Research & reports

Edwin Joseph, Elizabeth O'Dea · Advances in environmental engineering and green technologies book series · United States (South Bend)

This chapter examines South Bend, Indiana, a city facing urban decay and food insecurity among its poor, similar to some developing countries. It reviews the city's history, economic strategies, and efforts by various organizations to alleviate poverty and hunger. The chapter advocates for integrating spatial technologies, such as GIS, to promote collaboration and sustainable urban agriculture among diverse stakeholders to address poverty and malnutrition.

Zachary Schrank, Katrina Running · Journal of Consumer Culture · United States

This study analyzed consumer motivations in Community-Supported Agriculture (CSA) programs using interview data from 58 members in a large southwestern US city. Researchers investigated whether members were primarily motivated by individual interests (e.g., nutritional benefits, taste) or collective concerns (e.g., environmental, economic). Findings indicated that CSA members pursued individualist and collectivist goals equally, emphasizing environmental issues and sustainability through local organic consumption as a pathway to individual health.

Michael Carolan · Rural Sociology · United States (Colorado)

Researchers in Colorado studied individuals participating in alternative food practices (CSA, farmers' markets, food cooperatives) and conventional eaters. Participants were surveyed and re-surveyed two years later, with 119 qualitative interviews conducted, and a phone survey of 106 conventional eaters. The study aimed to understand how alternative foodscape engagement compares to conventional eating, how responses change after exposure to alternative foodscapes, and why individuals might think and behave differently.

Heliene Macedo de Araújo, Thiago Rodrigo de Paula Assis, Ana Paula Borges Martins · Cadernos de Agroecologia · Brazil (Lavras)

This qualitative case study aimed to identify the potential of urban agriculture in promoting food and nutritional security (SAN) based on the experience of the COHAB community garden association in Lavras/MG, Brazil. Interviews were conducted with 13 (48%) of the 27 association members using semi-structured questionnaires. Findings revealed that all interviewees had ancestral ties to farming, and cultivation was learned and passed down through generations. Food access was consistently ensured for families and neighborhood residents through commercialization, self-consumption, and donation, with 11 members prioritizing self-consumption. The garden produced 58 diverse products, demonstrating urban agriculture's link to SAN promotion and improved family diets.

Araceli Calderón Cisneros · Dialnet (Universidad de la Rioja) · Mexico (Chiapas)

This qualitative study analyzed the role of family urban agriculture in urban sustainability in San Cristobal de Las Casas, Chiapas, Mexico, using open and structured interviews. The visited agricultural systems showed characteristics favoring resilience and sustainability, such as low use of external inputs and recycling of domestic waste. However, a limitation found was that the contribution of own production to family consumption is very low, despite existing food, environmental, and socio-cultural motivations for its continuity.

Starecheski, Amy · · United States (New York City)

This chapter examines the contested nature of value, urban citizenship, and property claims through the study of squatting, urban homesteading, and community garden activism in the South Bronx, New York City. It highlights how squatters' initiatives, while challenging neoliberal privatization, could also be coopted into a discourse of individual responsibility in a neoliberalizing city. The research explores how squatters claimed a right to the city based on their labor and citizenship, and used history and property rights to redefine their urban presence amidst renegotiated meanings of debt and homeownership.

N. Claire Napawan, Stacie A. Townsend · Landscape Research · United States (California)

This study investigated the landscape of urban agricultural practice in Sacramento, California, examining past and present urban agricultural projects, advocacy, and city and state policies. The research found that community interest in urban agriculture is outpacing local policies in Sacramento. The authors concluded that city-wide initiatives might improve efforts at increasing opportunities for new urban agriculture projects.

Ivana Cristina Lovo, Alain Santandreu, José Divino Lopes Filho · Raízes Revista de Ciências Sociais e Econômicas · Brazil (Belo Horizonte)

In Belo Horizonte, the "Productive Garden" project, launched in 2008, promoted urban agriculture and food security. From 2009 to 2011, it integrated into the "From Seed to Table" program, encouraging urban farmers to sell vegetables to the institutional school meal market. Based on action research, the project enhanced farmers' technical and organizational capacity, resulting in public schools procuring vegetables from "Productive Garden," an experience that remains active. This experience demonstrated that urban agriculture is economically viable and contributes to food security.

