Research & reports

Christy Gene Somsen · Digital Commons - USU (Utah State University) · United States (Utah)

Farmers’ markets, Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) programs, and community gardens, while aiming to help low-income families access fresh produce, often assist more middle-class families. In Utah, these programs could be improved, as the state does not utilize the WIC Farmers’ Market Nutrition Program or accept WIC Cash Value Vouchers, and has few Farm to School Programs.

Rebecca Amato · Amsterdam University Press eBooks · United States (New York City)

This chapter discusses the historical production and perception of "empty space" in New York City, from settler colonialism to gentrification, driven by techniques like filtering and declaring vacancy. It highlights how the acceleration of development to maintain world city status threatens alternative visions like cooperative centers and community gardens. These alternative uses are presented as models for inclusive cities, despite being under threat.

Brian Bartell · Rethinking Marxism · United States

This essay in Rethinking Marxism revisits the writings and Detroit urban agriculture activism of James and Grace Lee Boggs, arguing that their 1960s theorization linked automation, land and racialized dispossession under racial capitalism, and that they called for postgrowth, postscarcity economies built on urban land marked by Fordist-era waste and toxicity.

Athayde Leite de Sá Filho, Mariana Gomes Kottas, José Edilson dos Santos Júnior, Vivianni Marques Leite dos Santos · Journal on Innovation and Sustainability RISUS · Brazil

This literature-based review of urban gardens (hortas urbanas) in Brazil describes the sector's evolution, challenges and outlook, arguing that Brazil has favorable natural conditions and that urban gardens are among the fastest-growing components of the country's agroecological sector, while identifying the need for incentive policies, public awareness, farming-space planning and greater research investment as conditions for further consolidation.

André Ruoppolo Biazoti, Angélica Campos Nakamura, Gustavo Nagib, Vitória Oliveira Pereira de Souza Leão, Giulia Giacchè, Thaís Mauad · Sustainability · Brazil (São Paulo)

Amid a COVID-19 outbreak that caused 15,587 deaths in São Paulo city through December 2020, this study examined effects on urban agriculture from April to August 2020, drawing on two government surveys (2,100 farmers in São Paulo state, 148 in São Paulo city) and two qualitative surveys of volunteers from ten community gardens and seven urban farmers. Fifty percent of farmers reported being affected by the pandemic through drops in sales, particularly those who depended on intermediaries, and 22% said obtaining inputs had become difficult. No municipal support was provided to urban agriculture in São Paulo, and pre-existing problems worsened; activity in community gardens declined, though none closed permanently.

Luciana Francisco de Abreu Ronconi, Bernadete de Lourdes Bittencourt, Gabriel Bertimes Di Bernardi Lopes · Revista Ibero-Americana de Ciências Ambientais · Brazil

This qualitative study analyses social innovation in urban agriculture in Florianópolis, Brazil, using the Centro de Estudos e Promoção da Agricultura de Grupo (Cepagro) as its case. It finds that Cepagro, through networks of diverse actors, has placed urban agriculture on the public agenda and produced significant social innovations linking urban agriculture, food security and community development, contributing to the drafting and implementation of public policy and participating in the city's public policy councils.

Paulo Eduardo Moruzzi Marques, Pierre‐Mathieu Le Bel, Vitória Oliveira Pereira de Souza Leão, Roberta Moraes Curan · Revista de Economia e Sociologia Rural · Brazil

This article analyzes the motivations and strategies of actors in urban and peri-urban agriculture (AUP) in the state of São Paulo, Brazil, using justification theory across a sociology-and-geography lens. Drawing on semi-structured interviews, field observations, and document analysis, it examines two cases: the Milton Santos settlement spanning Americana and Cosmópolis, and the Farmers' Association of the Eastern Zone of the São Paulo capital. The right of access to land was found to be absolutely central to AUP; claims to this right, together with conceptions of AUP's roles, mobilize references to justice with ecological contours, which lends growing legitimacy to the cause and generates various kinds of support. However, evidence from the cases studied indicates that AUP is far from having its permanence and growth assured.

Tatiana Cotta Gonçalves Pereira · Revista Rural & Urbano · Brazil

Drawing on two concrete cases handled by NAJUP Marli Coragem, a legal aid clinic linked to the law program at the Federal Rural University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRRJ), this action-research article examines urban planning issues in the municipalities of Nova Iguacu and Japeri in the Baixada Fluminense region of Brazil, seeking to understand the legal problems facing two farming communities the clinic assisted. It reviews how specialized literature defines rural and urban, the legislation relevant to farmers and their spaces, and how Brazil's statistics agency IBGE has treated the issue. The city of Rio de Janeiro and its Master Plan were added to the analysis through graduate research on urban agriculture, giving three quite different municipalities with similar consequences: family farmers' ability to exercise their rights when municipal zoning makes no provision for a rural area. The article concludes that while the specialized literature has moved past the rural-urban dichotomy, institutions have not kept pace, and this non-institutionalized reality generates numerous debates and concrete legal problems.

