Research & reports

Gordon Prain, R. van Veenhuizen · · Global

The production of food, feed, fuel, and construction material in and around cities is almost as old as human settlement itself: the earliest cities of the Fertile Crescent, China, and South and Central America show evidence of local food production that served as an essential component of urban food security in times of conflict. The available abstract text ends at this historical framing and does not describe the specific participatory technology development methods or results referenced in the title.

Goldsmith, Leah · Occidental College Scholar (Occidental College) · United States (Los Angeles)

Low-income neighborhoods, communities of color, and immigrant communities in Los Angeles often experience unjust access to fresh, healthy foods. Project CAFE published the "Los Angeles Fresh Food Access Guide" in 2002 to inform residents of fresh food resources like farmers' markets and community gardens. This study conducted research on language and formatting to make information easy to understand, aiming to revise the guide for a lower literacy audience. The revised guide will include updated food resource information and new content focusing on the linkages between food and health.

LDK. Awono, Sebastian Bernal Hernandez, J. Gockowski, T. Dongmo, Mbang à Moudon · DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals) · Cameroon (Yaounde)

This study examines peri-urban agriculture in Yaounde, Cameroon, highlighting its importance for employment and food security due to rapid urbanization and underdeveloped systems. It supplies perishable goods like leafy vegetables and bulky items such as fresh cassava, and provides employment for over four thousand women in marketing. Major constraints include pests, diseases, lack of producer credit, and inadequate extension services.

R. Robles · Revista Agraria · Mexico (Mexico City)

This paper provides an overview of urban agriculture in Mexico City and its conurban area, contrasting production models in developing and developed countries. It reviews the main urban, suburban, and peri-urban production systems and discusses public policies for promoting urban agriculture. The study concludes that no specific policy has been designed to promote urban agriculture in Mexico.

Nkawkaw Afriyie, Kofi Adziri, Yaw Asare, Amoako Gyamfi · Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research) · Ghana

A thematic analysis synthesized existing studies on community gardening impact measurement in Accra, Ghana, focusing on methodologies. While varied methods were reported, a notable theme emerged regarding the mixed results and challenges in accurately gauging the impact of community gardening on urban food security indicators, such as vegetable consumption rates among participants. This review underscores the importance of empirical data for understanding the effectiveness of urban agricultural interventions, but highlights methodological inconsistencies.

李伯才 · 上海农村经济 · China (Shanghai)

This article outlines the development of Fengxian District's agriculture in Shanghai, China, in response to China's WTO entry and the city's modernization and urban-rural integration goals. It proposes that Fengxian District will be transformed into a high-standard, high-level, international, and modern coastal urban agriculture area through diligent research, scientific demonstration, and active exploration.

Ángela Borroto, Águeda C. Arencibia, J.L. López, Liliam J. Leyva, Carlos Mazorra, Gladys E. Dopico, R. Maurelo, A. Caraballoso · Redalyc (Universidad Autónoma del Estado de México) · Cuba

A two-year study in Florencia, Cuba, examined 32 randomly selected backyard producers involved in urban agriculture. While 90% applied scientific techniques to animal feed, only 10% kept records, and no sustained work was done with animal species in existing associations. Productive results were encouraging, but achieved with low productive efficiency, and sustainable management methods for breeding and waste were unknown in practice.

Pan Qi-yun · Shanghai nongye xuebao · China (Shanghai)

This study investigated and analyzed the problems of developing urban agriculture in Shanghai, China. It discussed countermeasures and approaches for promoting the protection of urban agriculture based on sustainable development principles. The study also proposed strategies for advancing agricultural and rural economic structures, developing high-quality agriculture, and improving agricultural product quality and competitiveness.

Sukaina Bharwani, Mike Bithell, Thomas E. Downing, Mark New, Richard Washington, Gina Ziervogel · Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B Biological Sciences · South Africa (Limpopo)

The 'Climate Outlooks and Agent-Based Simulation of Adaptation in South Africa' project investigated how seasonal climate outlooks influence agricultural strategies and food security among smallholder farmers in Vhembe district, Limpopo Province, South Africa. Empirical field data, collected through surveys and participatory approaches, informed an agent-based social simulation. This simulation modeled household agents with varying adaptation options, examining the impacts on crop yields and food security based on whether seasonal outlooks were used or ignored.

André Viljoen, Katrin Bohn · University of Brighton Repository (University of Brighton) · United Kingdom (London)

This paper, from a U.K. perspective, discusses urban agriculture using London as an example. While the benefits of urban agriculture for food security and income have often focused on the Global South, its integration into a multifunctional land use strategy could significantly reduce a city's ecological footprint, raising questions about its wider implementation.

Gavin Parker · · Japan

This paper explores how Teikei groups, as a form of Community Supported Agriculture (CSA), operate in Japan, focusing on one particular group. The Teikei approach is linked to debates around social capital and consumer-citizenship, arguing that pre-existing consumer/citizen institutions can usefully be engaged in developing food citizenship and CSA operations. CSA involves bringing producers and consumers closer to aid food traceability and quality, and exhibits elements of agricultural governance based on enhanced consumer-citizenship, where consumers have a say in produce growth and land management.

Ian Knowd, David Mason, Andrew Docking · · Global

The integration of agriculture into urban landscapes has a long history, intensifying since the industrial revolution, with early "garden cities" remaining utopian ideals. In contemporary urban development, renewed interest in agriculture relates to implementing sustainability and addressing globalization's structural changes to communities, food systems, and urban quality of life. Urban agriculture is a strategic resource requiring a strategic planning approach that recognizes its economic, social, and environmental values.