Joana Chan, Lisa Pennisi, Charles Francis · Journal of Ethnobiology · United States

This article explores the social-ecological functions of community gardening based on a case study conducted in Lincoln, Nebraska, USA. Through semi-structured interviews with 20 community garden participants and staff, it was found that community gardening provides opportunities for participants to foster resilience to personal, cultural, and economic challenges resulting from urban migration. Participants were able to develop a sense of belonging and connection with cultural identity, social community, and the local environment.

Sérgio Luiz de Oliveira Vilela, Maria Dione Carvalho de Moraes · Revista Econômica do Nordeste · Brazil (Teresina)

This article discusses the importance of Urban and Peri-urban Agriculture (UPA) and the challenges of its management, particularly the need to institutionalize a Localized Agri-Food System (SAL) in Teresina, Brazil. The concentration of 46 gardens, occupying almost 140 hectares within Teresina, meets the basic requirements for establishing a SAL. Based on bibliographic research and empirical knowledge, the study concluded that adopting a SAL is a fruitful measure for Teresina to address necessary transformations in UPA, making it a significant part of the municipal planning agenda.

Binod Khanal · Lincoln (University of Nebraska) · United States

A hedonic model was developed to estimate consumer valuations of attributes for 466 Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) farms across seven Midwestern US states: Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, and South Dakota. The most statistically valued CSA attributes were home delivery, commanding an approximately $18 premium, and belonging to the fifth quintile of CSA membership size ($15.00). Increased vegetable variety (between $0.80 and $1.20) and USDA organic certification (about $10) were also valued, but farming practices like integrated pest management and distance to the nearest metropolitan area were not statistically significant.

Diego Maia da [UNIFESP] Costa, Carla Cipolla · LA Referencia (Red Federada de Repositorios Institucionales de Publicaciones Científicas) · Brazil (Rio de Janeiro)

This article defines the specific characteristics of urban agriculture (UA) through a literature review and identifies key aspects for developing new products and services. It analyzes the activities of the Centro de Educação Multicultural (CEM), which practices urban agriculture in the Penha favela complex in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

Alyssa Fico, Douglas Sathler · Portuguese National Funding Agency for Science, Research and Technology (RCAAP Project by FCT) · United States (New York City)

Dr. Dickson D. Despommier, a Columbia University professor and urban agriculture expert, was interviewed by Revista Espinhaço in New York on November 19-20, 2015. The informal interview, conducted during the "Geography 2050" event, featured his reflections on the field of urban agriculture.

Natalie McGill · ˜The œNation's health · United States

In 2016, in DeKalb County, Illinois, United States, where some residents lived in areas with limited access to grocery stores offering fresh produce, staff at DeKalb County Community Gardens initiated an effort to bring food directly to the people. This initiative aimed to improve residents' health.

Lorelei L. Hanson, Deborah Schrader · Interdisciplinary Environmental Review · Canada (Edmonton)

This case study critically examined the development of a food and urban agriculture strategy in Edmonton, Canada, using survey data and semi-structured interviews with citizens and stakeholders. It explored the transformative potential of local urban food initiatives and identified hurdles in moving beyond maintaining the status quo. The study aimed to identify leverage points for long-term local food system transformation within conceptualizations of sustainability.

Matthew M. Mars · Journal of Agriculture Food Systems and Community Development · Canada (Vancouver)

Michael Ableman's book "Street Farm" tells the story of how an urban farm transformed vacant lots in Vancouver, Canada's Low Tracks neighborhood into sites for food production, partial community restoration, and nurturing the human spirit. The narrative reveals a tenuous balance between the promises of urban farming and the harsh realities of addiction, hunger, homelessness, and violence often characterizing inner-city conditions. Urban agriculture is presented as a means to sustainably produce food for a city while also feeding the souls of disenfranchised individuals and communities.

