Research & reports

Sarah Himmelheber · Journal of Progressive Human Services · United States

This study discusses incongruities between social work's professional values and dominant public and private responses to food insecurity. Empowerment theory is positioned as an evaluative lens to examine food assistance, and dominant forms of food assistance are scrutinized using its basic tenets. Innovative programs, including community gardens, community kitchens, and D.C. Central Kitchen, are highlighted for their potential to yield empowering outcomes.

Benjamin Drury, Renee Laliberte, Jared Watson, Connor Wilgress · Digital WPI · United States (Worcester)

The city of Worcester, MA, faces health issues due to economic instability and low access to affordable healthy food. While urban farming has the potential to address these problems, the city lacks an effective policy.

Katherine Luke · D-Scholarship@Pitt (University of Pittsburgh) · United States (Pittsburgh)

This study used a door-to-door survey in six Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania neighborhoods to measure the impact of community gardens on residents' perceptions of food access. It found that many gardeners do not consider gardening to improve their personal food security, and despite geographic proximity and expressed interest, community garden participation rates were low. Social and emotional barriers, including lack of gardening knowledge and racial prejudice, appeared to prevent residents from becoming active participants.

Cristina Connolly, H. Allen Klaiber · American Journal of Agricultural Economics · United States

This study used a hedonic model with firm-level prices and CSA characteristics from 453 CSA farms in Michigan, New York, Ohio, and Pennsylvania during the summer 2012 growing season to value CSA attributes. Results showed a price premium of approximately 7% for USDA organic certification, though this varied by state, but no premium for competing certified naturally grown programs. CSA farms exhibited little market power and appeared to act competitively.

Monique Centrone Stefani, Debbie Humphries, Rebecca Kline · The FASEB Journal · United States

This study implemented and evaluated a pilot intervention addressing chronic disease risk factors in a low-income Hispanic population in the United States. The New Haven Farms Fresh Produce Prescription program provided fresh produce, nutrition education, gardening education, and cooking demonstrations weekly over sixteen weeks of the agriculture season. Participants, recruited through a community health center, came weekly to a central urban agriculture site and completed baseline and follow-up assessments of dietary diversity, chronic disease risk, food security, and physical activity. Fifty-one people completed the baseline survey and 40 completed the follow-up survey; preliminary analysis showed approximately 30% had some food insecurity at baseline. The study reports on the development of this complex agriculture-based intervention as a pilot.

Terence O'Connell · Community Development Journal · United States

An interview with Julie Ristau, Co-director, and Alexa Bradley, Program Director, of On the Commons (OTC) — a commons movement strategy center founded in 2001 — was conducted by Tom O'Connell in Minneapolis, Minnesota, on June 28, 2013. OTC uses workshops, presentations, and direct consultation to bring visibility to the commons movement and support the development of commons-based solutions and leadership, and in the interview both women describe how they came to the idea of the commons through prior community organizing experience.

Caitlin M. Port, Markus Moos · Planning Practice and Research · Canada

A study used Geographic Information System analysis to measure land potential for urban agriculture in four sub-urban neighborhoods in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada. Findings show that 49-58% of the land measured has potential to support urban agriculture; in older post-war sub-urban neighborhoods this potential lies primarily in private yards, while newer sub-urban neighborhoods incorporating new urbanist ideals have smaller yards but more public green space, meaning challenges and opportunities for urban agriculture differ between older and newer sub-urban areas due to differences in neighborhood design.

Nicole M Reese · USF Scholarship Repository (University of San Francisco) · United States (California)

This study assessed the feasibility of rooftop farming in the Small Business Mix Zone of West Oakland, California. The area has more than one million square feet of untapped rooftop space, and selling produce grown there at local farmers markets, produce stands, grocery stores, businesses, and restaurants could generate up to $4 million in revenue. Rooftop production would help the City of Oakland meet its goal of 30% locally sourced food and supply fresh fruits and vegetables to West Oakland, a food desert currently lacking access to them.

Joann Lo · Journal of Critical Thought and Praxis · United States

A first-hand essay by the executive director of the Food Chain Workers Alliance (FCWA) in the United States argues that despite growing interest in sustainable food production and systems — including community gardens, urban agriculture and "slow" food — the broader food movement has not fully integrated the voices and leadership of the workers who bring food from farm to table. It states that food workers, numbering almost 20 million in the U.S. alone, face multiple injustices including low wages, lack of benefits and dangerous working conditions that intersect with the sustainable-food movement's own concerns about food insecurity and access to healthy, affordable food, and recounts the FCWA's history and work from the author's own position.

