Research & reports

Nicholaus Mwageni, Gabriel Kassenga · Journal of Sustainable Development · Tanzania (Dar es Salaam City)

This study in Dar es Salaam City, Tanzania, assessed the costs and benefits associated with green space investment in residential plots. It employed in-depth interviews using structured questionnaires and document review. Results indicated that households incurred an average cost of TZS 136,579 (USD 59) for establishing home greenery. The total net monetary benefit per household was TZS 3,148,827 (USD 1,369) annually. Based on a cost-benefit analysis, the benefit was found to be 2.6 times the investment cost, suggesting that maintaining home greeneries is a cost-effective investment.

Héritier Mesa · Cahiers d études africaines · Congo (Kinshasa)

This article explores social trajectories and inequality dynamics among informal workers in Kinshasa, focusing on labor relations within the informal economy. Drawing from ethnographic data on street bread, second-hand clothing, and urban agriculture, the study finds that limited access to capital constrains many workers to sell their labor power with weakened bargaining power, revealing unequal social positionalities.

Maurice Kesonga Nsele, Jules Nkulu Mwine Fyama, Kevin Maréchal, Thomas Dogot · Agriculture · Democratic Republic of Congo (Lubumbashi)

In urban agriculture in Lubumbashi, Democratic Republic of Congo, an innovative technology package was disseminated, but ten years later, farmers' daily income was less than USD 1.25, and critical exceedances of heavy metal content standards in crops were recorded. Survey data from 202 farmers and a Logit model identified factors influencing the sustained adoption of two innovations: motor pumps and integrated soil fertility management. Socio-demographic factors were not significant for motor pump adoption, and only mutual aid moderately influenced integrated soil fertility management. Economic factors like land tenure and income diversification were significant for motor pump adoption, but no economic factors were significant for integrated soil fertility management. Institutional factors such as access to credit and association membership were significant for the sustained adoption of both innovations.

Demoundou Namodji, Ndoutorlengar Medard · International Journal of Humanities Social Sciences and Education · Chad

This article notes that while urban agriculture is protected and encouraged by governments in developed countries like Japan, in Africa, urban farmers often face repressive measures from urban administrators or planners. Despite its role as a safety valve for low-income households, urban agriculture in Africa is subject to these restrictive governmental actions.

Geir Wæhler Gustavsen, Helge Berglann, Elisabeth Jenssen, Signe Kårstad, Divina Gracia P. Rodriguez · International journal on food system dynamics · Norway (Oslo)

This study conducted a contingent valuation survey in Oslo, Norway, to assess citizens' attitudes and willingness to pay for non-commercial (community gardens, educational gardens) and commercial (aquaponics, vertical farming) urban agriculture. The results indicate that Oslo citizens are willing to increase their tax payments to support the further development of urban farming in the city.

Ibrahima Thiaw, Cheikh Faye, Honoré Dacosta, Diène Dione · International Journal of Environment Agriculture and Biotechnology · Senegal (Dakar)

A study involving 120 market gardening actors in four market gardening production areas of the Dakar region (Ouakam, Parcelles Assainies, Grand-Yoff, and Hann-Bel-Air) revealed that market gardening, mainly carried out by women, is a commercial activity whose monetary income significantly exceeds the minimum wage in Senegal. While this activity helps women cover urban living expenses, market gardeners face problems such as COVID-19, lack of water, land pressure, pest proliferation, and lack of training on cultivation techniques.

Ee-Wei Then, Meenchee Hong · Journal of Regional and City Planning · Malaysia (Penang Island)

This study investigated the likelihood of rooftop farming and its determinants among residents on Penang Island, Malaysia. Data collected from 323 Penangites living in high-rise residential buildings revealed that 65% of respondents were likely to participate in rooftop farming. The ordered Probit model estimated that awareness of rooftop farming's potential benefits, environmental knowledge and awareness, and environmental consciousness and perception are important factors determining participation likelihood.

Ananere da Silva Crüz, Márcia Maria Rodrigues Sá, Tarcísio Dorn de Oliveira, Daniel Knebel Baggio, Nelson José Thesing, Sandra Beatriz Vicenci Fernandes · Revista GESTO Revista de Gestão Estratégica de Organizações · Global

This literature review highlights the importance of urban and peri-urban agriculture (AUPs) for food security, household economy, and biodiversity. It concludes that AUPs contribute to job creation, alternative income, supplying small markets, valuing local cultures, community empowerment, and expanding gender participation opportunities. AUPs also improve climate and biodiversity, enhance urban productivity, foster cooperation among residents, reduce temperatures, improve air quality, preserve natural resources, and mitigate food scarcity.

