Research & reports

Gaspard Ntabakirabose, Maniriho Festus, Tuyisenge Jean Claude, Harold Ogwal, David Mwehia Mburu · International Journal of Environmental Protection and Policy · Africa

A study of smallholder vegetable- and fruit-growing households in Kigali City and Musanze District, Rwanda (Gasabo, Kicukiro, Nyarugenge and Musanze districts), used multistage purposive sampling on a population of 1,085 households, surveying 112 respondents. Of 14 factors examined, 10 positively influenced urban farming production and 4 influenced it negatively. Crops were grown in bags, baskets, hanging baskets, old tires, pallet gardens, open ground, trellises and window-box fences, doing well even in small plots enclosed within household compounds. Urban farming contributed to malnutrition control, household savings and food security, but was constrained by small plot sizes, limited farming knowledge and technology, crop maturation time, lack of capital, low awareness, housing arrangements and inadequate infrastructure.

Nova Southeastern University · NSUWorks (Nova Southeastern University) · United States

A description of the "Get Well" Community Garden and Eat Well Project — the Community Health Intervention Program in Neighborhood Gardens (CHIPING) — in the United States. The project's stated aim is to determine whether providing community gardens in diverse low-income neighborhoods promotes health by increasing knowledge of healthier food choices and increasing access to foods rich in micronutrients.

Asaduddin Abdullah, Dikky Indrawan, Anggi Mayang Sari, Asep Rakhmat · Policy Brief Pertanian Kelautan dan Biosains Tropika · Indonesia

A policy brief on the urgency of developing innovative urban farming in Indonesia as a response to challenges in urban food security and nutrition. It discusses urban farming's role not only in increasing food availability but in achieving locally based nutritious food, preserving local wisdom, supporting a free nutritious food program, and contributing to poverty reduction and environmental quality. It states that implementation remains constrained by existing policy limitations, and calls for comprehensive policy change including integrating urban farming into urban spatial planning, building community capacity, and providing infrastructure, technology, and public awareness support.

Eduardo Chierrito de Arruda, Gabriela Costa Alves, Catherine Menegaldi Silva, Barbara Macedo Soares de Araujo, Rute Grossi Milani · LA Referencia (Red Federada de Repositorios Institucionales de Publicaciones Científicas) · Brazil

A study in Brazil used the Affective Map Generator Instrument to interview 40 community garden users aged 45 to 80 about their emotional experiences during gardening activities. Analysis of the images produced showed that experiences in these gardens were mediated by feelings of pleasantness, belonging and restoration, with connection to nature and social interaction as the most cited senses.

Anant Bahadur, Anish Kumar Singh, Hare Krishna, Rajeev Kumar, V. K. Patel, Tusar Kanti Behera · Indian Journal of Horticulture · India

Over three years (2019-2022) at ICAR-IIVR, Varanasi, India, researchers grafted four brinjal cultivars and three tomato cultivars as scions onto the vigorous, waterlogging- and salinity-tolerant brinjal rootstock IC 111056 to produce dual-fruiting 'Brimato' plants. The Kashi Manohar scion combined with Kashi Aman or Kashi Chayan gave the highest brinjal fruit numbers, while Kashi Aman combined with the Kashi Sandesh rootstock hybrid gave the highest tomato fruit numbers; the Kashi Sandesh + Kashi Chayan combination produced the highest total fruit yield at 2.58 kg/plant, and Kashi Aman + Kashi Sandesh reached a cumulative yield of 5.98 kg/plant. Photosynthetic rate and chlorophyll fluorescence varied significantly by scion, with Kashi Manohar and Kashi Aman showing the highest photosynthetic rates, and grafted plants showed higher vitamin C and β-carotene content.

Karuniawan Puji Wicaksono, Setyono Yudo Tyasmoro, Akbar Saitama, Paramyta Nila Permatasari · International Journal of Environment Agriculture and Biotechnology · Indonesia

A study in Kedungkandang District, Malang City, Indonesia (May-September 2022) assessed agrotourism potential across four sub-districts using direct-observation survey and SWOT analysis, in an area with average temperatures of 22.7-25.1°C and humidity of 79-86%. Identified strengths included government-owned land available for agrotourism use, existing paddy-based agrotourism integrated with sheep farming and fisheries, a nearby Masked Village aerial-photography tourist site, multiple potential locations for agrotourism-based edutourism, and community enthusiasm. The study concludes that agrotourism development in Tlogowaru sub-district should be organized around two functions: lodging and trade, and agriculture, animal husbandry and fishery education.