Ana Maria Girotti Sperandio, Ângela Alessandra Torezan Silingardi, Giovanna Gastaldo Cifoni, Rafael de Souza Salomão · ˜The œurban book series · Brazil

This chapter reviews Brazilian urban planning responses to COVID-19, connecting concepts of healthy cities, reviews of Brazilian legal frameworks, international documents, and case records to argue that articulation and cooperation among cities were essential to minimizing pandemic impacts. It presents active mobility initiatives, reframed public space use, and the implementation of urban community gardens as practical examples with immediate results during the pandemic, without reporting original quantitative data.

Tatiana de Oliveira Sousa, João Aparecido Bazzoli, Cecília Delgado · Estudos Geográficos Revista Eletrônica de Geografia · Brazil

An exploratory study examined an urban gardening project run by the municipal government of Palmas, capital of Tocantins state, Brazil, analyzing challenges in setup and maintenance, administrative difficulties in production and distribution, and the socioeconomic profile of participating families. Surveying the gardeners' profiles and practices, the study found that the urban gardens promoted social inclusion of participating families, particularly low-income, unemployed, elderly, and women gardeners.

Michelle Cristine Medeiros Jacob, Cecília Rocha · Local Environment · Canada

This study of community gardens in Toronto, Canada, examines a governance model in which community members plan, implement, and manage a garden with political and/or administrative support from government or non-governmental organizations, using participatory observation and interviews with gardeners, garden coordinators, NGO representatives, and government members across neighborhoods with diverse economic, social, and cultural characteristics. From the participants' own perspective, governance structures with administrative support appeared to benefit the longevity of community gardens, particularly in low-income areas, and land access, funding, human resource support, and educational opportunities were identified as typical needs across the projects studied. The authors note that tradeoffs between bottom-up and top-down governance models remain to be examined in future research.

Alessandra Polastrini, Cláudia Regina de Sousa e Silva, João Aparecido Bazzoli · Informe GEPEC · Brazil

This study examined whether urban community gardens in the central region of Palmas, Tocantins, Brazil, fit a conventional or agroecological production model, surveying four gardens (in blocks 1006, 1106, 1206 and 1306 Sul) through questionnaires with 42 gardeners and interviews with two staff from the Urban Gardens program. Findings showed a mismatch between the number of registered gardeners and those actually working the plots; gardeners were mostly low-income, low-education women; use of products incompatible with agroecological production was documented, though a transition process was underway with gardeners adopting agroecology-based management techniques; and oversight and technical assistance existed but at levels insufficient to ensure adequate guidance for gardeners and product quality for consumers.

Doralice Sátyro Maia, Miriam Hermi Zaar · · Brazil

Drawing on field observation, photographic records, questionnaires and informal conversations, alongside prior research and government data, this study analyzes the persistence of rural practices — small-scale cattle dairying (vacarias) in João Pessoa and agricultural practices in Natal, both coastal cities in Brazil's Northeast — within areas classified as urban, describing these as "islands of rurality" that resist real-estate speculation and urbanization pressures, and calling for methodologies better able to distinguish urban from rural attributes in such hybrid spaces.

Valéria Borges Yonegura, Henrique Manoel da Silva · Confins · Brazil

A study of the Tatuquara neighbourhood and surrounding areas of Curitiba, Brazil, combining bibliographic review, historical-geographic analysis, and interviews with community gardeners (horteiros) conducted over 2017-2018, found that urban gardens improved local life, landscape and community safety and fostered topophilia and place attachment. Despite being used in city marketing, the practice's continuity is threatened by the possible end of a partnership with the electric utility and by pressure from the real-estate market.

Yasmin Koop‐Monteiro · Canadian Journal of Criminology and Criminal Justice/La Revue canadienne de criminologie et de justice pénale · Canada

Using neighbourhood census data from 2005 to 2015 in Vancouver, Canada, multilevel modeling assessed the effects of new community gardens along with median income, population size, homeownership and ethnic diversity on property crime. Median income, population size and new community gardens each showed significant negative effects on crime, with the addition of one community garden reducing neighbourhood crime by approximately 49 counts, a 1,000-person increase in population reducing it by 48 counts, and a CAD$1,000 increase in median income reducing it by 34 counts.

