Research & reports
Peer-reviewed research and reports on community urban agriculture, food education, composting, welfare and more.
Theme
Critical findings
134 results(5 / 6)
Disentangling Participation in ‘Local Organic‘ Food Activism in London. On the Intersecting Dynamics of Whiteness, Coloniality and Methodologies that Constitute Ecological Identities
2016Katharina Nowak · Freiburger Geschlechterstudien/Freiburger Zeitschrift für Geschlechterstudien · United Kingdom (London)
This paper explores participation in London's local organic food network, Organiclea, examining how whiteness and coloniality influence engagement in food activism. Using inductive interviews and intersectionality, the study found disproportionate participation of diaspora subjects in the design and operation of local organic food practices. This highlights racialized ecological identity formation within such networks.
Equity & displacementCommunityFood sovereignty & justiceA Story of Urban Farming and the Cultivation of Community and the Human Spirit
2016Matthew M. Mars · Journal of Agriculture Food Systems and Community Development · Canada (Vancouver)
Michael Ableman's book "Street Farm" tells the story of how an urban farm transformed vacant lots in Vancouver, Canada's Low Tracks neighborhood into sites for food production, partial community restoration, and nurturing the human spirit. The narrative reveals a tenuous balance between the promises of urban farming and the harsh realities of addiction, hunger, homelessness, and violence often characterizing inner-city conditions. Urban agriculture is presented as a means to sustainably produce food for a city while also feeding the souls of disenfranchised individuals and communities.
Equity & displacementCommunityWelfareFood sovereignty & justiceGender, resilience and resistance: South Africa’s Hleketani Community Garden
2016Elizabeth Vibert · Journal of Contemporary African Studies · South Africa
This article examines the Hleketani Community Garden in Limpopo Province, South Africa, highlighting the successes of women farmers in reducing poverty and improving health outcomes. Despite these benefits, the research identifies significant structural barriers, including lack of access to resources, unfavorable policy frameworks for small-scale agriculture, and worsening climate change, that hinder small-scale farmers, particularly women.
Equity & displacementCommunityWelfareHealthPolicyClimate changeFood sovereignty & justiceAppropriating a People’s Movement: The Relationship Between Community Gardens and Gentrification in New York City | Appropriating a People’s Movement: The Relationship Between Community Gardens and Gentrification in New York City
2016Lal, Prita · Academic Commons (Stony Brook University) · United States (New York City)
This dissertation studies the relationship between community gardens and gentrification in New York City. It argues that low-income people's efforts in revitalizing their blighted neighborhoods by building community gardens in the 1970s and 1980s contributed to gentrification in the 1990s and beyond. The research points out that real estate developers preyed on people's efforts, and the people subsidized the city's revitalization. It concludes that while gardeners did not cause gentrification, their efforts played a significant role in the process, and stronger policy protections for gardens are needed as city policies permitted gentrification.
Equity & displacementCommunityPolicyEconomicsFood sovereignty & justiceRacism and Capitalism: Dual Challenges for the Food Movement
2015Eric 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.
Equity & displacementFood sovereignty & justiceCommunityFood (In)Security: Provisioning Strategies in a Northern Wisconsin Town
2015Margaret Ellen Kubek · UWM Digital Commons (University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee) · United States (Wisconsin)
This thesis explored the food provisioning strategies of year-round and seasonal residents of Phelps, WI. Ethnographic data gathered in the summer and fall of 2011 found that Phelps, WI, is classified as food insecure, leading residents to modify routines for lengthy drives to purchase food, while year-round residents utilized self-provisioning strategies. Newly initiated farmers' market and community supported agriculture projects increased overall food availability, but these efforts were mostly utilized by seasonal residents, with year-round residents finding these options unaffordable and inconveniently scheduled.
