Research & reports

Setyo Parsudi · Berkala Ilmiah AGRIDEVINA · Indonesia (Surabaya)

This study in Surabaya, Indonesia, aimed to identify urban farming models, community motivations, and obstacles faced in implementing urban agriculture. The study found that the most common urban farming models were hydroponics, followed by verticulture, fisheries, and rooftop gardens. Community motivations primarily included increasing income, utilizing empty land, pursuing farming hobbies, and using green open spaces. The main obstacles faced by the community were plant pests, lack of capital for development, extreme weather, and insufficient experience and knowledge in urban agriculture.

Joeli Silva de Souza, Ryzia de Cássia Vieira Cardoso, Lídice Almeida Arlego PARAGUASSÚ, Sidione Ferreira dos Santos · Revista de Nutrição · Brazil (Salvador-Bahia)

A cross-sectional exploratory study in Salvador-Bahia characterized community gardens, with five out of seven gardens participating and data collected from 13 horticulturists. 80.0% of gardens lacked land legalization, 100.0% operated without technical support, and 60.0% had no social organization. Major difficulties included lack of funding, volunteers, and water use restrictions, indicating insufficient policies limited technical support and financing.

Michelle Tendai. Chihambakwe, Paramu Mafongoya, Obert Jiri · Challenges · Zimbabwe

This review maps the use of food sovereignty principles in urban and peri-urban agriculture (UPA) in Zimbabwe, addressing its potential for food security. Despite UPA being ingrained in urban households' livelihoods, institutional arrangements governing the practice remain ambivalent. The review underscores that the failure to involve all stakeholders undermines UPA, leading to heightened food insecurity and unsustainable practices.

Nathan McClintock, Christiana Miewald, Eugene McCann · · North America

This chapter explores urban agriculture (UA) as fundamentally political practices, examining its role in neoliberal governance and sustainability policy-making, and as an object of contestation. It relates UA motivations and practices to processes of urbanization and political economic restructuring. The chapter highlights that UA is a site of political contestation, arising from broader political economic shifts.

Percy Toriro · · Zimbabwe (Harare)

This chapter explores the governance of urban food production in Harare, Zimbabwe, from 1890 to the present. Evidence indicates that while the practice has gained general acceptance through shifting positions over the years, the status of producers remains uncertain. This uncertainty stems from the lack of full incorporation of urban food production into city plans by planning officials, whose values are out of sync with Harare's lived reality.

Natalia Matesanz Ventura · · United States (New York City)

This article examines over fifty self-managed community gardens in Loisaida, New York, which form an informal network combining "affection" and "dissidence" to create "affect-dent" spaces. These gardens, established since the 1960s, reconfigure public space by opposing administration, the real-estate market, media invasion, and the appropriation of public space by the private sector. The study highlights how these spaces challenge dominant power structures and serve as a reference in contemporary architecture of the common.

Daniel Calbino, I. Borges, Luis Antonio Andrade Rosas, C.T. Abreu, Fernanda Anziliero Gonçalves · COLÓQUIO - Revista do Desenvolvimento Regional · Brazil

This case study in Sete Lagoas, Brazil, discusses the advances and challenges of agroecological urban community gardens, which have a history of approximately 33 years. Research findings indicate that public policy enables income generation for producers, increased supply, and food security in the region. However, the study highlights the need for greater support to address producers' limited technical knowledge and the importance of more supportive interpersonal relationships.

Angelina Moreira Melo, Daniel Calbino, Yuri Gomes Figueiredo, Fabiola Paulino da Silva, E. R. de O. Carvalho · Cadernos de Agroecologia · Brazil

This empirical work, based on participatory research, analyzed the social relations between producers of the Vapabucu community garden in Sete Lagoas, Brazil, and municipal public support organs. Research results indicate that while agroecological knowledge has advanced significantly in the technical dimension of agronomic production, the social relations among producers still show contradictions inherent to agroecological assumptions.

Piyapong Boossabong · Amsterdam University Press eBooks · Thailand (Bangkok)

In Bangkok, most vegetables consumed in the city are transported from remote rural areas and contaminated with chemicals. Governmental policies have failed to control chemical use, while monopolistic food corporations constrain the sustainability of local food systems. This chapter highlights the collaboration of urban farming networks in Bangkok that aim to produce alternative food sources and create alternative markets, arguing that these networks can construct alternative urban spaces for social action.

