Research & reports
Peer-reviewed research and reports on community urban agriculture, food education, composting, welfare and more.
Theme
Critical findings
7626 results(270 / 306)
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2011Craig Pearson · Urban agriculture · Sri Lanka
Each community in Sri Lanka developed its own Green Plan and decided what vegetables or plants it would grow. Home garden plots and community gardens were created with seed and plant donations from a university, with planting occurring in April and May 2004. Community residents assumed responsibility for the maintenance of the plants, while Sevanatha and university staff visited the sites regularly to monitor and provide consultation.
CommunityDIYFood educationHillary Anne Doerfler · D-Scholarship@Pitt (University of Pittsburgh) · Global
A literature review examined the use of school garden programs for health promotion among elementary school youth. The review found that school gardens successfully improved academic achievement, increased fruit and vegetable consumption, and enhanced social skills. However, significant barriers to implementation were identified, particularly in low socioeconomic status schools, including a lack of funding, insufficient gardening knowledge among teachers, and limited community and parent involvement.
Governance failureFood educationHealthCommunityWelfareHoward Frumkin, Jared Fox · Island Press/Center for Resource Economics eBooks · Global
Contact with nature may benefit health, a relationship supported by both theoretical and empirical considerations. Nature contact can take many forms in the built environment, including plantings in buildings, views from windows, biophilic building design, community gardens, and parks. Evidence supports various benefits of such nature contact, ranging from stress reduction to improved recovery from illness and surgery.
HealthCommunityElizabeth Day · Crossings Journal of Migration and Culture · United Kingdom
This visual essay reflects on the ideas and processes of migration, mutation, and transplantation. Inspired by Robert Smithson's work, the author's art practice is intimately connected to the earth, exploring deterritorialization and reterritorialization in the creation of earthworks. The author examines Tasmanians' special connection to the earth through two photographic series: depictions of their own earthworks and a series created with women in a women's prison centered on the theme of a 'community garden'.
CommunityWelfareMarina de Fátima Brandão Carneiro, Antônio Maurílio Alencar Feitosa, Dulce Pereira dos Santos, Gabriel Alves Veloso, Igor Martins de Oliveira · DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals) · Brazil (Montes Claros)
This study investigated the role and importance of urban agriculture in Montes Claros, MG, Brazil, as a dynamic activity creating a specific rural-urban interaction space. Using bibliographic and documentary analysis, semi-structured interviews with farmers, iconographic production, and geotechnologies for mapping, the research found that urban agriculture is a reality in intra-urban spaces. It occupies vacant lots and backyards with diverse activities, generating work, employment, income, food security, and products for local commerce.
CommunityEconomicsFood sovereignty & justiceUrban–rural linkageReclaiming and Recirculating Urban Natures: Integrated Organic Waste Management in Diadema, Brazil
2011Julian S. Yates, Jutta Gutberlet · Environment and Planning A Economy and Space · Brazil (Diadema)
This paper analyzes food waste flows in Diadema, Brazil, through an urban political ecology lens, focusing on integrated organic waste management for composting and urban food production. While presented as a means for positive socioecological change, the process is characterized by conflict and potential exploitation. Broader structural conditions also constrain the system's ability to offer an alternative to existing waste-management models.
Equity & displacementCompostOrganic cycleCommunityWelfareFood sovereignty & justiceEconomicsNPO法人イノプレックス, 野村アグリプランニング アドバイザリー株式会社, 正一 佐々木, 巖根 米田 · Institutional Repositories DataBase (IRDB) · Japan
This report proposes a system to support city farmers' businesses by bridging the information gap between consumers and farmers, aiming for international export. The system provides consumers with information on city farmers' locations, vegetable quality, and production processes, while enabling feedback for farmers. The proposed system is projected to yield a net present value (NPV) of 5,300,000 yen in four years, starting in Tokyo and expanding to other regions and developing countries.
EconomicsCommunityDigital agricultureJohn M. Polimeni, Raluca Iorgulescu Polimeni, Richard L. Shirey, Christina L. Trees, W. Scott Trees · Journal of Business & Economics Research (JBER) · United States
This paper develops a theory of demand for Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) membership, using survey and anecdotal data from members of the Roxbury Biodynamic Farm, the second largest CSA in the United States. The discussion considers evidence of a direct relationship between production method and demand. It also hypothesizes that dynamic demand, influenced by participation over time, is a necessary but insufficient condition for CSA sustainability.
