Research & reports

Oregon Department of Land Conservation and Development (DLCD) · State of Oregon, Department of Land Conservation and Development · United States

Oregon's state land-use agency page explaining the state's farmland protection framework. Statewide Planning Goal 3, established under Senate Bill 100, defines agricultural land based on soil capability, and all 36 counties apply Exclusive Farm Use (EFU) zoning, with minimum lot sizes typically 80 acres for cropland and 160 acres for rangeland. As of 2015, Oregon's farmland totaled 16.3 million acres (over 26% of the state), with the farm economy valued at $5.7 billion, about 11% of the state economy, supporting more than 326,000 jobs.

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) · U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) · United States

This EPA page explains that green roofs can lower surface temperatures by up to 56°F, nearby air temperatures by up to 20°F, and indoor air temperatures by 27°F compared to conventional roofs, while cutting cooling loads by up to 70% and reducing runoff by 60-100%. The industry grew 5-15% from 2013-2019, with 763 projects covering more than 3.1 million square feet installed in 2019.

· Wikipedia · United States

Brooklyn Grange operates 5.6 acres of organic vegetable and honey production across three rooftop farms in New York City, the largest rooftop farm operation in the city. Founded in 2010, it produces about 80,000 pounds of vegetables and roughly 1,500 pounds of honey annually. The founders launched the business with loans, personal savings, and investors, and the Brooklyn Navy Yard farm was partly funded by a $592,730 grant from the NYC DEP Green Infrastructure Grant Program.

· Wikipedia · Canada

Lufa Farms is an urban agriculture company founded in 2009 in Montreal, Canada, that operates commercial hydroponic greenhouses on building rooftops. It runs four rooftop greenhouses, employs about 200 people, and delivers roughly 20,000 baskets weekly to more than 500 pickup points across Quebec.

· Wikipedia · United States

Gotham Greens is a U.S. company founded in 2009 by Viraj Puri and Eric Haley that grows lettuce, herbs, and related products via hydroponics in rooftop greenhouses. Its first greenhouse (15,000 sq ft) opened in Brooklyn in May 2011, and as of 2026 it operates 13 facilities totaling over 1.8 million square feet across New York City, Chicago, and other states. The company claims up to 30 times the production efficiency per acre versus conventional field agriculture, up to 90% less water use, and 97% less land use, and raised $310 million in 2022 (cumulative funding of $440 million).

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) · U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) · United States

EPA's Brownfields and Land Revitalization program page describes grants and technical assistance for assessing, cleaning up, and reusing contaminated land. As of June 2026 it lists $270 million in brownfield grants and a $1.5 billion investment under the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act. The page does not directly discuss urban agriculture.

Sole Food Street Farms · Sole Food Street Farms · Canada

Founded in 2009, Sole Food Street Farms is a social enterprise that converts vacant lots into productive farmland around Vancouver's Downtown Eastside. It trains and employs residents facing complex barriers, selling and donating fresh produce.

Philadelphia Water Department · Philadelphia Water Department · United States

Philadelphia Water Department's 25-year plan (2011-2036) is required to reduce combined sewer overflow pollution by at least 85 percent. In its first decade the program installed more than 2,800 green tools across nearly 800 sites, keeping more than 2.7 billion gallons of polluted water out of waterways. The Schuylkill River alone is credited with $589.9 million in annual economic impact, 6,154 jobs, and $37.7 million in annual tax revenue.

Jeong D., Li L., Perez-Quesada G. · Choices Magazine (Agricultural & Applied Economics Association), 2nd Quarter 2026 · United States

An analysis of community garden siting through an environmental cost-benefit framework, organised around two direct costs (land and water) and two externalities (water pollution and gentrification). Cheap vacant parcels can carry remediation and infrastructure costs that exceed those of pricier development-ready sites over a garden's planning horizon, and in arid regions irrigation can be up to 34% of annual maintenance cost. On the externality side, weak nutrient management lets nitrogen and phosphorus accumulate and risk groundwater contamination, and community gardens can raise adjacent property values by 3–4% initially and around 7% within five years, potentially displacing the lower-income residents they are meant to serve. The authors note that the absence of a comprehensive geo-referenced inventory of community gardens — with establishment dates, tenure arrangements and management practices — constrains rigorous cost quantification and causal analysis.

