Research & reports

Lana Slavuj Borčić, Cvitanović Marin, Aleksandar Lukić · · Croatia (Zagreb)

Community gardens have long existed in Zagreb, Croatia, where residents have transformed underused public urban areas into gardens. While these activities largely occurred outside formal government frameworks, the "City Gardens" policy was adopted in 2012 to allocate urban public parcels to interested citizens. This policy increased participation in community gardening, and previous research indicates that community gardens offer multiple benefits and positive impacts on individuals, local communities, and urban spaces.

Monique Centrone Stefani, Debbie Humphries, Rebecca Kline · The FASEB Journal · United States

This study implemented and evaluated a pilot intervention addressing chronic disease risk factors in a low-income Hispanic population in the United States. The New Haven Farms Fresh Produce Prescription program provided fresh produce, nutrition education, gardening education, and cooking demonstrations weekly over sixteen weeks of the agriculture season. Participants, recruited through a community health center, came weekly to a central urban agriculture site and completed baseline and follow-up assessments of dietary diversity, chronic disease risk, food security, and physical activity. Fifty-one people completed the baseline survey and 40 completed the follow-up survey; preliminary analysis showed approximately 30% had some food insecurity at baseline. The study reports on the development of this complex agriculture-based intervention as a pilot.

Milica Koscica · Journal of international affairs · Global

This article traces the history of urban agriculture and analyzes current practices and policies to argue for its role in addressing food insecurity in developing cities, noting that more than half the world's population is urbanized and that global food demand is projected to rise 70-100% as urban population reaches a projected 70% by 2050; it frames urban agriculture as a means to expand access to land and water for food production through innovative growing techniques, without presenting new primary empirical data.

Jonathan Crush · · Global

This article argues that cities of the Global South are experiencing a deepening crisis of food inaccessibility, marked by growing food poverty, hunger and malnutrition, lack of dietary diversity, child wasting and stunting, increased vulnerability to infectious and chronic disease, and a growing obesity epidemic. It states that this urban crisis remains largely invisible to the policy and research communities concerned with global food security, noting that there was more research and policy debate on urban food insecurity in the 1990s, when the Global South was less urbanized than today, and that concern with urban food security has since been displaced by the new international food security agenda and its pervasive anti-urban bias. It observes that the only aspect of urban food security currently commanding significant attention is urban agriculture, which it describes as widely, but improbably, seen as the key to achieving food security in cities of the Global South.

Marike Brits · Farmlink Africa · South Africa

This short piece introduces Oranjezicht City Farm (OZCF) in Cape Town, South Africa. Co-founder Sheryl Ozinsky explains that the idea for the farm originated as a response to rising crime in the surrounding neighborhoods.

Terence O'Connell · Community Development Journal · United States

An interview with Julie Ristau, Co-director, and Alexa Bradley, Program Director, of On the Commons (OTC) — a commons movement strategy center founded in 2001 — was conducted by Tom O'Connell in Minneapolis, Minnesota, on June 28, 2013. OTC uses workshops, presentations, and direct consultation to bring visibility to the commons movement and support the development of commons-based solutions and leadership, and in the interview both women describe how they came to the idea of the commons through prior community organizing experience.

Caitlin M. Port, Markus Moos · Planning Practice and Research · Canada

A study used Geographic Information System analysis to measure land potential for urban agriculture in four sub-urban neighborhoods in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada. Findings show that 49-58% of the land measured has potential to support urban agriculture; in older post-war sub-urban neighborhoods this potential lies primarily in private yards, while newer sub-urban neighborhoods incorporating new urbanist ideals have smaller yards but more public green space, meaning challenges and opportunities for urban agriculture differ between older and newer sub-urban areas due to differences in neighborhood design.

이숙미, Kim In Ho · · Global

Aiming to develop approaches for enhancing the self-support capability of vulnerable groups, this study analyzed foreign cases in which urban agriculture activities were used for self-support. The analysis classified urban agriculture activities into four types depending on participants' level of self-support capability and employment status: a healing type that helps mind and body recover through engagement, a self-consumption type that supports healthy eating and cuts food expenses, a social-relation type built around interaction with the community, and an occupation type providing jobs and income through production activities.

Nicole M Reese · USF Scholarship Repository (University of San Francisco) · United States (California)

This study assessed the feasibility of rooftop farming in the Small Business Mix Zone of West Oakland, California. The area has more than one million square feet of untapped rooftop space, and selling produce grown there at local farmers markets, produce stands, grocery stores, businesses, and restaurants could generate up to $4 million in revenue. Rooftop production would help the City of Oakland meet its goal of 30% locally sourced food and supply fresh fruits and vegetables to West Oakland, a food desert currently lacking access to them.

Joann Lo · Journal of Critical Thought and Praxis · United States

A first-hand essay by the executive director of the Food Chain Workers Alliance (FCWA) in the United States argues that despite growing interest in sustainable food production and systems — including community gardens, urban agriculture and "slow" food — the broader food movement has not fully integrated the voices and leadership of the workers who bring food from farm to table. It states that food workers, numbering almost 20 million in the U.S. alone, face multiple injustices including low wages, lack of benefits and dangerous working conditions that intersect with the sustainable-food movement's own concerns about food insecurity and access to healthy, affordable food, and recounts the FCWA's history and work from the author's own position.