Catherine Wong, Kathryn Geoffrion Scannell · University of New Hampshire Scholars Repository (University of New Hampshire at Manchester) · United States

McQuade Library partnered with a Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) operation to become a distributor of local foods, providing fresh produce to Merrimack College and the surrounding community. The library collaborated with Farmer Dave’s CSA, recruiting over fifty members to facilitate weekly food drop-offs for twenty weeks. Unclaimed food shares were distributed to a nearby food pantry, senior center, and an emergency shelter, supporting sustainable agriculture and hunger relief efforts.

Patrizia Longo · Agriculture and Agricultural Science Procedia · United States (Lafayette, California)

This paper documents the history of Urban Farmers, a grassroots organization in Lafayette, California, that addresses poverty and sustainability through a community-development approach to food security. The organization's project focuses on localizing the food system and fostering community development.

Diana Mincytė, Karin Dobernig · Environment and Planning A Economy and Space · North America

This article examines manual work in urban farming within alternative food networks in the Northeastern United States, based on ethnographic fieldwork and 40 interviews. The analysis reveals that while manual work counters alienation, it also reproduces consumer society institutions and reinforces neoliberal values like productivity and self-improvement. Urban farms function as "experiential production" sites, where the farming experience is continuously commodified despite re-embedding in community and environment.

Thaís Cristina Schneider, Paulo André Niederle, Myrian Regina Del Vecchio-de Lima · Razón y Palabra · Brazil

This article analyzes urban agriculture from a communication perspective, focusing on how practitioners and non-practitioners understand its critical and alternative role regarding the modern food system. The study of Quinta da Videira in southern Brazil found that while urban agriculture is used to counter conventional food production and associated lifestyles, there are also resistances to integrating agricultural practices into the urban environment.

Ricardo Massulo Albertín, Daniel Augusto, Boaventura Almeida Mubai, Bruno Luiz Domingos De Angelis, Márcia da Silva, Frederico Fonseca da Silva, Fábio Angeoletto · Boletim de Geografia · Brazil (Maringá)

This study aimed to diagnose the socioeconomic aspects of vegetable producers and identify the perception of passersby around urban gardens (community gardens) in Maringá (PR), as a means to mitigate negative social impacts like food insecurity caused by urbanization. A case study was conducted in five community gardens in the northern zone of Maringá, Paraná State. Results showed that the activities within these gardens and public sector involvement characterized them as public policies for promoting quality of life, rather than mere government policies. Questionnaire responses from passersby evidenced that the public policy for creating and consolidating urban gardens in Maringá promoted quality of life. The community garden project was found to have significant socioeconomic, landscape, and sentimental value for both producers and passersby, with producers opting for diverse production, self-consumption, and vegetable sales.

Lal, Prita · Academic Commons (Stony Brook University) · United States (New York City)

This dissertation studies the relationship between community gardens and gentrification in New York City. It argues that low-income people's efforts in revitalizing their blighted neighborhoods by building community gardens in the 1970s and 1980s contributed to gentrification in the 1990s and beyond. The research points out that real estate developers preyed on people's efforts, and the people subsidized the city's revitalization. It concludes that while gardeners did not cause gentrification, their efforts played a significant role in the process, and stronger policy protections for gardens are needed as city policies permitted gentrification.

Ruth Cary · Reflections A Journal of Community-Engaged Writing and Rhetoric · United States (Chester)

The Food Justice Portrait Project at Widener University involves first-year writing students creating portraits of community leaders engaged in food access and urban farming in Chester, PA. This collaborative community writing project aims for reciprocity, archiving biographies and institutional histories, and challenging the charity model of addressing community needs by supporting community agency.

Alfred Wong, Alan Hallsworth · Kobra (Universitätsbibliothek Kassel) · Canada (Vancouver)

This paper examines urban/community gardening in Vancouver, Canada, from the perspective of basic farming realities such as growing season and land availability. It was found that securing low-cost land within dense urban limits, insufficient ambient temperature and water supply during the growing season, and contemporary societal structures pose significant obstacles to community gardening producing affordable food. Overcoming these fundamental hurdles carries significant negative environmental and economic consequences.

Stéphane Stéphane · · Canada

Stephane Groleau gave a talk on Urban Vegan Agriculture at the Montreal Vegan Festival on November 6, 2016. The event also featured an information booth on veganic agriculture. The talk highlighted that growing food in cities without animal exploitation is possible, despite urban agriculture often relying on such practices.