Equity & displacementFood sovereignty & justiceCSA & TeikeiCommunityEconomicsEroding the Community in Community Supported Agriculture (CSA): Competition's Effects in Alternative Food Networks in California
2015Ryan E. Galt, Katharine A. Bradley, Libby Christensen, Julia Van Soelen Kim, Ramiro Lobo · Sociologia Ruralis · United States (California)
A study of 111 CSA farms in California examined the effects of competition within alternative food networks. Analysis showed that perceived competition is negatively correlated with CSA farms' profitability, farmer satisfaction, various indicators of CSA's social embeddedness, and two community food security strategies. Competition was found to undermine some commonly held CSA values, specifically fair farmer compensation and strong member-farmer relationships.
Equity & displacementCSA & TeikeiEconomicsCommunityFood sovereignty & justiceCultivating Sustainable Cities: A Comparative Study of Urban Agriculture in Mumbai, India and New York City, USA
2015Kristina Satterlee · Digital Commons @ Connecticut College (Connecticut College) · India (Mumbai); United States (New York City)
This comparative study of urban agriculture in Mumbai, India, and New York City, USA, utilized in-depth interviews with urban farmers and secondary research. The research revealed that farms and gardens in lower-income areas in both cities had access to significantly fewer resources than their counterparts in wealthier areas. Additionally, both movements struggled to form networks across socioeconomic divides.
Equity & displacementCommunityEconomicsPolicyFood sovereignty & justicePrivilege and Allyship in Nonprofit Food Justice Organizations
2015Danny Tarng · Journal of Agriculture Food Systems and Community Development · United States
This commentary discusses how nonprofit urban agriculture organizations, central to the U.S. food justice movement, can foster better allyship. It highlights that as the movement expands, the transformation of allies' privilege into empowerment at an organizational level is crucial for ongoing growth and success. The text provides insights into organizational policies and practices that can improve allyship.
Equity & displacementCommunityPolicyFood sovereignty & justiceFrån konsument till medproducent
2015Jenny 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.
Equity & displacementCSA & TeikeiCommunityUrban–rural linkageFood sovereignty & justiceHortas escolares: possibilidades de anunciar e denunciar invisibilidades nas práticas educativas sobre alimentação e saúde
2015Elizabete Cristina Ribeiro Silva, Alexandre Brasil Carvalho da Fonseca, Fernanda Pereira Dysarz, Ernani Jardim Reis · Alexandria Revista de Educação em Ciência e Tecnologia · Brazil
This research identifies parameters for school gardens in Brazil, analyzing various experiences and an urban public school case. The study correlates the health of students and farmers in agricultural activities, explicitly pointing out negligences in this regard. It argues that a healthy eating concept from school gardens requires an equally healthy production system, and attention to student safety can highlight farmers' working conditions, which is crucial for food and nutritional education.
Equity & displacementFood educationHealthCommunityFood sovereignty & justiceKnowing “Good Food”: Immigrant Knowledge and the Racial Politics of Farmworker Food Insecurity
2014Laura-Anne Minkoff-Zern · Antipode · United States
Research on farmworker food insecurity in the USA points out that food assistance providers often treat farmworkers' inability to afford healthy food as a lack of knowledge, reinforcing racialized assumptions that people of color do not know "good" food. This study argues that food security and healthy eating are not a matter of consumers making healthy "choices," but rather a matter of class-based and racial differences within the food system.
Equity & displacementCommunityFood sovereignty & justiceHealthWelfareFood Co‐ops and the Paradox of Exclusivity
2014Andrew Zitcer · Antipode · United States (Philadelphia)
This article explored the paradox of exclusivity in consumer food cooperatives in the United States, focusing on two food co-ops in Philadelphia, PA. The study found that exclusivity manifests in the co-ops' sales, business practices, and marketing, inadvertently excluding certain practices and people. This paradox hinders co-ops from fully realizing their transformative social and economic potential.