· Corporate Philanthropy Report · United States

The Sprouts Healthy Communities Foundation, the philanthropic arm of Sprouts Farmers Market in the United States, awarded $4 million to neighborhood elementary schools and local nonprofits through its annual grants program, funded partly by customer checkout round-up donations. Individual grants ranged from $5,000 to $10,000 across three categories: Sprouting School Gardens for school-based gardening programs, Growing Healthy Kids for community-based children's nutrition programs, and Wellness Across the Lifespan for adult health and wellness programs. The foundation has awarded more than $25 million in such grants since 2015.

Cody Gusto, Catherine Campbell, Annie Wallau, Wendy Wood · Journal of Agriculture Food Systems and Community Development · United States

With Family and Consumer Sciences (FCS) Extension educators in the United States seeking new audiences amid reduced enrollment and a lack of unified vision, workplace wellness and education programs are identified as an emerging opportunity, particularly to complement workplace Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) programs that connect local farmers and employees via employer-sponsored cost-offsets. A study assessed potential workplace wellness program participants' perceived knowledge, attitudes, and barriers to purchasing and cooking local food, and their preferred information types and program format, to guide development of a local food health and wellness education program. Respondents had positive attitudes about local food but limited knowledge of how to purchase and prepare it. They indicated that information on those topics, plus information on unusual locally grown fruits and vegetables and reducing food waste, would be most useful, and preferred online program offerings during weekday lunchtimes.

Miguel Angelo Rodrigues, Silvia Adriana da Silva Soares, A. F. V. BISCARO, R. V. MARTINS, Rafael C. Dutra · Editora Científica Digital eBooks · Brazil

This report documents an interdisciplinary school activity in Mato Grosso do Sul, Brazil, built around the Agrinho program and centered on urban, social and sustainable agriculture. Activities included classroom discussion, a video, a body-mass-index exercise linking math and science, visits to organic and hydroponic garden beds from bed preparation to fertilizing, and a closing essay; the report states that cross-disciplinary integration and partnerships with the municipal agriculture department were key to the activities' success.

Jagarlamudi Nethra, B. Srinivasulu, Vadada Vinay Kumar, C. Lakshmana Rao · International Journal of Environment and Climate Change · Global

This review surveys nutrient-rich microgreens with emphasis on their role in urban agriculture, covering nutritional composition, culinary applications and cultivation techniques through an agronomy, nutrition and urban-planning lens, without presenting specific experimental data or figures.

Nafisah Awang, Suhana Saad, Sarmila Md Sum · International Journal of Academic Research in Business and Social Sciences · Malaysia

A discussion of Malaysia's government Urban Agriculture Program, which promotes farming on unused spaces such as rooftops and empty lots, including rooftop gardens, community gardens, vertical farming and hydroponics, against a backdrop in which 76% of Malaysia's population lives in cities and faces difficulty accessing affordable, nutritious food. It describes support for urban farmers from the Department of Agriculture (DOA) and the Malaysian Agricultural Research and Development Institute (MARDI), and states that urban agriculture provides improved food access, income generation, social interaction and community empowerment, arguing that participation, knowledge sharing and skills development drive economic empowerment.

M Abror, A. Miftakhurrohmat, Andriani Eko Prihatiningrum, Ade Eviyanti · Journal of Social Comunity Services (JSCS) · Indonesia

This community-outreach program in Candi District, Indonesia, targeted the Muhammadiyah Student Association (IPM), a youth organization, aiming to improve members' understanding and skills in vertical culture cultivation as a way to optimize narrow urban land for agriculture, delivered through structured socialization, training, and mentoring. Participants gained the ability to design and implement vertical culture systems, agricultural productivity improved in both quantity and quality of harvests, and the program evaluation showed a significant increase in participant knowledge.

Sonnur Öztürk, Michelle Forsythe · Journal of Agricultural Education · United States

A pilot instructional intervention on permaculture was implemented within an elementary science methods course for preservice teachers (PSTs) in the United States. The intervention had four components — background readings and videos, guided discussion, a food forest design activity, and a lesson plan analysis activity — with data drawn from pre/post-tests, the lesson analysis activity, and daily reflections. After the intervention, PSTs self-reported higher knowledge of permaculture topics and ways to use permaculture in their classrooms, and effectively linked permaculture-based lesson plans to elementary learning standards. PSTs viewed permaculture-based lessons positively as active, real-life learning experiences supporting environmental consciousness, but identified cost and time as barriers to classroom implementation, and viewed the developmental appropriateness and spatial resources required as both advantages and disadvantages.

Emily Harris, Ilana Lowe, Lindsey Mohan, Whitney Cohen, Sara E. Severance, Terra Giotta, Carlo Albano, Jeffrey Snowden · Science and Children · United States

This is a practice report describing "Designing Trellises," a guided grade 3-5 engineering unit set in a U.S. school garden. Students work collaboratively toward a shared classroom goal of designing, researching, prototyping, building, and testing 2-3 pea plant trellises for the school garden. Through this process — asking questions, planning and carrying out investigations, and designing solutions, among other science and engineering practices — students work out the disciplinary core ideas of balanced and unbalanced forces. At the end of the unit, teachers and students reported that students felt a strong sense of agency and pride from asking and answering questions and creating designs that mattered to them and their school community.