Tatsurô Suehara · Medical Entomology and Zoology · Japan (Kyoto)

This article examines the history of urban agriculture in Kyoto, Japan, an ancient capital city unique for its lack of surrounding walls (murailles). The absence of these walls allowed residents to flexibly transform residential areas into agricultural fields during the medieval period, adapting to changing needs for crops like barley and vegetables over 1200 years. The author suggests that Miyako-Kyoto was likely the birthplace of Japanese urban agriculture, arguing that agricultural fields played a crucial role in its history, making it an agricultural city as well as a capital.

Ranasinghe · The International Journal of Biodiversity Science and Management · Sri Lanka

This paper expands knowledge on urban agriculture through literature analysis and feedback from implementing the Family Business Garden concept in Sri Lanka. It argues that traditional home gardening distracts urban planners from the economic and social value of small-to-medium agro-entrepreneurship. The paper emphasizes the necessity of formal acceptance for micro-farming activities by mainstreaming urban agriculture in the development sphere.

Fernando Neira Orjuela · Estudios Demográficos y Urbanos · Mexico

This study examines San Luis Tlaxialtemalco, a town of 12,553 inhabitants in the Xochimilco borough in southern Mexico City that engages in urban agriculture, through a survey of 185 households, to determine whether greenhouses are a viable option for generating household income and which forms of family economic participation and sexual division of labor prevail. It also examines whether access to financial resources, age, and educational attainment give wives greater say in decision-making and freedom of movement, comparing them with wives engaged in paid and unpaid non-farm activities in the same town.

Fernando Neira Orjuela · · Mexico

This study focuses on San Luis Tlaxialtemalco, a town of 12,553 people in the Xochimilco delegation in southern Mexico City. Because the town practices urban agriculture, a survey of 185 households provided an opportunity to examine whether greenhouses are a viable option for generating household income, and the forms of family economic participation and sexual division of labor that shape this. The study also sought to clarify whether access to economic resources, age, and schooling grant wives the final say in household decision-making and freedom of movement, comparing them with wives engaged in salaried and non-salaried non-agricultural activities.

Lauren Baker · Geographical Review · Canada (Toronto)

Toronto's community gardens, numbering over 100, are sites of place-based politics linked to the community food-security movement. These gardens reflect the city's cultural landscape and serve as a strategy to regenerate the local food system and provide access to healthy, affordable food. Three case studies illustrate the complexities of "food citizenship" and the role gardeners play in transforming urban spaces.

Anne C. Bellows · Food and Foodways · Poland

Polish allotment gardeners collectively represent the largest land managers in Poland, with a formalized urban allotment food production system dating back to 1997. This system, combining local and national government policy with NGO management and private use, provides a model for food security and urban open space. However, this arrangement also creates ongoing tension among stakeholders and a contentious debate regarding the private and public uses of urban land.

CAST · · United States

This comprehensive report by a twelve-member task force examines the changing role of agriculture in urban settings within historical and contemporary American society. It outlines geographic, demographic, and economic changes in rural and metropolitan life, considering policy issues such as land preservation, alternative market opportunities, sprawl, taxation, and food security. The report also presents research and educational challenges for higher education institutions.

Wilfred Subbo · University of Nairobi Research Archive (University of Nairobi) · Kenya (Nairobi)

This paper discusses strategies for sustainable food production in Nairobi, Kenya, aiming to supplement rural food supplies and improve urban health through fresh, accessible food. It argues for discarding the attitude that food can only be produced in rural areas and explores the linkage between sanitation and urban food security. Additionally, the paper offers suggestions for mechanisms to increase food production in Nairobi.

M. R. S. Mlozi · UNISWA Research Journal of Agriculture Science and Technology · Tanzania

This paper examines whether urban agriculture (UA) contributes to alleviating income poverty among practitioners in Tanzania. Based on literature and empirical evidence, it shows that people of all socio-economic statuses undertake UA for food provisioning and income poverty alleviation due to declining real incomes of urban dwellers. The reasons for UA's persistence reside at four contextual levels: government, the Ministry of Agriculture and Food Security, city/town councils, and the individual, with government and individual levels being the most important.

Ademola K. Braimoh, Paul L. G. Vlek · Earth Interactions · Ghana

This study quantified land-cover changes in a 2400-ha area of northern Ghana using Landsat images from 1984, 1992, and 1999, and projected future distribution. Remote sensing showed built-up area expansion at 26 ha/year (1984-92) and 35 ha/year (1992-99), alongside peri-urban agriculture development at 24 ha/year (1992-99). Projections indicated built-up areas would cover 39% of the landscape by 2006, at the expense of cropland and natural vegetation.

Daniela Adil Oliveira de Almeida · Organic Eprints (International Centre for Research in Organic Food Systems, and Research Institute of Organic Agriculture) · Brazil (Belo Horizonte)

This article focuses on the "Project for Training Local Development Agents in Food and Nutritional Security and Urban Agriculture," which began in 2003 in Belo Horizonte, Brazil.

Marian Goslinga · Cuban studies · Cuba

This entry from "Recent Work in Cuban Studies 2003" lists several publications related to Cuban agriculture and urban agriculture from 2003. It includes books such as "Agriculture in the City: A Key to Sustainability in Havana, Cuba" and master's theses on user benefits of urban agriculture in Havana and sustainable livelihoods in Cienfuegos. The entry also references articles discussing land-use planning, economic reform, and agricultural policy in Cuba.

Eugênio Ávila Pedrozo, Tânia Nunes da Silva, Izabel Cristina Takitane · Americanae (AECID Library) · Japan

This exploratory study examines the Seikatsu Club's experience in Japan, which operates based on Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) and Sanchoku systems. These movements foster direct relationships between organic consumers and Japanese organic rural producers, who are part of social networks and aligned with sustainability principles. This approach contributes to more sustainable solutions for society by emphasizing new food consumption patterns and valuing consumer cooperatives.