Research & reports

Carol Posthumus · SABI Magazine - Tydskrif · Global

Discussions about providing nutritious food for a growing population often include agricultural growth, focusing on both the quantity and quality of food produced. An emphasis is also placed on the growth of smallholder farmers, particularly women farmers, as a solution for future food provision.

Marc van lersel · · Global

Agriculture faces the 21st-century challenge of feeding a growing, urbanizing population while minimizing negative environmental impact. Urban farming has been presented as a potential solution to perceived problems with conventional agricultural production, but its effectiveness as a comprehensive solution is questioned.

Marianne 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.

Diana Lee-Smith · City · Africa

This paper reviews a synthesis from late 2010 on Urban and Peri-urban Agriculture (UPA) data from East and Central Africa, identifying major issues such as UPA's relationship to food security and poverty, its waste recycling effectiveness, and policy responses. The analysis is updated with data from Southern Africa, suggesting UPA's capacity to recycle nutrients, particularly on efficient crop-livestock backyard farms, signifies its potential role in making cities sustainable.

Senoaji Widianto, Cahyadi Nugraha, Khuria Amila · · Indonesia (Bandung)

This study presents an Agent Based Modeling & Simulation method to model the urban farming activities of the Bandung Berkebun Community in Bandung, Indonesia. The model shows the effect of system parameters such as the intensity of community programs, campaigns, and the availability of land for gardening on the growth of these activities. The output of the simulation model suggests that these activities can help to increase the supply of vegetables for the people of Bandung.

김효정 · 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.

Dominique Rossi Breetzke, Christina Breed · Suid-Afrikaanse tydskrif vir kunsgeskiedenis · South Africa (Pretoria)

This paper explores using abandoned urban land for allotment community gardening in Sunnyside, Pretoria, South Africa, through a case study along the Walker Spruit. It tests the hypothesis of increasing food security and social capital through urban ecology design. Findings suggest that allotment culture and permaculture can reconnect people with urban nature, proposing a design concept to unite neighborhoods and provide social and biophysical services sustainably.

Laura Lavid · Journal of Agriculture Food Systems and Community Development · United States

This article discusses the impact of urban gardening on a city's food system, noting that while it is not the sole solution, it offers significant benefits beyond economics. It cites historical data from World War II, where 20 million victory gardeners produced 44% of fresh vegetables in the United States. Recent studies estimate community gardens can yield $500 to $2,000 worth of produce per family annually, and a Denver study found community gardeners ate significantly more fruits and vegetables than non-gardeners.

Bruno Henrique Comassetto, Gabriela P. Solalinde Z., João Vicente Rosa de Souza, Marcelo Trevisan, Paulo Ricardo Zilio Abdala, Carlos Alberto Vargas Rossi · Revista de Administração de Empresas · Brazil

A qualitative study with in-depth interviews of urban agriculture specialists and practitioners in nine neighborhoods of a large Brazilian capital explored the meaning of urban agriculture as a consumption phenomenon. The findings indicate a dual motivation for practicing urban agriculture: an extrinsic motivation (example) and an intrinsic motivation (well-being). The practice is linked to concerns for the environment, health, and personal well-being, as well as nostalgic respect and pride for cultural heritage.

Simon Underhill, Underhill, Simon · Asian Journal of Agriculture and Development · Cambodia

This paper reported on trends in urban agriculture (rice, vegetables, cattle, swine, and poultry) in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, since 1993. Approximately 20% (125 square kilometers) of the municipal area of Phnom Penh is used for agriculture, supporting nearly 300,000 livestock. Between 1993 and 2011, livestock populations declined but increased in 2011, while vegetable production and cultivated area decreased, and rice production increased.

Nicholas F. Reed · Stanford law & policy review · United States (California)

This legal note centers on California Assembly Bill 551 (AB 551), introduced on February 20, 2013 by Assemblyman Phil Ting, which would create incentives for owners of undeveloped urban residential property to lease their land for agricultural use or the creation of urban green space. It positions AB 551 as a potential "Williamson Act for cities," in contrast to the 1965 California Land Conservation Act (the Williamson Act), which was intended to protect rural agricultural land from urban development; AB 551 would instead let local governments encourage commercial agriculture where urban development is infeasible or has stalled. The author reviews the social, economic, and environmental benefits attributed to urban agriculture, legal barriers such as property tax and zoning codes, and the history of differential tax programs protecting agricultural land, before explaining the rationale for the AB 551 proposal.