Theodore Ngoufo Sogang, Youssouf Monkouop · Journal of Agricultural Chemistry and Environment · Cameroon

This article proposes a framework for understanding the past, present, and future of urban agriculture in Cameroon, focusing on the period from 1993 to 2017. It examines the subject through five fundamental notions: International Relations and Geopolitical Agriculture, Urban Economic Agriculture, Environmental and Food Climate Stakes, and Science and Culture adapted to agricultural and food mutations. The study aims to provide a comparative review of agriculture in transition by integrating historical, social, economic, and diplomatic perspectives.

Chiara Marradi, Ingrid Mulder · Sustainability · Global

This work addresses the challenge of scaling bottom-up initiatives, such as urban farming, into new local ecosystems, noting that these initiatives often struggle due to socio-cultural challenges. It introduces a three-phased approach to enable knowledge exchange and collaboration across cultures and ecosystems. The approach defines common scalability criteria and frames scaling as a multi-step learning process to bridge cognitive and context gaps, contributing to transferable impact-driven scaling strategies.

Amine Mseddi, Mariann Simon · European Journal of Architecture and Urban Planning · Hungary (Budapest)

This paper analyzes four community gardens on vacant inner-city plots in Budapest, Hungary, to understand their challenges and opportunities. It found that these gardens face significant obstacles including temporary status, changing political circumstances, and varying local population attitudes. Despite these challenges, NGOs and local communities play a crucial role in sustaining these projects and raising awareness.

Kelly Donati, Nick Rose · · Australia

A 2022 report presents findings from a survey of urban agriculture practitioners in greater Melbourne (including green wedge areas), Bendigo, Ballarat, and Geelong, Australia. It provides baseline data on the composition, activities, market channels, challenges, needs, and aspirations of the urban agriculture sector, and, informed by the survey findings and the academic literature, sets out a roadmap for addressing the sector's key challenges and building on its existing social and environmental commitments.

Richard Kwasi Bannor, Helena Oppong-Kyeremeh, Samuel Kwabena Chaa Kyire, Humphrey Nii Ayi Aryee, Helen Amponsah · Sustainable Futures · Ghana

A study examining the impact of urban agriculture commercialization on poverty in Ghana and the determinants of urban farmers' choice of market outlet, based on 480 urban farmers. It used the Household Commercialisation Index (HCI) and Foster-Greer-Thorbecke (FGT) model to analyze poverty, Two-Stage Least Squares (2SLS) and heteroskedastic linear regression to assess commercialization's effect on poverty, and Probit and Bivariate Probit models for market-outlet choice. Age, gender, education, experience, household size, household food security and commercialisation significantly influenced urban poverty, while education, postharvest losses, commercialisation, storage ability, grading and sorting, distance to the nearest market, extension contacts and road quality influenced outlet choice. The study recommends that government, traditional leaders and other stakeholders integrate urban farming into urban development policy for sustainable poverty reduction.

Ana Spataru, Robert Faggian, Victor A Sposito · International Journal of Agricultural Resources Governance and Ecology · Global

A paper proposing a comprehensive conceptual framework for assessing metropolitan peri-urban agriculture. It argues that peri-urban agriculture provides non-commodity benefits — food security, farm viability, environmental stewardship, and landscape and socio-cultural preservation — that free markets under-recognize, and that the double vulnerability created by urban pressure and systemic agricultural change has led to myopic policy interventions. The proposed framework integrates the concepts of multifunctional agriculture, resilience, climate-smart agriculture and alternative food networks into 21 enabling features across five dimensions.

Benjamin Hennchen, Martina Schäfer · Frontiers in Sustainability · Global

A comparative study of three food system innovations — citizen shareholder companies, community-supported agriculture, and food co-ops — examining their inclusiveness, degree of member involvement, and quality of experienced connectedness. It draws on quantitative and qualitative data from an online survey, two focus group discussions, and a broad literature search. All three food innovations were found to show a rather low level of inclusiveness, although efforts are being made to overcome barriers to access. The innovations were found to generate social cohesion between different actors along the value-added chain, constituted differently in a more service-oriented versus a community-oriented model. The study concludes these innovations provide momentum toward the dominant food regime by rewarding producers for sustainable practices, establishing stronger producer-consumer relationships, and motivating consumers to assume shared responsibility, and considers the three innovations complementary for food system transitions.