MDRC · MDRC · United States

A project page for ABLE (Adolescent Behavioral Learning Experience) at New York City's Rikers Island, the first US social impact bond. Goldman Sachs invested $9.6 million over four years, backed by a $7.2 million guarantee from Bloomberg Philanthropies. The programme served 16- to 18-year-olds, a group with a recidivism rate near 50 per cent within a year and more than 200 additional days in jail over six years, against a New York City incarceration cost above $85,000 per person per year. Cognitive behavioural therapy was cited as capable of cutting recidivism by up to 25 per cent, and the payment threshold was set at a 10 per cent reduction; a pilot ran February–June 2012 and full implementation from September 2012 to August 2015, with Moral Reconation Therapy delivered by The Osborne Association and Friends of Island Academy.

Zhao H., Wardropper C.B., Cao H., Campbell C.G., Chang N.-B., Qiu J. · npj Urban Sustainability · United States (South Florida)

A University of Florida (UF/IFAS) study of where public support for urban agriculture actually comes from, combining a survey of 1,000 adults across Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach counties (in English and Spanish) with AI-assisted analysis of thousands of US news stories over the past decade. Support is not monolithic: different behaviours have different drivers. A sense of community connection predicts financial donations; hands-on gardening experience predicts volunteering; a sense of shared responsibility predicts buying local produce and backing policy. News interest has risen especially since COVID-19, and is strongest in Florida and West Coast states. The authors conclude that outreach tailored to the specific behaviour being sought works better than one uniform message.

Kristida 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.

Leigh Whittinghill, Megan Goins, Shawn Lucas · HortScience · United States

This study examined how two urban agriculture production systems (raised beds and container plots) and four nutrient-management treatments (conventional fertilizer, organic fertilizer, peat-and-compost plus organic fertilizer, and peat-and-compost only) affected yields of relay-cropped leafy greens across the 2018–2019 seasons. Significant differences between systems and treatments were few and inconsistent, but results suggest small plastic-pool containers are suitable for urban greens production and tentatively support organic fertilizers and compost as a nutrient source.

Kaitlyn M. Fruin, Elizabeth L. Tung, Jean M. Franczyk, Ketaurah James, Andrew J. Koetz, Angela K. Mason, Wayne M. Detmer · Health Affairs · United States (Chicago)

An evaluation of VeggieRx, a produce prescription programme anchored to the Farm on Ogden — a 20,000-square-foot urban agriculture facility opened in 2016 in a historically disinvested food desert in Chicago, Illinois, by the Chicago Botanic Garden together with Lawndale Christian Health Center. Clinicians refer patients to the farm for free produce boxes, nutrition counselling and cooking classes. Using a retrospective, propensity-score-weighted cohort design covering January 2016 to December 2021, the study compared 680 VeggieRx participants with 978 weighted controls and found a mean body weight difference of −6.71 pounds (−4.7% of body weight) at eighteen months. Because the design is observational rather than randomised, residual confounding such as selection by motivation cannot be excluded.

Christina Frendo · Urban Geography · Canada (Montréal)

This study analyzed how urban agriculture contributes to green gentrification in Montréal. Based on interviews with planners, developers, and community actors, and discourse analysis of municipal policy documents, it showed that ecological initiatives are prioritized over housing, and sustainability fixes reconcile progressive rhetoric with growth imperatives, leading to policy trade-offs that undermine housing affordability. These findings reveal how progressive governments reproduce structural injustices through their ecological transition agendas within the context of a housing crisis.

Rita de Cássia Lisboa Ribeiro, Cecília Rocha, Andhressa Araújo Fagundes · Urban Planning · Brazil

An integrative literature review investigated the potential of Community-Supported Agriculture (CSA) to promote food security in Brazil. CSA can ensure a decent income for family farmers, reducing social vulnerability, and shows significant potential for promoting food sustainability due to its strong influence from agroecology. However, CSA faces a significant limitation in the elitization of this movement, reflecting historical social inequalities where only a relatively small portion of the population can afford healthier food.

Ayari G. Pasquier Merino, Simone Buratti · · Mexico (Mexico City)

This study analyzed the conditions and challenges in the logistics of transporting merchandise from production areas to commercialization spaces, using a case study of Mexico City’s peri-urban agricultural producers. Qualitative research, conducted from 2019 to 2022, involved 60 interviews with production and distribution project managers, a discussion workshop on transportation issues, and visits to production and distribution spaces. Results indicate that infrastructure and logistics for goods transportation are a key issue for the successful integration of small, peri-urban producers into urban markets. It was suggested that transport and logistics must be addressed for these producers to become viable economic actors.