CSA & TeikeiEconomicsCommunityMaria Lundgren · School for International Training Digital Collections (School for International Training) · Global
This workshop explores how school gardens can be integrated into the curriculum and used for learning. Participants will engage in experiential activities demonstrating the garden's utility in elementary classrooms as a setting for content-based language acquisition.
Food educationCommunity장보경, 최윤지, 황정임 · 농촌지도와 개발 · South Korea
This study aimed to identify the needs assessment for urban agricultural programs. Urban citizens expressed a need for educational programs addressing "shortage of farming technology education" and desired "farming technology" education more than other areas. They requested urban agricultural programs with both theory and practice, preferring an 80:20 ratio of practice to theory for "farming technology" based programs. Citizens most preferred a 3 to 6-month education period, with over 95% indicating a desire to join such a program if developed.
Food educationCommunityConsuelo Montes Rojas, Astrid Alejandra Gomez · LA Referencia (Red Federada de Repositorios Institucionales de Publicaciones Científicas) · Colombia (Popayán)
This participatory research in three communes and four urban-marginal settlements of Popayán, Colombia, surveyed 116 displaced families to evaluate chayote (Sechium edule) as a food alternative. The study found that chayote adapts well to settlement conditions and serves as an alternative food source, promoting the consumption of underutilized species and encouraging urban agriculture practices.
Food sovereignty & justiceCommunityFood educationMasao Makiyama, Mami Inoue · JOURNAL OF RURAL PLANNING ASSOCIATION · Global
This study examined kleingartens (stay-type allotment gardens) established by private organizations, finding an increasing number of such gardens. Case studies revealed that privately established kleingartens tend to have higher use fees compared to government-established ones. Furthermore, problems identified include the reduction of administrative and maintenance expenses, location conditions, and the succession of managers.
Governance failureCommunityPolicyEconomicsMA Cui-hua · Hebei Nongye Daxue xuebao · China
This paper introduces and explains typical landscape design using Hebei Agricultural University as an example, focusing on school buildings, school gardens, and campus comedy. It explores the role of campus landscape in beautifying the campus environment, establishing the college image, inheriting university spirit, and fulfilling an educational function.
Food educationCommunityAnne-Marie Pailhès · Palgrave Macmillan UK eBooks · Germany
Today, allotment gardens are counted among Germany's "lieux de mémoire," finally recognising the importance of the "allotment holders' movement" (Kleingärtnerbewegung) in the German cultural landscape. From the 1890s to the 1920s, in a continuous process centred mainly on the Berlin area, allotment enthusiasts gradually changed the character of urban peripheries, occupying parcels of land grouped into "sections" (Sparten) of "colonies." Since 1996 there has been a museum dedicated to this social movement.
CommunityUrban–rural linkageSinan Koont · University Press of Florida eBooks · Cuba
This chapter discusses the expansion of Cuba's higher-education system after 1959 and the establishment of institutions such as BTJ, ANIR, FCT, and SCIT to encourage technological innovation. Science education was emphasized down to the primary-school level, and Cuba devoted considerable resources to research and development and to building R&D capacity — including founding CIGB for biotechnology, establishing scientific hubs, and developing in vitro propagation technologies. In agricultural research and education, many universities established sustainable agriculture programs, and phyto-sanitary institutions were created to ensure plant health. The chapter ends with a discussion of two examples of urban agriculture outcomes: banana production and nematode control (Hebernem).
CommunityPolicyFood educationLiu Bai-ping · · China
This paper analyzes the status and problems of modern agriculture in Anhui Province, China, and identifies several development modes: advantageous agricultural products, eco-agriculture and characteristic agriculture, rural tourism, and suburban urban agriculture. It proposes measures for advancing Anhui's modern agriculture; no quantitative data are reported.
CommunityPolicyEconomics박은지, 이연숙 · 한국주거학회 학술발표대회 논문집 · South Korea
A study on the initial planning stage of resident-participation community gardens, using a case in Jeonju City, South Korea. Based on a literature and theoretical review together with case studies, it identifies five modes of resident participation in community garden planning and applies them to a community garden construction project in a deteriorated area of Jeonju. The study provides improvement guidelines for the initial planning stage of resident-participation community gardens.
CommunityPolicyWelfareFood educationSinan Koont · University Press of Florida eBooks · Cuba
This chapter describes how Cuba's 1980s economic reforms ("perfeccionamiento empresarial") sought to link urban agriculture workers' incomes more closely to their production output, noting that Cuba's urban agriculture price-formation and supply-demand mechanisms provide relatively high incomes for the workforce, and that non-monetary "moral" incentives—awards such as "de referencia" and "de excelencia" status given to individuals, collectives and provinces, plus an annual December 27 meeting between the President and outstanding urban agriculturalists—operate alongside material incentives to raise workers' self-esteem and social standing.