Sécou Omar Diédhiou, Oumar Sy, Christine Margétic · Espace populations sociétés · Senegal (Ziguinchor)

A study in Ziguinchor, Senegal, surveyed 248 farmers and 130 vegetable vendors in 2016 and 2017 to examine the role of urban agriculture. Urban expansion has led to shrinking agricultural land and land-use conflicts, while increasing food demand. Women play a central role from production to commercialization, farming in multiple locations for self-consumption and income, but the sustainability of these practices requires integration into proactive urban development policies.

Lena Partzsch · · Germany (Freiburg)

This chapter examines agency and accountability in food localization projects in Freiburg, Germany, using two case studies: Regionalwert AG and Luzernenhof. Regionalwert AG defines agency through the market, while Luzernenhof, a CSA, relies on trust and charity. It was shown that while food localization is often portrayed as "best practice," it also implies decisions about alternatives, raising questions of agency and accountability.

Laila Pacheco, Fabrício Khoury Rebello, Marcos Antônio Souza dos Santos, Paulo Fróes Júnior, Silvana Venâncio da Silva · Agrarian Academy · Brazil (Belém)

An analysis of urban agriculture potential was conducted in the Montese neighborhood of Belém, Brazil, through interviews with 40 residents from April to August 2018. The study found that 42.5% of respondents practiced urban agriculture, but the main limitation for its development was a lack of technical guidance and incentives. Broad partnerships involving community leaders, city hall, and universities are needed to overcome these technical, logistical, and infrastructure demands.

Michelle Marie Proctor · · United States (Detroit)

Urban agriculture programs in Detroit have seen many urban farms begin to include animals, sparking policy and ethical debates. Supporters claim animals accelerate land remediation, fertilize and aerate soil, and improve petroleum-polluted soils. However, opponents point to problems such as botched slaughters and lack of animal welfare oversight, arguing that backyard animal husbandry should be regulated in the best interests of the community and animal welfare.

Sugandhi del Canto, Rachel Engler‐Stringer · Policy Press eBooks · Global

Restrictive covenants, a corporate real estate practice, are identified as a significant barrier to establishing new food stores in older neighborhoods globally. These covenants place conditions on land use, such as prohibiting food sales or grocery store development, making it harder to address existing nutrition deserts. Government support is needed to limit these covenants and develop alternative food channels, including urban agriculture.

Matthew Reed, Evy Mettepenningen, Paul Swagemakers, M.D. Domínguez García, Ingrid Jahrl, Marlinde Koopmans · Urban Agriculture & Regional Food Systems · Europe

This paper examined urban food governance in four European city-regions: Bristol (UK), Ghent (Belgium), Vigo (Spain), and Zurich (Switzerland). The case studies demonstrated the role of citizens in urban food and the challenges this presents to city-region governance. Urban food activists, through horizontal networking and clear communication of demands, have raised significant questions about how cities are governed.

Chihambakwe, Michelle, Mafongoya, Paramu, L., Jiri, Obert · University of Zimbabwe Institutional Repository (University of Zimbabwe) · Africa

This review examines the application of food sovereignty principles in urban and peri-urban agriculture in Zimbabwe. It notes that despite urban households integrating these practices into their livelihoods, institutional arrangements governing them remain ambivalent. The review concludes that the failure to involve all stakeholders undermines urban and peri-urban agriculture, leading to increased food insecurity and unsustainable practices.

Marie Gisclard, Richard Raymond · Institut français d’études anatoliennes eBooks · Turkey (Diyarbakır)

This article examines the Hevsel Gardens in Diyarbakır, Turkey, which face sustainability challenges due to the city's growth and an asymmetric relationship where the city dominates the gardens. It highlights the unbalanced relationships between the gardens and the city, stemming from a lack of quality and quantity in water resources. The coexistence and competition of three socio-political projects, including centralized political networks and farmer-specific adaptations, call for a re-examination of this relationship and an alternative to the concentration of powers in the metropolis.