Joshua Birky, Elizabeth Strom · Urban Geography · United States

A review of historical and contemporary literature on the U.S. community garden movement, combined with surveys of participants in three distinctive community gardens, compares today's movement with its predecessors. It concludes that a greater diversity of gardeners and gardening motivations, combined with changing views on urban land use, will make community gardens a more lasting feature of city neighborhoods.

Sylvie Lardon, Salma Loudiyi · OpenEdition (OpenEdition) · France

Set against the mid-21st-century demographic challenge, in which urban growth projections toward 2050 raise alarms over cities' food security, food sovereignty, and the sustainability of increasingly fragile territorial food systems, a French essay questions our capacity to think through change and devise new modes of action. The available abstract is truncated at this point and provides no further detail.

Julián Briz Escribano, Isabel de Felipe Boente · · Global

This piece reports on a conference on commercialization and food value chains as a tool for socioeconomic development and urban agriculture, held in Bolivia by the Institute for Rural Development for South America (IPDRS), the CIDES-UMSA graduate development studies program, and Agronomes et Veterinaires Sans Frontieres Bolivia. Invited speakers Julian Briz Escribano and Isabel de Felipe, researchers at the Technical University of Madrid, have published three books of methodological and case studies on food value chains with contributions from 80 authors across 60 countries.

Rob Porter, Heather McIlvaine-Newsad · Leisure/Loisir ·

This ethnography examines the origins and growth of a rural community garden through the lenses of food security, leisure and social capital within an environmental justice framework. Community residents, including low-income populations, people with disabilities and senior citizens, came together with support from local leaders to grow healthy produce out of concerns over produce cost and commercial growing practices; participants entered mainly for food security but came to recognize leisure benefits such as socializing, and the external social networks that facilitated the garden also generated internal social capital, including increased gardening knowledge and shared skills.

Rebecca Bramall · Palgrave Macmillan UK eBooks · United Kingdom

An essay (United Kingdom) centered on a 2007 allotment project - a "victory garden" set up in St James's Park, London, by the Imperial War Museum London with the Royal Parks - that traces connections between the Second World War "Dig for Victory" campaign and contemporary discourses of sustainability and austerity. Focusing on urban agricultural projects, it considers how austerity discourse might shape British consumers' understanding of agricultural systems and the formation of consuming subjects.

Romborah Simiyu, Dick Foeken · Gender Place & Culture · Kenya

The study examined labour divisions between men and women in urban crop cultivation in Eldoret, Kenya. Divisions were shaped by social constructs of masculinity and femininity, gendered differences in entitlements and farming knowledge, and intra-household power relations, and showed up in which crops each gender took responsibility for, which tasks they performed, and spatial separation of activities. Traditional gender-related labour boundaries were being challenged and reworked. Women's labour contributed more directly to household food security, while men's growing involvement in subsistence farming held prospects for improved productivity and food security.

Sylvester Jatta · Munich Personal RePEc Archive (Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich) · Global

A paper using a newly compiled dataset combining comparable, nationally representative household survey data from 15 developing or transition countries to analyze, in comparative international perspective, the importance of urban agriculture for the urban poor and food insecure. The potential for urban agriculture to play a substantial role in reducing urban poverty and food insecurity should not be overemphasized, the study finds, as its share of income and of overall agricultural production is often quite limited. At the same time, its role should not be too easily dismissed either: particularly across much of Africa, agriculture provides a substantial share of income for the urban poor and constitutes an important livelihood source for the households that rely on it. The study finds fairly consistent statistical evidence of an association between engagement in urban agriculture and dietary adequacy indicators.

