Research & reports
Peer-reviewed research and reports on community urban agriculture, food education, composting, welfare and more.
Theme
Critical findings
5821 results(14 / 233)
Urban Agriculture Interventions in Refugee and Immigrant Communities: A Scoping Review
2025Langerman S., Juarez N., Magan I. M. · Journal of Urban Health 102:857-871 · Global
Scoping review of 42 studies (1990-2024) on urban agriculture interventions for refugees and immigrants, identifying five domains (well-being, physical health, ecological, economic, sociological), with social outcomes most common.
WelfareCommunityHealth都市と地域をつなぐ「BRANZ オーナーズファーム」開始
2025東急不動産株式会社, 株式会社マイファーム · 東急不動産 プレスリリース資料 · Japan
Tokyu Fudosan launches an agriculture experience project for Branz owners in Higashimatsuyama using solar-sharing farmland, an official developer-led rental-garden initiative linking resident food education, exchange, and regional revitalization.
CommunityEconomicsHealth市民農園って楽しい！
2025名古屋市 東部・緑農政課 · 名古屋市 市民農園調査・広報資料 · Japan
Nagoya outreach and survey material cataloguing municipal allotment types — Nogomi, community, partitioned and Minori farms — with plot sizes, fees and recruitment timing, showing the reality of publicly operated rental gardens.
CommunityFood educationEconomics令和7年度版さいたま市の農業
2025さいたま市 · さいたま市 農業統計・振興報告書 · Japan
Saitama's annual agricultural report summarising publicly supported urban agriculture including the urban agriculture council, land-coordinator programme and 79 public/private citizen farms with supply statistics.
PolicyCommunityFood educationEconomics市民農園開設状況調査の結果について（令和7年3月末時点）
2025農林水産省 · 農林水産省 統計調査 · Japan
MAFF nationwide survey of citizen farm counts, plots, area and operator-type trends, providing baseline statistics on publicly and institutionally supported urban gardening across Japan as of March 2025.
PolicyEconomicsCommunityDistinct Socio-Ecological Drivers Shape the Diversity of Plants, Birds, and Lepidopterans in Chicago Community Gardens
2025Domanus A., Smith A., Roberts M., Schnorenberg R., Doane M., Minor E. · Cities and the Environment (CATE), 17(2):9 · United States (Chicago)
A study of 24 community gardens in Chicago measuring not only cultivated crops but also spontaneous (wild/native) plants, birds, butterflies and bees. Gardens supported many spontaneous plant species (mean 8.4 per garden) alongside crops, which underpinned diverse fauna (18 bird species, 13 bee genera, 10 lepidopteran species). Socio-ecological drivers such as management type (allotment vs. communal) significantly shaped cultivated richness, the volume of spontaneous vegetation, and tree/shrub density — showing that how gardens are managed governs urban biodiversity.
BiodiversityPollinatorsCommunityGlobal Health as Vector for Agroecology in Collective Gardens in Toulouse Region (France)
2025Wilkens J., Mombo S., Dumat C. · Urban Science · France (Toulouse)
Examines 11 years of collective urban gardens in the Toulouse region through the lens of global health—encompassing human well-being, soil health, and interspecies interactions—as a driver of agroecological transitions among gardeners.
CommunityHealthBiodiversityOrganic cycleFrom social innovation to institutional governance: Unveiling urban rooftop farming in Dhaka city using YouTube video analysis
2025Ashikuzzaman M., Swapan M.S.H., Zaman A.U., Song Y. · Landscape and Urban Planning · Bangladesh (Dhaka)
Analysis of 187 YouTube videos reveals urban rooftop farming in Dhaka is a growing grassroots movement with fragmented institutional oversight; farmers in mixed land-use neighborhoods show the strongest motivation and seek government policy guidelines.
PolicyCommunityUrban Agriculture for Post-Disaster Food Security: Quantifying the Contributions of Community Gardens
2025Liu Y., Chanse V., Chicca F. · Urban Science (MDPI), Vol. 9, No. 8, Article 305 · New Zealand (Wellington)
This study quantifies Wellington, New Zealand's community gardens' capacity to meet post-disaster vegetable demand in terms of weight and nutrient content, finding current gardens insufficient alone but identifying substantial potential through expanded urban agriculture land use.
