. Critics note the Detroit Land Bank Authority never reclaimed a single Hantz property despite missed deadlines, even as it repossessed land from ordinary residents who fell behind.

Graham Slater, Robert G. Unzueta, Clayton Pierce · · Global

This chapter argues that much scholarly literature on school gardens is based on problematic assumptions or ignores histories of violence and dispossession. Without an ecocritical approach, school gardens risk replicating systems of domination, extraction, exploitation, and human supremacy. The authors propose integrating theoretical reflection into emancipatory action within a historical materialist framework to address colonization, land dispossession, labor exploitation, and anthropocentrism.

Melissa Anna Murphy, Peter E. Parker, Margot Hermus · Local Environment · Global

This article aims to unpack how urban settings, organizational forms, and municipal enabling affect urban gardening (UG) practices towards inclusion in public space. It draws on urban commons theory and research on inclusion in public space to understand multi-faceted UG governance and its exclusionary aspects. A comparative analysis of UG initiatives in three Northern European municipalities explores both municipal enabling and the co-production of inclusive public space.

K. Michelle Glowa · Journal of Agriculture Food Systems and Community Development · United States (California)

This paper reflects on the engagement between Mexican and Salvadorian farmers at the Beach Flats Garden in Santa Cruz, California, and local educational institutions. It discusses the garden's role in critical food system education, highlighting its function as a space of resistance to gentrification in a competitive land market. The garden provides examples of noncapitalist exchanges and decolonial foodways, emphasizing traditional agroecological knowledge.

Maddy 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.

Theodoros Kouros · Built Environment · Cyprus (Limassol)

This ethnographic study in Limassol, Cyprus, examines tactical gardening as a form of informal urbanism. It found that, contrary to common perceptions of guerrilla gardening as community-building, these interventions by home and business owners often serve private gain by expanding into public spaces and can exclude other community members from using those public spaces. The research highlights a negative aspect of tactical gardening, where it contributes to the privatization of public areas.

Sina 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.

Valéria Borges Yonegura, Jennifer Domeneghini, Júlio Celso Borello Vargas, André Luiz Lopes da Silveira · LA Referencia (Red Federada de Repositorios Institucionales de Publicaciones Científicas) · Brazil (Curitiba)

This paper focuses on mobility issues in the southern region of Curitiba, Brazil. It points out that the benefits of urban agriculture, particularly the ecological advantages of short food circuits, are hindered by the isolation of its growers. The lack of accessibility in peripheral areas, due to distance or insufficient infrastructure investment, suggests a loss of opportunities in utilizing the transport system.

Arnaud Sapin, Philippe Bodénan, Thierry Lebeau, Ghozlane Fleury‐Bahi · Journal of Community & Applied Social Psychology · France

A qualitative study in Nantes, France, interviewed 28 allotment garden users to examine psychosocial impacts. While highlighting benefits like psychological well-being, physical health, self-development, and social bonding, the study found these were balanced by various conflicts reported by participants. Lexicometric analysis confirmed that positive and negative social aspects are significantly associated and must be considered jointly.

Larissa 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.

Daniel Sax, Lorien Nesbitt, Shannon Hagerman · Environment and Planning E Nature and Space · Canada (Vancouver)

A case study of an urban farm in Vancouver, Canada, facing displacement due to redevelopment, revealed that urban residents engaged in urban greening can be both implicated in and impacted by green gentrification processes. The study highlighted the power dynamics farm members navigate to preserve land access and found that the farm's identity was co-opted by development agents as a branding tool. This research contributes to understanding the limitations of development processes in accounting for green gentrification risks.

Megan Marshall · Journal of Agriculture Food Systems and Community Development · Global

"A Recipe for Gentrification" is an edited volume exploring the complex relationship between intent and impact at the intersection of alternative food systems and urban development. The book aims to unpack how food systems can both drive and resist gentrification. It shows that well-intentioned efforts to increase food access in a neighborhood can be an early initiator of gentrification, and urban agriculture and public green spaces are frequently co-opted for development efforts.

Angie Sassano, Christopher Mayes, Yin Paradies · Urban Policy and Research · Australia

In Australia, COVID-19 accelerated reliance on resiliency for post-pandemic urban recovery. This study examined the use of resilience in urban agriculture proposals for cities after COVID-19, drawing on critical literature. It argues that the current pandemic conditions for urban agriculture risk perpetuating urban colonial governmentality. The paper calls for a rethinking of urban agriculture for future cities by radically disrupting the foundational colonial logics of urban spatiality.

Amy Trauger · · Global

The contemporary industrial food system is problematic, producing diverse foods for a small elite and replicating past labor injustices rooted in colonialism. Urban agriculture is a growing global trend and is expected to be the future of food production. The future of food will also diversify what we eat, including aquaponic tilapia, sprouts, algae, fungus and yeast-derived foods, and imitation meats.

Emmanuelle Melis, Emma Louise Armitage, Yuxin Ma, Amelia Weiss, Brian E. Robinson · McGill Science Undergraduate Research Journal · United States (Chicago)

This study investigated the location of urban commercial farms in Chicago, Illinois, and whether there is a significant disparity between the social demographics of production and sale points. All production and distribution points for commercial urban farming companies were geocoded and analyzed against socioeconomic indicator data from the 2016 US census, including median annual household income, mean home value, and percent racialized minority population. Findings revealed statistically significant differences in socioeconomic indicators between census tracts of farm and sale point locations, showing a skewness of farm locations towards lower socioeconomic status areas and sale point locations towards higher socioeconomic status areas. This suggests that while farms are more likely to be located in marginalized neighborhoods in Chicago, most produce grown by these farms is sold in more privileged areas.

Mawuna 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.