Equity & displacementCommunityFood sovereignty & justiceEconomicsAlternative Food Projects, Localization and Neoliberal Urban Development
2014Pascale Joassart‐Marcelli, Fernando J. Bosco · Métropoles · United States (California)
This article explores the growth of local food practices in urban southern California, focusing on farmers' markets. While alternative food initiatives like farmers' markets are often seen as resistance to capitalist pressures, this research provides evidence that they have become increasingly popular among affluent and white urban residents. This finding challenges the claim that local food fosters democracy and justice, indicating that these initiatives can reproduce neoliberal urban agendas and reshape cities along lines of race and class.
Equity & displacementCommunityPolicyEconomicsFood sovereignty & justiceThe politics and technologies of urban waste
2014Jonathan 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.
Equity & displacementFood sovereignty & justicePolicyEconomicsWelfareCONFLICTS, CONTESTATION AND MARGINALIZATION IN URBAN AGRICULTURE: EXPERIENCES FROM KUWADZANA EXTENSION, HARARE
2013Josiah Taru, Hardlife Stephen Basure · Russian Journal of Agricultural and Socio-Economic Sciences · Zimbabwe (Harare)
This study applied Norman Long's interface analysis to understand the causes of conflicts and struggles among urban agriculture (UA) actors in Kuwadzana Extension, Harare. Intensified competition for scarce land and water escalated conflicts, particularly in off-plot agriculture due to its contentious nature outside institutional frameworks. Actors with different power bases used them to dispossess and marginalize others. Conflict resolution mechanisms (mediation, litigation, conciliation) often lacked legal binding or institutional backing, tending to generate more disputes.
Equity & displacementPolicyCommunityEconomicsFood sovereignty & justiceNot Just the Price of Food: Challenges of an Urban Agriculture Organization in Engaging Local Residents
2013Yuki Kato · Sociological Inquiry · United States (New Orleans)
This case study of a community-supported agriculture (CSA) organization in New Orleans focused on the lack of participation by local residents in the CSA market despite its intentions. Interview and ethnographic observation data indicated a general consensus on economic constraints, while some non-resident supporters attributed the issue to a lack of knowledge about the food system. Residents, however, pointed to spatial and sociocultural barriers, including produce selection, purchase options, market access convenience, and the race-related historical and spatial context of the market's location, making the market less accessible to them.
Equity & displacementCommunityEconomicsFood sovereignty & justicePolicyRace, Class, and Food Justice in South Allison Hill, Pa.
2013Giovania Genevieve Tiarachristie · · United States (Harrisburg)
This qualitative study explored race-class conflicts around food and urban gardening in South Allison Hill, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, a diverse, low-income neighborhood. Seven interviews with neighborhood leaders revealed that the "Whiteness" of a new wave of urban gardening can create race and class tension, hindering collaborative partnerships and local food systems development. The findings indicate structural limitations and social roadblocks, suggesting that urban gardening can exacerbate existing inequities if not approached with structural economic justice and cultural competency.
Equity & displacementCommunityFood sovereignty & justicePolicyEconomicsDecolonizing Ecology Through Rerooting Epistemologies
2013Lauren M Bitter · Scholarship @ Claremont (The Claremont Colleges) · United States (California)
This autoethnographic thesis centers on the People and Their Plants garden in Upland, California, which represents the ecological changes caused by colonization in Southern California. The study critiques research and ethnography by examining the politics of knowledge, language, history, and ecology, and interrogates colonial/capitalist food systems that render Indigenous ways of knowing invisible. The People and Their Plants garden is presented as an act of resistance, creating space for alternative economic and decolonial food practices.
Equity & displacementCommunityFood sovereignty & justicePolicyImported from Detroit: An Examination of a City in Crisis
2013Freda G. Sampson, Thomas G. Costello, Stacey Stevens, Desiree Squire · Journal of Law and Society · United States (Detroit)
This paper examines Detroit, United States, as a city in crisis, analyzing redevelopment conflicts between gentrification and revitalization. It applies a "Litmus Test for Equity and Opportunity" to current redevelopment efforts, including the Detroit Future City Plan and projects by Michael Ilitch & Company and Dan Gilbert. The analysis suggests that despite efforts, the complexities of this post-industrial city, particularly regarding its predominantly African-American population, are only superficially addressed, indicating ongoing equity challenges.