CommunityFood educationHealthPolicyVertical gardening undergirds household food security: evidence from Nairobi's Kibera informal settlements
2025Otieno J.A., Omia D.O., Amwata D.A. · Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems · East Africa (Kenya)
Evidence-based study demonstrating how vertical gardening (particularly sack farming) in Kibera's informal settlements underpins household food security. Shows how stacking soil-filled sacks vertically enables vegetable production in space-constrained environments, serving as a solution to chronic hunger.
CommunityFood educationFood lossOrganic cycleCrop-specialized pollinator drives bee and floral community response to urbanization on small squash farms
2025Roedel J., Szendrei Z. · Urban Ecosystems · North America (urban-suburban gradient)
2025 research showing that squash bees are most abundant on suburban and urban farms compared to rural farms. Demonstrates that small-scale urban farms benefit from urban environment advantages (lower pesticide use, diverse floral resources, landscape heterogeneity), enabling bee and floral community responses to urbanization.
PollinatorsBiodiversityCommunityUrban food resilience: a bibliometric and systematic literature review of evolution, dimensions, and planning integration
2025Global research network · Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems · Australia, Canada, China
Bibliometric analysis of 710+ articles on urban food resilience, documenting evolution of connections between urban-planning-environment clusters and food-agriculture systems globally.
CommunityPolicyDoes urban agriculture contribute to food security, and how might this be achieved?
2025(Open Research Community) · ResearchGate, Discover Sustainability (Springer Nature) · Global
2025 review article examining urban agriculture's contribution to food security and mechanisms of achievement. Analyzes through empirical evidence the benefits and challenges, income generation effects, and improvements in fresh food access for low-income households.
EconomicsCommunityPolicyHousehold food waste behaviors of participants in a municipal community compost program
2025Campbell C., Gusto C., Kelsey K.D., Haase H., Cohen N., Robertson K., Kiker G., Boz Z. · Journal of Agriculture, Food Systems, and Community Development, 14(2):9-26 · United States
A study in which 107 participants in a municipal community compost program in Gainesville, Florida, used a citizen-science approach to measure and record their household food waste for two weeks. Participants generated more than double the EPA's estimate (about 14 lb/week), yet 85.8% reported increased food-waste awareness and 71.5% reported reducing their waste, showing that community composting can nudge household food-loss reduction.
Food lossCompostCommunityFood educationSustainable transitions in food systems: a case study of an urban agriculture farming training program in Washington, United States
2025Soumya Keefe, Jean Lee · Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems · United States (Washington)
Using an urban agriculture farmer-training program in Washington, United States, this case study examines how such programs support sustainability transitions in the food system, applying the multi-level perspective and social practice theory. It finds the program creates a space for social learning and shifts graduates' collective practices and narratives, but their capacity to change the broader food regime is curtailed without intentional state and local policy support.
Food educationCommunityPolicyA drop in the bucket: examining practice and policy for water resilient urban agriculture and urban food system resilience
2025Kristida Chhour, Maya Carrasquillo · Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems · United States (San Francisco East Bay)
This mixed-methods case study of the water-scarce San Francisco East Bay maps 91 urban agriculture sites, interviews 34 stakeholders, and analyzes regional plans to examine water management and urban agriculture's resilience potential. It finds growers were the main water managers while municipalities and utilities were minimally involved, that land access shaped water access, and that institutional support to stabilize long-term land and water access is needed for greater water and food-system resilience.
PolicyCommunityEconomicsMeasuring community power: A scale to measure collective self-determination, Embodied Earth Care, and Ubuntu among urban farmers and gardeners
2025Ashley Gripper, Tori Cowger · Journal of Agriculture, Food Systems, and Community Development · United States
Using exploratory factor analysis on 363 respondents recruited from U.S.-based agricultural networks, this study developed a survey-based scale to capture what Black- and Brown-led food justice organizations value most about community farming and gardening. The analysis supported a five-factor structure—termed "Agricultural Community Power" (AgCPS), covering collective self-determination, community care, land-based spiritual wellbeing, embodied Earth care, and Ubuntu/interdependence—with adequate reliability (Cronbach's alpha = 0.93).