Cláudia Souza, Paula Simas de Andrade · Sustainability in Debate · Brazil

This piece describes how, under the motto "community and government, a successful partnership," 34-year-old official Sheila Souza dos Santos turned a community garden program into a genuine space for citizenship in Itapoã, a satellite city of Brasília, Brazil. Reviving a community vegetable-production project brought access to healthier food for the community, the school, and the families working in it, and also generated a series of community initiatives involving children, youth, adults, and older people.

Lorelei L. Hanson, Deborah Schrader · · Canada

A participatory action case study examined the development of Edmonton, Canada's urban food policy from 2008 to 2013, using participant observation, semi-structured interviews and document analysis, coded and triangulated through a grounded-theory approach. Despite initial progressive changes in municipal policy and promising innovative food-system planning, the research found that Edmonton's city council was ultimately driven largely by a development agenda, following a pattern documented in other urban sustainability initiatives that foreclose political debate and reinforce the status quo.

Maria Lúcia da Silva Sodré, Aucéia Matos Dourado, Daiane Santos Oliveira, Vanessa Januário Graça · · Brazil

A report on a rural extension project developed around a community garden run by a women's association in Brazil, based on agroecological principles that center on exchanging traditional, technical and scientific knowledge as a means of interaction between the university, advisors and family farmers. The aim was to strengthen social organization and production processes by combining composting and vermiculture practices with technologies such as irrigation systems and cisterns, using theoretical and practical workshops. Results showed that these activities enabled families to increase production and gain access to healthier food; the resulting availability of produce for sale brought increased income and improved living conditions, along with improved soil quality, outcomes the report attributes in part to the organizational capacity of the women involved in the association.

Amanda Brown, Antonin van der Lely, Camilo Cortes, Eileen Leung, F. Lam, Liz Overton, Muneera Hussain · cIRcle (University of British Columbia) · Canada

As part of the UBC Food Systems Project, this student report evaluates the effects of campus development at the University of British Columbia (UBC), Canada, on the ability to create and maintain a sustainable food system. The goal was not to promote food self-sufficiency at UBC but to build campus-community awareness and education around food security issues. Through evaluation of the plans guiding UBC's development — the Official Community Plan (OCP) and the Comprehensive Community Plan (CCP) — the report identifies major barriers and opportunities affecting campus food sustainability and proposes amendments to both plans. It resulted in a proposed urban agriculture strategy, "The Edible Campus," comprising six strategic actions: a demonstration garden, designated garden areas, green space and open areas, food production on buildings, waste management systems, and management considerations. The report is explicitly disclaimed as a student project under UBC's SEEDS program, not an official UBC document.

S. Guillaume · University of Minnesota Digital Conservancy (University of Minnesota) · United States

A description of the Aurora St. Anthony Peace Sanctuary Garden in the Summit-University (Rondo) and Frogtown neighborhoods of St. Paul, Minnesota, developed ten years earlier by African American community leaders as a tool for community building through gardening, and made up of a collaboration among six individual community gardens and backyard box gardeners. Through cultivating and sharing food, the project aims to promote reconciliation, healing, peace, and social and environmental justice, centering on the creation of a Neighborhood Garden Alliance meant to strengthen connections among the area's gardeners and gardens. The Alliance is intended to feed the neighborhood by empowering residents to grow their own food, meet and work with neighbors, share Rondo's food culture within families, and foster a stronger sense of ownership through a deepened connection to the land, serving as a vehicle for community building among diverse residents, expanded access to fresh food, and the engagement of new leaders through gardening.

Ryan E. Galt · Economic Geography · United States (California)

A study of 54 Community-Supported Agriculture (CSA) farms in California's Central Valley used qualitative and quantitative data to explain farmers' earnings. An ordinary least squares regression analysis revealed that farmers' age, number of employees, and CSA type strongly influence earnings. The study found that the moral economy of CSA often results in self-exploitation due to farmers' strong sense of obligation to members, despite allowing for economic rents.

David Aftandilian, Lyn Dart · Journal of Community Engagement and Scholarship · United States

This article presents approaches for using garden-based service-learning to promote food justice, educate undergraduate students, and strengthen campus-community ties. It discusses three interdisciplinary service-learning projects: the Fairmount Community Garden, the North Side Garden Survey, and the Como Community Garden. The authors evaluate the success of their approaches using multiple measures and identify benefits for undergraduates, community partners, communities served by the gardens, educators, and their university.