Rebecca J. McLain, Patrick T. Hurley, Marla R. Emery, Melissa R. Poe · Local Environment · United States

Drawing on an integrated urban political ecology and human-plant geographies framework, researchers examined foraging for wild food across Baltimore, New York City, Philadelphia, and Seattle. Foraging is a vibrant, ongoing practice among diverse urban residents, yet regulations, planning practices, and the attitudes of conservation practitioners frame it as out of place in urban landscapes and something to be discouraged.

Adriana Allen, Alexandre Apsan Frediani · City · Ghana

Drawing on a four-year research collaboration between the Development Planning Unit (DPU), the International Water Management Institute (IWMI), People's Dialogue, and the Ghana Federation of the Urban Poor, this paper examines the trajectories of female and male farmers working under different and rapidly changing land tenure systems across the Accra-Ashaiman corridor in the Greater Accra Metropolitan Area, Ghana. It argues that urban agriculture can be interpreted not merely as gardening for beautification, subsistence, or therapy, but as a means through which marginalized groups actively claim spaces of daily sociability and political voice in the city.

Jane Battersby · Geography Compass · Sub-Saharan Africa

A critical review (Geography Compass, 2013) traces the historical and political trajectory of urban food security research in sub-Saharan Africa, arguing the field has often been narrowly framed as a developmental rather than political problem. It links the rise of urban agriculture as a research and policy focus to the region's experience of structural adjustment, and discusses emerging "repoliticized" research trajectories, concluding these could enable synergies between urban food research in the global North and South.

Rachel Slocum, Arun Saldanha · · Global

An edited collection (2013) argues that an unacknowledged racial dimension underlies the production and consumption of food under globalization, examining this across three "socio-physical spatialities"—fields, bodies, and markets—through international, multidisciplinary case studies. The volume states that human groups become entrenched in racial hierarchies through food at scales ranging from the household to the slave trade and empire, and includes a chapter specifically addressing urban agriculture and race in South Africa (by Jane Battersby) among contributions covering topics such as bracero labor in California and food-justice organizing in Newtown. The abstract presents this as the collection's conceptual argument rather than as findings from a single empirical study.

Ruth Stewart, Marcel Korth, Laurenz Langer, Shannon Rafferty, Natalie Rebelo Da Silva, Carina van Rooyen · Environmental Evidence · Global

This is a systematic review protocol — not a completed review — that sets out methods for identifying, appraising and synthesizing evidence on how urban agriculture programs affect food security and nutrition in low- and middle-income countries. It notes urban agriculture is widely promoted as providing the urban poor with food and income while improving the urban environment, but also carries potential disadvantages: use of wastewater can contaminate produce, intensive irrigation can spread malaria and water-borne disease and strain limited water supplies, and soil erosion and intensive fertilizer/pesticide use can pose health risks and environmental damage. Despite the current policy drive to promote urban agriculture, the paper states that the evidence base for its benefits and harms is not well understood. As a protocol, it reports planned search, screening, bias-appraisal and synthesis methods rather than results.

Seanna Berry · SMARTech Repository (Georgia Institute of Technology) · United States

A report on Atlanta, Georgia's local food system reviews the rationale for food systems planning, surveys mechanisms other cities and regions use to enhance the supply and consumption of locally grown food, and describes Atlanta's current efforts in this area. Building on goals that city officials and food advocates have set over the preceding five years toward a more localized and vibrant food system, it recommends strategic directions to help the city improve its efforts and overcome identified barriers.

Dominique Rossi Breetzke, Christina Breed · UpSpace Institutional Repository (University of Pretoria) · South Africa

A landscape architecture study centered on Sunnyside, Pretoria, South Africa, using an abandoned stretch of land along the Walker Spruit as a case study to test the hypothesis that allotment-style community gardening designed around urban ecology can increase food security and social capital. It examines Guerrilla Gardening and allotment cultures in Britain, Canada, and Switzerland, and applies the green infrastructure concept of a "Continuous Productive Urban Landscape," concluding that allotment culture and permaculture can be ways of reconnecting people with urban nature. It proposes a "three natures" design concept intended to unite the neighboring Clydesdale and Sunnyside East areas. The work is a design proposal and case study rather than a study with measured outcome data.