FX Andy Sutrisno, Bakti Setiawan · Jurnal Perencanaan Pembangunan The Indonesian Journal of Development Planning · Indonesia

This case study of Surakarta, Indonesia's sustainable agricultural land protection policy -- focusing on conservation within the urban environment -- used field observations, stakeholder interviews, and secondary data to analyze the local government's policy and how urban farmers and landowners perceive it. It found that the policy is not well understood by the farmers and landowners directly affected, that the local government itself views urban agricultural land mainly from an economic standpoint and is less supportive of conservation, and that farmers and landowners, while believing the policy is essential, reject it because designation requires relinquishing some land rights and the incentives offered are not economically sufficient to compensate them.

Illana C. Livstrom, Amy Smith, Mary Rogers, Karl Hackansan · Interdisciplinary Journal of Partnership Studies · Global

A qualitative case study of "Grounding Roots," a community-based collaborative educational program that aims to build food, environmental, and cognitive justice through sustainable urban agriculture and horticulture via intergenerational communities of practice. Drawing on Linda Tuhiwai Smith's framework of decolonizing methodologies, the study examined both the ways a Community-University partnership engaged in decolonizing work through research and practice, and the ways the same partnership served to preserve colonizing practices, using deductive coding grounded in decolonizing-practice theory. Identified decolonizing practices included implementing a program of worth to the community and youth, building from community-led agendas, and prioritizing community healing and transformation over academic research agendas. Identified colonizing practices included inequitable power hierarchies within the leadership team and in garden groups, deficit-oriented talk about minoritized youth, and the devalorization of youth voice. The study concludes that researchers doing community-based work need to examine the white supremacist roots embedded in their own practices, embrace decolonizing and humanizing approaches, engage in community-driven agendas that prioritize process over product, facilitate distributed leadership in collaboration with community members, and produce work of genuine value together with the community.

Annalisa Lodigiani · · Europe

This research addresses the ineffective governance of peri-urban agricultural territory in Europe, noting that spatial planning lacks the tools to guide agricultural sector forces influencing landscape transformation. Public action, through agricultural and rural development policies, significantly transforms the environment and territory but does not directly target space. The study finds that the separation between spatial planning and rural development policy creates ineffectiveness and stalemates in governing peri-urban agricultural land, concluding that integration of these two fields is required.

Elsa Perroit · · France

This article reflects on the French agricultural model and the absence of urban agriculture from the "Etats généraux de l’Alimentation" (General Assembly on Food). Despite its multifaceted nature and role in urban food security, urban agriculture was relegated to a non-productive status, with its food functions disregarded. The article concludes that while urban agriculture possesses many qualities, it is not and will not be sufficient to feed urban areas.

Nyasha Chaminuka, Ernest Dube · PEOPLE International Journal of Social Sciences · Zimbabwe

This qualitative study, involving 26 participants in Mkoba suburb, Gweru, Zimbabwe, analyzed urban agriculture as a food security strategy. It found that urban agriculture's growth is driven by population growth, poverty, high food prices, and unemployment, and it promotes food security, employment, and savings. However, existing legal frameworks, including the Urban Councils Act and Regional Town Planning Act, do not support but rather impede urban agriculture, alongside challenges like lack of supportive legislation, government support, and funding.

Alec Thornton · Local Environment · Australia

This study, based on Australian city case studies, explored community gardeners' views and engagement in community gardens. Findings revealed that community gardeners identified local councils as barriers to the emergence of community gardens and other forms of urban agriculture. Unlike other Western cities, effective city–community relations for community garden growth have not yet emerged in Australian cities.

Nadia Belinda, Dian Rahmawati · Jurnal Teknik ITS · Indonesia (Surabaya)

This study in Semampir District, Surabaya City, Indonesia, aimed to develop urban farming based on community preferences. It identified potentials and problems using theoretical descriptive techniques, identified community preferences using confirmatory factor analysis, and formulated development directions using qualitative descriptive analysis. The study found that urban farming activities in Semampir District had not developed optimally due to the suboptimal role of the community and local institutions.

P. V. ERMINI, M. R. DELPRINO, B. GIOBELLINA · DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals) · Argentina (Santa Rosa-Toay)

In the Santa Rosa-Toay metropolitan area of Argentina, urban and peri-urban agriculture is noted for its scarce recognition in urban development policies and food security policies. Despite the region's urbanization, the absence of political recognition as a metropolitan area has hindered planning and management of land use and occupation according to its potential and limitations. This study developed and applied a methodological proposal to generate information on urban and peri-urban agricultural activities, integrating a spatial perspective with participatory procedures.