Muhamad Subhi Apriantoro, Indah Noor Rahayuningsih, Sarwanto Sarwanto · IQTISHODUNA Jurnal Ekonomi Islam · Global

Drawing on descriptive field research, this paper addresses how, amid the coronavirus's impact across economic sectors, many individuals struggled to meet basic needs. Urban farming is positioned as one answer to food availability, with food safety, food pricing, and stimulating the local economy as its main concerns; people cultivated short-cycle crops in small pots or used hydroponic methods in their yards. Integrated urban farming is characterized as a type of green economic activity that adheres to the maslahah (public benefit) aim of maqasid sharia. Green economy activity built around integrated urban farming is described as aiming to improve community economic wellbeing and as able to help mitigate the risk of substantial environmental harm, including the pandemic's detrimental impact on macro and micro food security. The paper observes that the green economy concept can be integrated harmoniously with core maqasid sharia values.

Simone Schiller-Merkens · Organization · Global

A theoretical paper (2022, no specific region) examines forms of alternative economic organizing — cooperatives, post-growth organizations, common-good organizations, community-supported agriculture, transition towns, and ecovillages — that are described in organization and social-movement studies as "prefigurative," creating imaginaries of an alternative future while demonstrating viability through everyday practice. It argues that existing scholarship often leaves the meaning of prefiguration and its relationship to alternative organizing and anarchism unclear, and develops a definition of prefigurative organizing that distinguishes it from alternative organizing while foregrounding its political nature — its ties to multiple struggles, tensions, and conflicts. The paper then presents a systematic overview of types of struggles around prefigurative organizing with reference to exemplary research, and argues that studying prefigurative organizing requires an alternative praxis within academia itself.

Brunno da Silva Cerozi, Caitlin G. Arlotta, Matthew L. Richardson · Agriculture · Global

A study (2022, Agriculture) examined integrating urban agriculture with aquaculture to reduce water use and cost, competition for water, chemical fertilizer use, and the environmental impact of discharging nutrient-rich agricultural water into fresh and saltwater bodies, noting that urban aquaculture could also directly benefit human health as a local source of lean protein, while few studies had demonstrated the practical feasibility and production advantages of using aquaculture wastewater to fertigate specialty crops in cities. Four spring crops (bok choy, tatsoi, radish, turnip) and two fall crops (pole beans, sugar snap peas) were grown using nutrient-rich fish aquaculture effluent versus well or municipal water to evaluate effects on soil fertility and crop production. The fish effluent raised soil pH and potassium and increased pole bean count by 9.1% (bean mass trended toward significance but was not conclusive); the soils used were relatively nutrient-rich even before the effluent was applied, which may explain the limited impact, and the study suggests differences could be more pronounced in acidic, nutrient-poor soils or with longer-duration fertigation.

M.C.G. Haitsma Mulier, F.H.M. Van de Ven, Paul Kirshen · Energy Nexus · Global

Drawing on case-study water-energy-food (WEF) nexus research at urban farms, which found that two distinct types of "food" are relevant to urban agriculture, this study (2022, no specific region) splits the "food" component of the WEF framework to build a water-energy-nutrients-food (WENF) nexus framework for urban farming. The systematic WENF monitoring, analysis, and evaluation framework aims to support quality data acquisition during case-study research at farm sites, addressing a quantitative data gap on urban agriculture and closed circularity loops; it differentiates stocks of water, energy, nutrients, and food, describes flows within each, and identifies multi-sectoral flows and interdependencies among the four resource stocks to formulate options for circularity in urban farming. The analysis indicates urban systems offer many opportunities for realizing sustainable agriculture in cities because waste management and farming can mutually reinforce each other: local reuse of resources found in urban "waste" could reduce stormwater problems and energy needs for water, nutrient, and food transport, irrigation, and wastewater pumping, while eliminating the need for synthetic soil amendments and unsustainable mineral mining, and reusing resources from urban (waste)water in urban farming could reduce food production's overall negative environmental impact.

