Research & reports

Luciano Deiques Minozzo · · Brazil

This study characterized urban and peri-urban agriculture practiced by nine producers belonging to the Associação Pedritense dos Produtores de Hortifrutigranjeiros (APPH) in Dom Pedrito/RS, Brazil, between September 2011 and March 2012. Findings showed that 67% of producers practiced peri-urban agriculture (10-26 km from the city), while three practiced urban agriculture. Producers had low schooling (78% incomplete elementary education) and 55% earned 2.5 to 4 minimum wages. Family labor accounted for 88% of the workforce, and personal satisfaction was the main motivation. Water availability and quality were identified as limiting factors for production.

Kurt B. Waldman, David Conner, John A. Biernbaum, Michael W. Hamm, Adam Montri · HortTechnology · United States (Michigan)

Quantitative and qualitative data from 12 novice hoophouse farmers in Michigan were analyzed over a 3-year period to understand factors associated with profitable use of these structures. There was wide variation in labor inputs and effective wages, and not all farmers utilized hoophouses between outdoor seasons. However, high wage earners tended to extend production into off-peak months, hire labor at higher wages, and spend less time on crop maintenance, appearing to harvest more efficiently.

Evan Weissman · Syracuse University Libraries (Syracuse University) · United States (New York City)

This dissertation explores urban agriculture in Brooklyn, New York, using a mixed-methods analysis to investigate its historical changes, motivations for engagement, and outcomes. The study argues that Brooklyn's urban agriculture is limited by its neoliberal characteristics, which undermine its potential to build a radical political movement around food issues. While urban agriculture tends to reproduce neoliberalism, it simultaneously creates political possibilities through the assertion of public rights to cultivate the city and the potential of food to serve as a tool for building solidarities towards food justice.

Erika S. Svendsen, Lindsay K. Campbell, Nancy Falxa-Raymound, Jessica Northridge, Edie Stone, Carolin Mees · Cities and the Environment · United States (New York City)

This study introduces a longitudinal examination of community gardens in New York City, building on data collected since 2003 by the GreenThumb program. In summer 2011, structured phone interviews were conducted with representatives from a sample of 102 community gardens to examine membership, programming, partnerships, and motivations for gardening from 2003-2011. The research aims to understand the evolving role of community gardens and how they have changed over time.

Rebecca Mize · eCommons (Cornell University) · United States

The Massachusetts Avenue Project (MAP) aims to create a more local and inclusive food system by growing fresh produce on its urban farm on the West Side of Buffalo. Annually, MAP employs approximately 50 at-risk youth to support the transformation of the community's food system.

James E. McWilliams · Southwestern historical quarterly · United States

This is a review of Robert Carriker's book "Urban Farming in the West: A New Deal Experiment in Subsistence Homesteads", which examines the Division of Subsistence Homesteads (DSH) program in the American West. The DSH, established in 1933 by the New Deal, aimed to redistribute population and support self-sufficient homesteads. Carriker's work offers a balanced perspective on the program, noting that "confusion over disparate objectives" and bureaucratic conflicts ultimately undermined its goals.

Ryan E. Galt, Libby O'Sullivan, Jessica Beckett, Colleen C. Hiner · California Agriculture · United States (California)

This study investigated Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) operations in California's Central Valley and surrounding foothills, United States. Surveys and in-depth interviews were conducted with 54 CSA farmers and two CSA organizers, focusing on CSA type, economic viability, farmer characteristics, and farm attributes. Findings revealed that 54% of CSAs reported profitability, farmers were generally younger, better educated, and more likely to be women, and farms were small, utilizing agroecological methods.

Mahbubur Meenar, Brandon Hoover · Journal of Agriculture Food Systems and Community Development · United States (Philadelphia)

This paper examines urban agriculture (UA) projects' role in addressing food insecurity in lower-income neighborhoods of post-industrial U.S. cities, using Philadelphia as a case study. While UA projects are vital, findings indicate concerns regarding their geographic, economic, and informational accessibility, social exclusion, and spatial mismatch between participants and neighborhood demographics. Challenges also exist in distributing fresh produce to impoverished populations and UA's economic contributions in underprivileged areas.