CommunityHealthPolicyStraw cover increases garden soil microbial biodiversity
2025Emory Walker, Mara Welty, Emma Creviston, Jacob J. Adler · Urban Agriculture & Regional Food Systems · United States (Lafayette)
This project examined how straw cover affects the soil microbiome of a community garden, using EcoPlate carbon-source utilization analysis and 16S rRNA sequencing on samples from the Erie Street GrowLocal community garden in Lafayette, Indiana. Straw cover increased soil moisture content and significantly increased bacterial alpha diversity, with a shift toward carbohydrate preference, though beta diversity showed no difference between conditions. The authors conclude that straw coverage can improve soil microbial biodiversity and moisture, potentially benefiting yields and food quality for communities.
BiodiversityOrganic cycleCommunityGarden as society: exploring the values embedded in community garden aesthetics
2025Azucena Lucatero, Madeleine Fairbairn · Agriculture and Human Values · United States (California)
Using a photovoice project and semi-structured interviews with community gardeners on California's central coast, this study investigates the values that drive community garden aesthetics. It finds that "tidiness" remains the hegemonic aesthetic, upheld by formal and informal governance and personal taste, while an alternative aesthetic the authors term "wildness" offers an ecologically valuable counterpoint—though tidiness and a sustainability orientation are not necessarily mutually exclusive.
CommunityBiodiversityCan Reuse of Stormwater Detention Pond Water Meet Community Urban Agriculture Needs?
2025Estenia Ortiz, Adriana Mayr Mejia, Emma Borely, Liam Schauer, Lena Young Green, Maya Trotz · Sustainability · United States (Tampa)
Motivated by a community's desire to co-locate community gardens with stormwater pond spaces, this study monitored water quality of a 23.4-hectare stormwater detention pond in East Tampa, Florida over one year and compared it to US EPA reuse recommendations and water quality criteria. pH and conductivity were acceptable for irrigating crops and heavy metals were below maximum reuse levels, but E. coli concentrations exceeded irrigation requirements and synthetic organic compounds exceeded human health criteria.
CommunityOrganic cycleHealthA culturally tailored community gardening approach to improving physical activity, fruit and vegetable consumption, and psychological health among African American women: A pre-post feasibility study
2025Imani Canton, Vanesu Jakachira, Dawn Blackman, Heather Rose, Susan Aguiñaga · Health Promotion Perspectives · United States (Champaign, Illinois)
This 8-week pre-post feasibility study tested a culturally tailored community gardening intervention—embedding Black History Knowledge—among 11 middle-aged African American women in Champaign, Illinois, in summer 2023. Participants significantly increased device-measured daily step count (median +880 steps/day) and fruit and vegetable consumption (median +82 units), with smaller effects on physical activity and perceived stress. The authors conclude the intervention may be a feasible way to improve physical activity, produce intake, and psychological health, though larger, adequately powered studies are needed.
CommunityHealthUnraveling the Interaction and Synergies between Urban Agriculture and Urban–Rural Integration in China: A Case Study of Xi'an
2025· Journal of Urban Planning and Development · China (Xi'an)
Analyzes the interactions and synergies between urban agriculture and urban–rural integration through a case study of Xi'an, China.
PolicyCommunityExploring the Value of Urban Agriculture in China: Based on Three Urban Agriculture Case Studies
2025· Sustainability · China
A study exploring the multifaceted value of urban agriculture in China based on three urban agriculture case studies.
CommunityEconomicsLicensed Commoning and the Authoritarian Commons: Governing Participation in China's Community Gardens
2025· Environmental Policy and Governance · China
Analyzes how citizen participation in China's community gardens is governed within state-licensed frameworks, conceptualized as an 'authoritarian commons.' Examines the relationship between participatory greening and governance.
PolicyCommunity'Quiet' green community innovations at the interface of public and private ownership in an old neighbourhood in Zhengzhou, China
2025· Geo: Geography and Environment · China (Zhengzhou)
Analyzes 'quiet' green community innovations—resident greening and gardening at the interface of public and private ownership—in an old neighbourhood of Zhengzhou, China.
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