Rafael Caetano de Lima e Silva, Ricardo Dagnino, Leonardo Nunes de Lima, Rejane Margarete Schaefer Kalsing · MoExP - Mostra de Ensino, Extensão e Pesquisa do Campus Osório · Brazil

A literature review examined the research methods used in urban and peri-urban agriculture scholarship held in the LUME digital repository of the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS), Brazil. From 14 selected documents (two journal articles, five master's dissertations, two doctoral theses, and five undergraduate capstone papers), the analysis applied the mixed-methods classification frameworks of Briceño-León and Creswell. Of the 14 documents, five used mixed methods, eight used qualitative methods alone, and one used quantitative methods alone, indicating that qualitative and mixed approaches predominate in urban and peri-urban agriculture research at this institution.

Kevin Bolduc · The Center for Effective Philanthropy (CEP) · United States

A blog post published on 10 November 2021 by the US grant-assessment body CEP. Grantees spend roughly 8 hours a year on reporting for a typical grant and often more than 30 hours across a grant's life, yet only about 60 per cent get to discuss the report they submitted with their funder. Around 70 per cent of nonprofits said funders relaxed or cancelled reporting requirements during COVID. The author argues that unless foundations genuinely engage with what is submitted and discuss it with grantees, reporting requirements should be eliminated or drastically reduced.

Beatriz Salazar · CEPES (Centro Peruano de Estudios Sociales) · Peru

A CEPES article describing biohuertos run by communal kitchens (ollas comunes) in metropolitan Lima, a practice underway for roughly a decade under the legal framework of Ordinance 1629 (enacted 2012). It cites implementation across 12 districts without giving specific garden or participant counts, and concludes that such urban agriculture initiatives should be incorporated into Local Climate Change Plans and funded under regulations for the country's food emergency law.

Eduardo Sá · Articulação Nacional de Agroecologia (ANA) · Brazil

An article tracing three decades of Belo Horizonte's urban agriculture and agroecology policy, from the 1993 founding of the municipal food and agriculture policy department (SMAB) through the 2004 creation of Amau and the 2018 launch of a participatory organic-certification system (SPG-RMBH). It reports that in 2019 the city's food bank handled 387,905 tons of food and school meal programs served 84.7 million meals.

Mupeta M., Kuntashula E., Kalinda T. · Asian Journal of Agriculture and Rural Development · Zambia (Kitwe, Lusaka)

Using propensity score matching on survey data from Kitwe and Lusaka, this study finds that urban agriculture participation increases household income by 13.7–19.1%, demonstrating a significant positive economic impact.

Charlotte Glennie · City & Community · United States (Seattle)

This study examines how culture shapes urban political and economic processes by analyzing documents and interviewing advocates of Seattle's P-Patch community garden program, which has secured near-permanence for its publicly owned sites. It finds that advocates leveraged cultural capital and Seattle's legal-policy infrastructure to institutionalize the gardens within urban planning, but notes that as amenities signaling sustainability the gardens also contribute to gentrification, so equity requires deliberate consideration.

Yuki Kato · City & Community · United States (New Orleans)

This study examines the development of the urban cultivation scene in New Orleans over the decade following Hurricane Katrina, focusing on entrepreneurial projects. Contextualizing in-depth interviews with growers, it finds that dominant motives shifted from social missions to economic interests as the city moved from recovery to redevelopment, and argues that the distinction between socially and economically motivated cultivation cannot be easily drawn.

Caitlin K. Kirby, Lissy Goralnik, Jennifer Hodbod, Zach Piso, Julie C. Libarkin · Urban Agriculture & Regional Food Systems · United States (Lansing)

A descriptive correlational survey (n=92) of the urban agriculture system in Lansing, Michigan, examining demographics, farm characteristics, motivations, barriers, and resilience indicators. Support actors (nonprofits, university extension, municipalities) were most strongly motivated by social and environmental justice, and motivations around community-building and justice correlated significantly with several resilience indicators.

Kate G. Burt, Kathleen Delgado · Electronic Green Journal · United States (New York)

This study developed and validated a survey measuring the social and dietary outcomes of community garden participation in relation to food-system equity, testing it with community gardeners in New York City (n=38). The resulting 25-item Just Community Gardening Survey showed high test-retest reliability and internal consistency and covers domains such as social cohesion, collective efficacy, dietary intake, and food access, incorporating food-justice aspects not assessed in prior research.

Mohammed Hussen Alemu, Carola Grebitus · PLOS ONE · United States

This study used choice experiments and latent class analysis in North America to quantitatively examine what drives consumer preferences for growing food in community gardens. It found that providing tools and guidance were the most important contextual factors for participation, that proponents were characterized by high subjective knowledge and perceived benefits, and that opponents had low knowledge. The authors suggest the findings can inform policies promoting sustainable urban food systems.