Kyle Clark, Kimberly A. Nicholas · Landscape Ecology · United States (Burlington, Vermont)

This study proposes "urban food forestry" (UFF), combining urban agriculture, urban forestry, and agroforestry, to enhance urban sustainability and food security. It analyzed 37 urban food tree initiatives, finding 73% performed only one activity (planting, mapping, or harvesting) and 8% performed all three. An analysis of 30 urban forestry master plans showed only 13% included human food security objectives. A case study in Burlington, Vermont, estimated that planting Malus domestica in public spaces could meet 108% of the city's daily fruit intake under the most ambitious scenario. The study identified 70 potential food tree species for temperate urban environments, with 30 deemed highly suitable.

Jamie M. Bouvier · Maine law review · United States

This essay argues that urban agricultural practices, such as growing food or raising animals, are symbolic acts that communicate viewpoints and support for the "Food Movement." It asserts that these acts, as symbolic expressions, deserve protection under the First Amendment. The article examines the Food Movement as a social and political movement, how urban homesteading practices symbolize it, and the application of First Amendment principles to these practices.

Yuki Kato · Sociological Inquiry · United States (New Orleans)

This case study of a community-supported agriculture (CSA) organization in New Orleans focused on the lack of participation by local residents in the CSA market despite its intentions. Interview and ethnographic observation data indicated a general consensus on economic constraints, while some non-resident supporters attributed the issue to a lack of knowledge about the food system. Residents, however, pointed to spatial and sociocultural barriers, including produce selection, purchase options, market access convenience, and the race-related historical and spatial context of the market's location, making the market less accessible to them.

Adam Prince · · United States (California)

This chapter considers movements to transform the food system in the United States. In Oakland, California, a growing community of urban food producers and advocates is working to address food insecurity in historically underserved communities. Diverse enclaves in Oakland exhibit various forms of community-based food production, ranging from windowsill herb patches to rooftop projects and distributed farming networks utilizing vacant lots.

Giovania Genevieve Tiarachristie · · United States (Harrisburg)

This qualitative study explored race-class conflicts around food and urban gardening in South Allison Hill, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, a diverse, low-income neighborhood. Seven interviews with neighborhood leaders revealed that the "Whiteness" of a new wave of urban gardening can create race and class tension, hindering collaborative partnerships and local food systems development. The findings indicate structural limitations and social roadblocks, suggesting that urban gardening can exacerbate existing inequities if not approached with structural economic justice and cultural competency.

Kathryn Colasanti, Michael W. Hamm · Journal of Agriculture Food Systems and Community Development · United States

This paper criticizes Hallsworth and Wong (2013) for failing to adequately recognize the potential for increased productivity in urban agriculture and its role in alleviating food insecurity. The authors emphasize the opportunities for urban agriculture in diverse North American cities and the potential for productivity expansion using methods like passive solar and season extension. They cite examples such as Michigan hoophouses growing 30 crops year-round and a 4-square-meter garden providing daily vegetable servings for a family of four, arguing that urban agriculture's value extends beyond food quantity.

Charlotte Lai-Sam Hryse · · United States (California)

This study examined the practices, outcomes, and motivations of guerrilla gardeners in California's East Bay through nine interviews. Projects occurred on different scales involving individuals, neighborhoods, community-based organizations, and 'Occupy the Farm,' demonstrating outcomes such as youth empowerment, community building, and civic engagement. Guerrilla gardening was shown to facilitate inclusive community organization, expand social capital, and build local resiliency and assets.

Hilary Neff, Rachel Manning · OPUS - Open Portal to University Scholarship (Governors State University) · United States (Ohio)

This record introduces Hilary Neff, a third-year Environmental Studies student at Oberlin College, focusing on Food Justice and Sustainable Communities. She is passionate about local foods and community empowerment projects.

Evan Weissman · Journal of Agriculture Food Systems and Community Development · United States (New York City)

This essay refutes the claims by Hallsworth and Wong (2013) that the benefits of urban food gardening are exaggerated and that it cannot deliver fresher or lower-cost foods. It states that Hallsworth and Wong's assumptions are incorrect and that urban gardening plays a significant role as public space, an economic development strategy, and a community-organizing tool, contributing to household food security. For example, a 0.2-hectare urban farm project in Brooklyn, New York, "East New York Farms!", produces over USD20,000 of fresh produce annually, with over 70% of transactions made through SNAP, reaching high-need community members.