Equity & displacementCommunityFood sovereignty & justiceEconomicsPolicyFrom Potato Chips to Kale Chips: Examining Motivations of Clark Community Gardeners in Worcester, MA
2013Marianne Sarkis, Tiffany Lee, Steph Fenner, Erin Barta, Kristina Kalolo · Clark Digital Commons (Clark University) · United States
Research was conducted using free-list, pile-sort, interviews, and surveys to examine the association between community gardening and food justice among Clark community gardeners in Worcester, MA. The findings supported the conclusion that Clark community gardeners do not conform to the food justice interpretation of a community garden. Although both actors share similar methods and ideologies, neither is attempting to fit the other's definitions.
Equity & displacementCommunityFood sovereignty & justice비혼 여성 활동가들의 공동체 농사를 통해 본 도시농업의 여성주의적 실천 가능성
2013김효정 · 한국여성학 · South Korea
Through in-depth interviews and participant observation research targeting women's activist organizations established since 2010, the characteristics of urban agriculture cases led or participated in by unmarried women in their 20s and 30s were analyzed. Unmarried women activists met the growing demand for safe and healthy food among single-person households through community farming in urban areas, practicing agriculture not only for food production but also as a lifestyle pursuit and recreational culture. However, their practices face limitations such as urban space constraints, difficulties for unmarried women to relocate to rural areas, excessive ecological value attribution, and a lack of solidarity with rural communities.
Equity & displacementCommunityWelfareFood sovereignty & justiceEconomicsUrban–rural linkageThe City as an "Agricultural Powerhouse"? Perspectives on Expanding Urban Agriculture from Detroit, Michigan
2012Kathryn Colasanti, Michael W. Hamm, Charlotte M. Litjens · Urban Geography · United States (Detroit)
This research explores perceptions of expanding urban agriculture in Detroit, Michigan, through semi-structured interviews and focus groups. While revealing widespread support for urban agriculture as a strategy for food security and urban sustainability, the study highlights contested aspects regarding the extent to which it should occur, its purpose, and the people it would involve.
Equity & displacementCommunityFood sovereignty & justicePolicyTime and Self-Valorization Freedom from Work Thr ough Work, an EJ Perspective on Work, Capital, and the Environment
2012Sjsu ScholarWorks, Gabriel R. Valle · · United States
This paper explores the self-valorization of work in community gardens as a path to environmental justice, arguing that community gardens disrupt capital's system by removing food as a commodity and revaluing time outside market-driven speed. The Chicano community, being susceptible to workplace inequalities, has a particular stake in this self-valorization, as these inequalities are reflected in unhealthy communities, economies, and environments. The study suggests that self-valorization through work creates natural wealth, reconstructing time, oppression, and communities.
Equity & displacementCommunityEconomicsFood sovereignty & justiceHealthCommunity Food Security via Urban Agriculture: Understanding People, Place, Economy, and Accessibility from a Food Justice Perspective
2012Mahbubur Meenar, Brandon Hoover · Journal of Agriculture Food Systems and Community Development · United States (Philadelphia)
This paper examines urban agriculture (UA) projects' role in addressing food insecurity in lower-income neighborhoods of post-industrial U.S. cities, using Philadelphia as a case study. While UA projects are vital, findings indicate concerns regarding their geographic, economic, and informational accessibility, social exclusion, and spatial mismatch between participants and neighborhood demographics. Challenges also exist in distributing fresh produce to impoverished populations and UA's economic contributions in underprivileged areas.
Equity & displacementCommunityFood sovereignty & justiceEconomicsHealth