Serge Bonnefoy · SHILAP Revista de lepidopterología · France

This paper traces the historical trajectory of peri-urban agriculture in France, starting from the history of the Town/Country dualism and the phases of politicization of peri-urban agriculture, and examining the development of agglomeration policies into which agriculture has become embedded, identifying five distinct types of agricultural agglomeration policy. It describes the movements currently renewing peri-urban agriculture policy: the pursuit of sustainable cities (including opposition to urban sprawl), the food issue (strengthening agriculture's production function), and a return to a territorial economy. The paper focuses on the uncertainty of this policy argument and how it is exploited by different policies.

Cláudia Souza, Paula Simas de Andrade · Sustainability in Debate · Brazil

This piece describes how, under the motto "community and government, a successful partnership," 34-year-old official Sheila Souza dos Santos turned a community garden program into a genuine space for citizenship in Itapoã, a satellite city of Brasília, Brazil. Reviving a community vegetable-production project brought access to healthier food for the community, the school, and the families working in it, and also generated a series of community initiatives involving children, youth, adults, and older people.

Lorelei L. Hanson, Deborah Schrader · · Canada

A participatory action case study examined the development of Edmonton, Canada's urban food policy from 2008 to 2013, using participant observation, semi-structured interviews and document analysis, coded and triangulated through a grounded-theory approach. Despite initial progressive changes in municipal policy and promising innovative food-system planning, the research found that Edmonton's city council was ultimately driven largely by a development agenda, following a pattern documented in other urban sustainability initiatives that foreclose political debate and reinforce the status quo.

Christine Aubry, Jean-Noël Consalès, Leïla Kebir, Bernard Barraqué · Espaces et sociétés · Global

This joint interview with Christine Aubry and Jean-Noel Consales addresses debates around the resurgence of urban agriculture in cities of the Global North, where public, private, associative and entrepreneurial initiatives are spreading. It notes broad enthusiasm about the range of services urban agriculture provides, food as well as social and environmental roles, alongside dissenting views that dismiss non-professional agriculture as peripheral to meeting citizens' food needs, a passing fad, or urban leisure rather than real agriculture. The interviewees point to the great variety of urban agriculture forms as a breeding ground for innovation and a possible sign of major transformation in the agricultural world.

Zsófia Benedek · Econstor (Econstor) · Europe

A literature review of international research on short food supply chains (SFSC) and their impacts, combined with findings on the types already established in Hungary. SFSC consumers tend to be more highly educated than average; traditional forms such as farmers' markets attract older people while newer forms such as community-supported agriculture and web-based value chains attract younger people. The review finds that clear scientific evidence of SFSCs' positive environmental, social or economic impact is not always available, and in some cases traditional food supply chains prove cheaper and more environmentally beneficial, concluding there is no generally preferable SFSC solution given their heterogeneity.

Maria Lúcia da Silva Sodré, Aucéia Matos Dourado, Daiane Santos Oliveira, Vanessa Januário Graça · · Brazil

A report on a rural extension project developed around a community garden run by a women's association in Brazil, based on agroecological principles that center on exchanging traditional, technical and scientific knowledge as a means of interaction between the university, advisors and family farmers. The aim was to strengthen social organization and production processes by combining composting and vermiculture practices with technologies such as irrigation systems and cisterns, using theoretical and practical workshops. Results showed that these activities enabled families to increase production and gain access to healthier food; the resulting availability of produce for sale brought increased income and improved living conditions, along with improved soil quality, outcomes the report attributes in part to the organizational capacity of the women involved in the association.

Otu W. Ibok · Asian Journal of Agricultural Extension Economics & Sociology · Nigeria

A study of food security determinants among 217 urban food-crop-farming households in three urban areas of Cross River State, Nigeria — Calabar, Ikom and Ugep — selected through two-stage sampling. Cross-sectional data from structured questionnaires and interviews were analyzed using a headcount index, food insecurity gap index, food surplus gap index and logistic regression. Results showed 52.5% of households were food secure and 47.5% food insecure; food-secure households exceeded the food security line by 44%, while 53% of food-insecure households fell below the poverty line. Logistic regression identified years of formal education, farming experience, farmer age, farming as the main occupation, household size, farm income and crop output as the main determinants of food security status.

Amanda Brown, Antonin van der Lely, Camilo Cortes, Eileen Leung, F. Lam, Liz Overton, Muneera Hussain · cIRcle (University of British Columbia) · Canada

As part of the UBC Food Systems Project, this student report evaluates the effects of campus development at the University of British Columbia (UBC), Canada, on the ability to create and maintain a sustainable food system. The goal was not to promote food self-sufficiency at UBC but to build campus-community awareness and education around food security issues. Through evaluation of the plans guiding UBC's development — the Official Community Plan (OCP) and the Comprehensive Community Plan (CCP) — the report identifies major barriers and opportunities affecting campus food sustainability and proposes amendments to both plans. It resulted in a proposed urban agriculture strategy, "The Edible Campus," comprising six strategic actions: a demonstration garden, designated garden areas, green space and open areas, food production on buildings, waste management systems, and management considerations. The report is explicitly disclaimed as a student project under UBC's SEEDS program, not an official UBC document.