Mulala Danny Simatele, Tony Binns, Munacinga Simatele · Journal of Environmental Planning and Management · Zambia (Lusaka)

This paper, based on recent field-based research in Lusaka, Zambia, examines the relationships between urban agriculture (UA) and extreme weather conditions, and their impact on the livelihood options of the urban poor. Despite its significance as a source of food and income in many sub-Saharan African cities, UA has not been integrated into urban development and planning policy and has come under increasing pressure from extreme weather events like droughts and flooding over the last two decades.

Sarah Schindler · Faculty publications · United States

This article addresses the conflict between local governments and "locavores" seeking to use private property to produce food — for personal use and for sale — and municipal zoning ordinances that separate agriculture from residential uses. It examines the police power rationales behind ordinances disallowing urban homesteading in urban and suburban communities, then argues that public health, civic virtue, and free market principles can justify ordinances expressly permitting these activities. It discusses problems associated with industrial agriculture — food insecurity, food deserts, obesity tied to processed foods, monoculture-induced environmental harm, harm to animals, and greenhouse gas emissions — that could be partly alleviated through urban agriculture, noting that some local governments have already begun passing ordinances expressly allowing gardens, chickens, and the sale of produce in residential areas.

Sima Patel, Rod MacRae · Journal of Agriculture Food Systems and Community Development · Canada

A land parcel analysis in Toronto, Canada identified 77 parcels totaling 1,270 acres (514 hectares) of potential land for community supported agriculture (CSA) farming — about 1 percent of the city's surface area — with much of it located in northeast Toronto. Five commercially viable scenario types were constructed with varying land use, zoning, institutional and residential characteristics, but considerable challenges remain for widespread implementation, leading to policy and program recommendations including pilot projects, institutional linkages, program supports, training and extension.

Kristen B. Crossney, Emily Shellenberger · · United States

A study examining the relationship between neighborhood quality and the presence of community gardens in Philadelphia, United States. Neighborhoods were characterized by population and neighborhood factors including race, ethnicity, and income, and t-tests assessed the statistical significance of differences between areas with a community garden and other parts of the city. The statistical results showed that while areas with community gardens faced more socioeconomic challenges, they underwent more positive change and improvement between 2000 and 2010 than other parts of the city.

Margaret C. Kirnbauer · Journal of Environmental Informatics · United States

Amid growing interest among community groups in using vacant and underutilized land for urban food production, but with few community-based tools available to assess site suitability or location-allocation decisions, this U.S. study describes a scientific software tool, built in Microsoft Excel, to help community groups identify and inventory the location and condition of vacant and underutilized land, determine relative site suitability, and allocate urban agricultural reuse strategies across the urban landscape. The tool augments the prototype community-based decision support tool (C-SAP) developed by Kirnbauer and Baetz (2011), which already includes a binary scoring methodology for the vacant and underutilized land inventory (VULI) process and an analytic hierarchy process for calculating site suitability indices (SSI). The added capacity, called LOCAL, formulates a multi-objective binary integer program for location-allocation of reuse strategies at the neighborhood, community, or city-wide planning level. The paper summarizes and discusses applying the prototype tool to 21 sites identified as potential future urban agriculture sites.

Kynda R. Curtis, Voravee Chakreeyarat, J. Dominique Gumirakiza · Digital Commons - USU (Utah State University) · United States

A brief discussion piece frames growing interest in local food systems as a potential response to challenges in the globalized food system and as an avenue for promoting agricultural and rural sustainability. It does not present a specific research method or findings.

Lucy Jarosz · Gender Place & Culture · United States

This article examines the motivations of women farmers involved in community supported agriculture (CSA) in a US metropolitan region, based on interviews. It argues that these women's motivations reflect an ethics of care, centering their work on nourishing themselves and others. Their choices are shaped by the urban context, race, and middle-class status, expressing self-care and a post-capitalist politics that challenges neoliberal subject formation.

Melea Press, Eric J. Arnould · Journal of Consumer Culture · United States

This study examines how Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) programs gained legitimacy as a market form in the United States, using a socio-historical lens. It argues that American pastoralist ideology, linking historical agrarian ideals with modern CSAs, helped integrate them into the mainstream. The research suggests that the Internet further aided this legitimation by fostering personal commercial communications and de-massification, reinforcing egalitarian principles and community perceptions central to pastoralist ideology while masking cultural contradictions.