CommunityEconomicsPolicyKatrin Bohn, André Viljoen · University of Brighton Repository (University of Brighton) · United Kingdom
A 2011 paper from the UK discusses the Continuous Productive Urban Landscape (CPUL), a strategic concept for introducing interlinked productive landscapes into cities. It focuses on the environmental benefits of integrating urban agriculture as one of CPUL's major spatial and functional components, tracing, with reference to international exhibitions and publications, how urban agriculture has moved from a fringe interest toward the center of contemporary urban and architectural discourse. It concludes that while urban agriculture is attracting more attention, further cross-disciplinary work is needed to build the theory underpinning productive landscape design and the policy rationale to support it.
CommunityPolicyFood sovereignty & justiceMonica Caggiano · DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals) · France
This brief article discusses the public health role of urban agriculture in urban contexts, where most of the world's population now lives, noting its contribution to food security in developing countries and ecological services everywhere (citing FAO, 2000). It states that the new interest in urban agriculture reflects diverse and multifaceted needs and trends, illustrated by the notable urban agriculture practices found in the densely built city of Paris.
CommunityHealthCONSUELO MONTES R, ASTRID ALEJANDRA GÓMEZ G · DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals) · Colombia
This participatory study evaluated Sechium edule (chayote, locally "cidra papa") as an alternative food source for displaced families living in marginal urban settlements of Popayan, Colombia, aiming to recover traditional knowledge of its use and management, identify ecotypes, capture its sociocultural significance as a means of maintaining ties to the countryside, and assess its productivity and management potential in marginal urban spaces. Using participatory methods including recreational activities, awareness workshops, and knowledge- and seed-exchange tours, the study covered three communes in Popayan, applied 116 surveys across four selected settlements, and conducted monthly visits with informal dialogue with participating families. It confirmed that plants such as chayote adapt to conditions in the settlements and can serve as an alternative food source for these populations, and the activities encouraged consumption of underutilized species, knowledge exchange, and conservation of ecotypes and plant species able to withstand marginal conditions.
CommunityFood sovereignty & justiceFood educationSamuel W. Lewis · Scholarship @ Claremont (The Claremont Colleges) · United States (California)
In summer 2010, 11 high school students from under-resourced communities in Pomona, Montclair, La Puente, and Chino Hills, California, were paid to participate for six weeks (five days a week, 30 hours a week) in the Youth Earth Connections (YEC) summer internship program, funded by the 2010 Davis Projects for Peace and a Pomona College Summer Undergraduate Research Project Award. The program was designed to connect movements for food and environmental justice with farming work, and weekly survey responses from interns suggest that experiential urban farming programs at the high school level can connect students with issues of environmentalism and social justice and motivate action against the industrial food system and the environmental injustices they experience.
Food educationCommunityFood sovereignty & justiceEdna Bonacich, Jake Alimahomed‐Wilson · Souls · United States (California)
The role of capitalism in the ecological crisis and jobs crisis facing the Los Angeles African American community is examined, arguing that sectors of Black Americans, like many people in the Global South, are being pushed out of the formal system of capitalist employment. In response, the paper looks to delinking and the development of economic experiments rooted in community economic self-determination based on anti-capitalist values, reporting on a small urban farming project the authors are starting.
Food sovereignty & justiceCommunityEconomics石嫣, 程存旺, 雷鹏, 朱艺, 贾阳, 温铁军 · 贵州社会科学 · China
International experience indicates that the development of ecological urban agriculture is inseparable from the rise of a middle-income group, characterized by taking responsibility for social stability, holding non-extreme policy positions, and — in consumption — emphasizing environmental protection and advocating green consumption. The paper argues that urban agriculture must foreground an ecological theme to attract this middle-income consumer group, gain support from a consumer base of sufficient scale, and allow the multifunctionality of ecological urban agriculture to be realized and exercised.
CSA & TeikeiCommunityEconomics· Lincoln (University of Nebraska) · United States
The May 2011 issue table of contents for NEBLINE, a newsletter published by the University of Nebraska-Lincoln Extension. It lists a feature on nature, gardening and science in a butterfly garden, alongside sections on urban agriculture, 4-H and youth programs, nutrition education, and Family and Community Education (FCE) club news.
Food educationCommunity