US Yannick, BL Louis, KL Antoine, AB Lukangila, MK Matthieu, KM Nathan, MKL Jerry, MM Mpundu, KL Nyembo · Journal of Applied Biosciences · Colombia

In Lubumbashi, Democratic Republic of the Congo, researchers analyzed the fertilizing value of different types of biowaste used in urban market gardening through principal component analysis of grower profiles, chi-square analysis of practices, and physico-chemical analysis of the waste materials. Most market gardeners were married women over 18 without land title; half the biowaste used was purchased chicken manure (with some pig manure), applied raw and buried in the soil, and while 33% of growers expected spreading it to increase productivity and improve soil physico-chemical properties, 48.3% expected it to improve vegetable growth appearance and boost yield.

Darmawan Listya Cahya · Forum Ilmiah · Indonesia

This case study of Kelurahan Slipi in West Jakarta, Indonesia, examined the characteristics of urban agriculture -- specifically household medicinal plant (TOGA) cultivation -- and its role in supporting sustainable urban development. Typical urban farmers were married women aged 41-50 with high school education, working as housewives in households of more than five, farming small plots of 1-10 m² using vertical farming methods for over three years, obtaining seeds from the government, operating on their own capital of under Rp 500,000 per month, and growing crops for personal use; the study concluded that urban farming supports sustainable development through economic benefits (supplementary income), social benefits (leisure use, mutual assistance), and environmental benefits (use of vacant land, reduced air pollution, greenery), recommending an integrative approach across five dimensions including ecological, economic, and social factors.

Muhammad Bello Ibrahim, Nobaya Ahmad · Universiti Putra Malaysia Institutional Repository (Universiti Putra Malaysia) · Global

This review paper examines the concept and role of peri-urban agriculture (PUA) as a contributor to solving urban food crises in developing countries. It reviews the historical development and current state of PUA across different parts of the world in relation to rising urban vegetable demand, noting that agricultural communities engaged in PUA make multifunctional contributions to national economies. As approaches to PUA vary by country, the paper argues it is the community's role to identify the functions that benefit local people most, and discusses how PUA, through community and rural development, can boost urban food supply and serve as an income-generating option for farmers in developing countries.

Marian Simón Rojo, Nerea Morán Alonso · E.T.S. Arquitectura (UPM) eBooks · Spain

This paper argues that the resurgence of interest in urban and peri-urban agriculture is tied to a rediscovery of the importance of food security and local production, which has led to the development of the first local sustainable food plans. It states that this resurgence often comes with an aura of renewed modernity, whether through its creative and social-mobilization potential or through the dazzling technological innovation linked to new building-based production systems (vertical farming), and notes that professional and academic urban-planning circles have begun incorporating debate on organizing local agricultural systems, framed as strategic reserves in an energy-transition scenario, into reflection on the city's future.

S. Guillaume · University of Minnesota Digital Conservancy (University of Minnesota) · United States

A description of the Aurora St. Anthony Peace Sanctuary Garden in the Summit-University (Rondo) and Frogtown neighborhoods of St. Paul, Minnesota, developed ten years earlier by African American community leaders as a tool for community building through gardening, and made up of a collaboration among six individual community gardens and backyard box gardeners. Through cultivating and sharing food, the project aims to promote reconciliation, healing, peace, and social and environmental justice, centering on the creation of a Neighborhood Garden Alliance meant to strengthen connections among the area's gardeners and gardens. The Alliance is intended to feed the neighborhood by empowering residents to grow their own food, meet and work with neighbors, share Rondo's food culture within families, and foster a stronger sense of ownership through a deepened connection to the land, serving as a vehicle for community building among diverse residents, expanded access to fresh food, and the engagement of new leaders through gardening.

Michela Felicetti · Advanced engineering forum · Italy

A paper examining whether the food hub concept can be applied to the Piana di Sibari area of Calabria, Italy, designated a Quality Agrifood District (DAQ) under regional law. After identifying features of the food hub concept within the area's largest cooperative, the paper argues that this arrangement represents an opportunity for small farmers to access conventional food supply chains from which they would otherwise be excluded. It frames food hubs as a hybrid of alternative and conventional food networks and, notably, as a way to address the economic viability problem faced by local food initiatives such as community-supported agriculture (CSA)—that is, the paper's premise is that CSA-type local food initiatives struggle to be economically viable on their own.

Ryan E. Galt · Economic Geography · United States (California)

A study of 54 Community-Supported Agriculture (CSA) farms in California's Central Valley used qualitative and quantitative data to explain farmers' earnings. An ordinary least squares regression analysis revealed that farmers' age, number of employees, and CSA type strongly influence earnings. The study found that the moral economy of CSA often results in self-exploitation due to farmers' strong sense of obligation to members, despite allowing for economic rents.