Chris Szczygiel · eCommons (Cornell University) · United States (Buffalo)

Greening vacant lots is one of the most cost-effective ways for the city of Buffalo to improve its neighborhoods. A program to clean up, green up, and maintain vacant lots can combat blight, raise property values and tax revenue, lower crime rates, and improve residents' quality of life. Greening lots can provide various community benefits, including jobs, educational opportunities, and a local source of fresh, nutritious food.

Pedro Paulo Videiro Rosa · Revista Geográfica de América Central · Brazil

This paper provides a preliminary analysis of a document by FAO and Brazil's MDS, which identified and characterized urban and peri-urban agriculture (UPA) initiatives in Brazilian Metropolitan Regions. The article relates this document to existing Brazilian legislation and public policies, discussing the refunctionalization of urban spaces to integrate economic, sociocultural, and environmental factors. It also reports on contemporary UPA experiences aligned with agroecology principles and discusses the definition of urban agriculture to identify bottlenecks in its promotion.

Marina Castelo Branco, RS Liz, F. A. de Alcântara, HAG Martins, J.A Hanson · Horticultura Brasileira · Brazil

This study gathered information on Community Supported Agriculture (CSA/AAC) projects in the US and assessed the willingness of consumers and poor urban producers in a low-income Brazilian city to engage in such projects. US AAC farmers typically cultivated less than 2 hectares, offered various vegetables for at least four months, but faced challenges with production planning and long-term maintenance. Brazilian consumers showed willingness to participate, mainly for fresh, organically produced food, while poor urban producers were unwilling due to their inability to guarantee production.

Maura Neves Coutinho, Heloísa Soares de Moura Costa · Revista Geografias · Brazil (Belo Horizonte)

This article discusses urban agriculture (UA) concepts and practices, focusing on initiatives in Belo Horizonte, Brazil, by both residents and local government. It considers UA's potential for ecological, productive, and inclusive cities, but notes the difficulty of secure access to urban land. The discussion on UA is still fragile and faces challenges in becoming an effective social policy.

Maura Neves Coutinho, Heloísa Soares de Moura Costa · Anais ENANPUR · Brazil (Belo Horizonte)

This paper discusses urban agriculture (AU) practices occurring in Belo Horizonte, Brazil, both through informal and spontaneous initiatives by residents in peripheral neighborhoods and as an object of public intervention by the local government for specific purposes. The study concludes that secure access to urban land for maintaining AU practices is difficult, and the discussion on AU remains fragile, facing challenges for its implementation as a social policy impacting urban policies.

Jack Russell Weinstein, Jay Basquiat · UND Scholarly Commons (University of North Dakota) · United States

This abstract explores philosophical questions regarding food and sustainability. It raises inquiries about why certain foods are eaten, the meaning of 'natural,' and the moral rules for food manufacturing and agricultural priorities. The text also questions the cultural and spiritual roles of food and responsibilities in providing food. Jay Basquiat is an Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Bismarck State College who sustainably farms near Mandan, ND.

Alice Hu, Ángela Acosta, Abigail McDaniel, Joel Gittelsohn · Health Promotion Practice · United States

This qualitative study identified strategies to promote locally grown produce from an urban agriculture project, Produce From the Park (PFP), among low-income neighborhood residents and community organization representatives (20 interviews, 2 focus groups, 3 participant observations) in a mid-Atlantic city in the United States. Informants identified structural and cultural barriers to purchasing healthy food, including price, location, food culture, and lack of interest, and proposed strategies such as distribution via mobile food carts and farm stands, marketing new foods through taste tests and cooking demonstrations, and youth mentorship. These strategies were inexpensive and incorporated cultural norms and local assets.

Siny Tsang, AM Holt, Eduardo Bessa Azevedo · Chronic diseases and injuries in Canada · Canada (Cobourg, Ontario)

This needs assessment in Cobourg, Ontario, interviewed food program clients to identify barriers to food access. Clients reported lack of transportation, insufficient food quantities, and inconvenient operating hours as barriers to using food programs. They also cited lack of available vegetables and fruit at home and income as barriers to consuming more produce.

Héctor Ávila-Sánchez · Norois · Mexico

This paper discusses socio-territorial changes in peri-urban food production spaces in Central Mexico, focusing on the impacts of urbanization on old rural areas. It highlights that peri-urban poor populations often face marginalization, degradation of their agricultural activities, and conflict over space with other social groups. The development of peri-urban agriculture has led to significant transformations in land use, production structures, and social and cultural aspects.