Dipesh Joshi, Anjal Nainabasti, Rita Bhandari, Prakash Awasthi, Dinanath Banjade, Santoshi Malla, Bishesh Subedi · Archives of Agriculture and Environmental Science · Global

This review covers soilless cultivation, in which plants are grown without soil as a rooting medium, including hydroponic, aeroponic, vertical farming, and other systems. It states that in greenhouses and tunnels, about 3.5% of the world's crops are produced using soilless, hydroponic methods. It notes that hydroponic farms can be built in deserts, the Arctic, and other difficult-to-farm places, and that the absence of soil means fewer insects and weeds. Crops grown in soilless systems include vegetables, fruits, flowers, and medicinal plants, using inorganic or organic growth media such as bark, coconut coir, coconut soil, fleece, marc, and peat. The review characterizes soilless culture as a relatively recently developed approach to agricultural development that is nonetheless difficult to put into practice.

Ye. V. Klimov, B. O. Assilov · Problems of AgriMarket · Global

This study identifies and analyzes common sales channels for organic products and the potential for alternative marketing strategies among small-scale organic fruit and vegetable producers in the Almaty region, Kazakhstan, who have transitioned to organic horticulture, drawing on international and Kazakhstani experience. Methods included desk research, industry information from open sources, and a survey of business entities. In Kazakhstan, where organic production has existed for about 20 years and has been dominated by large export-oriented grain producers using indirect trade channels, an emerging domestic eco-products market means small-producer entry requires effective marketing programs and expanded direct-delivery channels. Distribution options examined include an order-based "organic box" scheme, Community-Supported Agriculture (CSA), a centralized U-pick sales platform, organic farmers' markets and sales fairs, shops attached to organic farms, organic restaurants, public procurement, agritourism, and e-commerce. The study concludes that the choice of sales points is an important management decision affecting the economic efficiency of an agricultural enterprise, and that small-scale producers should develop multiple distribution channels that connect them directly with consumers.

Diego Alejandro Salinas Velandia, Felipe A. Perdomo, Stephanie Numa-Vergel, Edwin Villagrán, Pilar Donado-Godoy, Julio Ricardo Galindo Pacheco · International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health · Global

This study used bibliometric and text-mining analysis of the literature to assess how horticulture is transitioning to the circular economy. It found that circular horticulture is a recent, growing research field whose approach has been fragmented rather than systemic or integrative. Bioeconomy, urban agriculture, recycled nutrients, biochar, fertigation, and desalination emerged as research hotspots, with vegetables and fruits the most-studied crops; resource circulation has focused mainly on biowaste recovery for biofertilizers and substrate substitutes, and on water reuse for hydroponic systems. The One Health approach was found to be scarcely explored and weakly articulated, with the absence of assessment methodologies covering ecosystem, animal, and human health noted as a notable limitation, and science-policy interfaces linking One Health and food systems identified as needing improvement.

Singapore Food Agency · Singapore Food Agency (SFA) · Singapore

Published by the Singapore Food Agency on 11 Nov 2022, this article explains that Singapore is vulnerable to supply shocks because it imports more than 90 per cent of its food, while less than 1 per cent of its land is set aside for farming, and sets out the country's '30 by 30' goal to produce 30 per cent of its nutritional needs locally by 2030.

Jorgelina Hiba · Infobae (América/Soluciones) · Argentina

Twenty years after launching amid Argentina's 2001 economic crisis, Rosario's Urban Agriculture Programme now supports 360 jobs, this article reports: 30 hectares of urban gardens plus 120 hectares of peri-urban plots, over 300 gardeners (60% women) growing agroecological produce across 7 Park Gardens, sold through 39 outlets, with about 400 heirloom species and varieties held in the CAR seed bank.

Bárbara Corneli Colombatto · enREDando · Argentina

Built around interviews with huerteros (urban gardeners), this piece presents both the achievements and the limits of Rosario's urban agriculture: 7 Park Gardens and 6 group gardens involving over 250 people, 25 hectares producing 2,500 tonnes a year, and a $250,000 international prize won in 2021. It also documents organizational fragmentation among gardeners, a lack of secure land-loan agreements (comodatos), the absence of sustained public investment matching the programme's international recognition, and unresolved conflicts with neighbors that the municipality does not intervene in. It cites a regional statistic that only 18% of farms in Latin America and the Caribbean are run by women.