Gonzalo Lizarralde, Sara Latorre, Neidy Clavijo, Benjamín Herazo, Manuel Pérez, Kevin Gould, Myriam Paredes, Elsa Monsalve, Nicolás Ordoñez, Roberto Burdiles, Claudio Araneda, Lisa Bornstein, Ricardo Dueñez, Adriana Patricia López Valencia, Oswaldo López, Andrés Olivera, Pedro Tex Martinez, Gloria Artze · Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems · Latin America and the Caribbean

This study investigated the emergence, legitimization, and survival of alternative food systems in low-income settlements across Latin America and the Caribbean. Researchers conducted 340 interviews and 312 questionnaires, following 18 bottom-up initiatives related to food production, distribution, transformation, and consumption in urban and peri-urban areas of Colombia, Cuba, Ecuador, and Chile. Empirical results demonstrated the inadequacy of existing regulations and policies to comprehend the dynamic resistance occurring in the "in between" spaces of both identities and urban structure.

Caitlin Morgan · Gastronomica The Journal of Food and Culture · United States (upstate New York)

This study is a case study of Essex Farm, a full-diet Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) operation in upstate New York. The farm struggled to balance its ecological and social values with the economic imperatives and pressures of surviving in a competitive, capitalist market. Consequently, the farm's social fabric, critical to its initial success, began to fray over time.

Celso Donizete Locatel, R.F. da Silva, Roberto Marinho Alves da Silva · · Brazil

This paper presents the definition and evolution of urban and peri-urban agriculture (AUP) in Brazil, highlighting advances in public policies. It also discusses the National Project of Urban and Peri-urban Agriculture Supported by Agroecology and Solidarity Economy (Projeto AUP), which aims to expand and consolidate this practice in Brazil.

R. Salazar, Abraham Rojano Aguilar, Jorge Flores Velázquez · Regiones y Desarrollo Sustentable · Mexico (Mexico City)

This study aimed to estimate the volume of rainwater that can be stored in 13 urban gardens in Mexico City over one year to supplement irrigation water requirements. Using precipitation data from 2007-2018 from 12 meteorological stations, the study calculated the 80% exceedance probability for rainwater capture. The 13 gardens were categorized into three climate-based groups to assess their potential for rainwater harvesting, addressing water shortages in the metropolitan area.

Lúcio Lorandi de Toledo, Renata Ferraz de Toledo · Periódico Técnico e Científico Cidades Verdes · Brazil (São Paulo)

A case study in São Paulo, Brazil, mapped 152 urban gardens in public spaces, identifying 114 as community gardens. These gardens are predominantly distributed in peripheral regions, coinciding with areas of high socio-environmental vulnerability and food insecurity. The analysis concluded that despite their good geographic distribution, the productive volume of these gardens is assumed to be insufficient to significantly impact access to fresh food in these communities.

Emanoel de Jesus Aquino Moreira, Amanda Beatriz de Souza Lopes, Edna Antônia da Silva Brito · Caderno Pedagógico · Brazil (Moju)

In Moju, Brazil, a study conducted from August to November 2024 investigated the importance of urban productive backyards by collecting qualitative and quantitative data from a representative group of residents practicing them. Questionnaires gathered information on food production, consumption frequency, food expenses, sustainable practices, and knowledge of food security. The findings indicate that urban productive backyards in Moju can significantly contribute to improving local food security by providing direct access to fresh, healthy, and low-cost food.

Ramírez Pérez, Norma Verónica, Padilla Medina, José Alfredo, Cárdenas Manríquez, Marcela, Araujo Rodríguez, Jessica Alejandra, Barranco Gutiérrez, Alejandro Israel, Prado Olivarez, Juan · Dialnet (Universidad de la Rioja) · Mexico

This article analyzes the technical feasibility, energy efficiency, political, and economic viability of urban agriculture (UA) in Mexico, considering its advantages, disadvantages, and conditions favoring soilless cultivation. The study, based on a systematic review and meta-analysis using the PRISMA protocol, aims to provide scientific evidence on UA's technical, economic, and energy feasibility. It highlights that UA faces technical, political, and economic challenges that limit its development and expansion.

Jairus Rossi, Tamora Pierce, Shuoli Zhao, Timothy Woods · Journal of Agriculture Food Systems and Community Development · United States (Kentucky)

A survey was conducted among 172 shareholders and non-shareholders of an employer-sponsored CSA voucher program at the University of Kentucky to understand consumer values influencing their decision to join a CSA. Best-worst scaling analysis showed that subscribers were primarily interested in product quality and local economic impacts, while those who declined a CSA focused on perceived food affordability.