Andin Irsadi, Partaya Partaya, Abdul Jabbar · Jurnal Abdimas · Indonesia

Tanjung Mas Village in North Semarang District, Semarang City, Indonesia, is vulnerable to food insecurity due to a high level of poverty, since poor residents are unable to either produce or buy sufficient food. This has prompted government and residents to try to secure food independently through farming, though limited availability of agricultural land has hampered these efforts. This community-service program aimed to provide knowledge and skills and to facilitate urban farming facilities to achieve food independence in Tanjung Mas, using methods including socialization, counseling, dissemination, training, and facilitation of urban farming facilities. As a result, the community gained an understanding of urban farming, learned about urban farming technologies, acquired verticulture skills, and verticulture facilities were established as learning demonstration plots.

Colleen Saxen, Yoko Miura, Alan R. Wight, Michelle A. Fleming · Educational Action Research · United States

Using Participatory Action Research (PAR) with community partners and school staff who led a school garden project in a low-income neighborhood of a small mid-western U.S. city, this study explored the meaning of the garden through photovoice, mapping, and interviews. Three overarching themes emerged from participants' perspectives: community, empowerment, and justice. The garden project was experienced as holding depth of possibility for participants that went beyond the typical outcome measures — content knowledge, physical health, and ecological stewardship — used to assess school gardens.

Nurul Hidayati, Pienyani Rosawanti, Djoko Eko Hadi Susilo, Fahruddin Arfianto, Hariyadi Hariyadi · Daun Jurnal Ilmiah Pertanian dan Kehutanan · Indonesia

This experimental and descriptive study examines the implementation of urban farming techniques — vertical gardening, hydroponics, potted plants (tabulapot), and cultivation in sacks and planters — in urban areas of Indonesia, focusing on household food security. Sweet potato was chosen for its ease of growth and environmental adaptability, with both tubers and leaves usable as vegetables. Regression correlation analysis found sweet potato productivity of 1.4 kg per 40 kg sack with 10 cuttings per sack, a strong positive correlation of 96.77% between tuber count and total weight per sack (y = 71.069x - 878.93), and a strong positive correlation of 83.05% between tuber count and individual tuber weight (y = 1.6985x - 9.87), indicating that more tubers did not reduce individual tuber weight. A household growing 10 sacks was calculated to have a potential yield of 14,000 grams (14 kg).

Essi Lamberg · The Journal of Architecture · Africa

A case study of the Tanga, Mbeya and Moshi master plans (1973-1975) in Tanzania, developed with Finnish technical assistance, challenges the conventional narrative that Nordic countries acted as neutral, benevolent foreign aid agents. The analysis shows Finnish planners operating in an ambivalent environment combining colonial heritage, decolonial policy and neo-colonial practice, developing a planning approach that translated travelling concepts of suburbanization, neighborhood models and urban gardening into the language of Tanzanian decolonial policy. The three master plans used garden city planning ideas to extend planning principles formerly reserved for the white European elite to the entire urban population, in service of the socialist ujamaa project.

Victor Crespo de Oliveira, Leonardo França da Silva, Érika Manuela Gonçalves Lopes, Ana Carolina Chaves Dourado, Matheus Mendes Reis, Bruna Nogueira Rezende, Letícia Duron Cury, Cássio Furtado Lima, Fabiane de Fátima Maciel, Silvana Ferreira Bicalho, Ariadna Faria Vieira · · Europe

Noting that global population growth is raising concerns about the sustainability of cities and soils, climate change, and food access and security, and that many urban areas face challenges related to their food supply infrastructure, this paper positions urban agriculture as a potential contributor to food security and income generation for impoverished households, while noting that conventional agriculture contributes to soil erosion and soil/groundwater pollution, and that climate change disrupts animal life cycles and drives species extinction, reducing food availability for humans and other organisms. Within this framing, the paper presents aquaponics as a method integrating urban agriculture for plant cultivation with safe fish production, and reports a project to develop and install an optimized aquaponics system at the School of Engineering, Polytechnic of Porto (ISEP). The soil-less vertical garden was built using two tanks holding approximately 2,000 liters of water, spanning three floors with three planter boxes and more than 120 positions for growing vegetables. Pedagogical activities were also carried out, involving students from Bioresources, Chemical Engineering, Biomedical Engineering, Electrical and Computer Engineering, Mechanical Engineering and Informatics Engineering.

Andree Wijaya Setiawan, Yohanes Hendro Agus, Nugraheni Widyawati, Endang Pudjihartati, Maria Marina Herawati, Suprihati Suprihati, Djoko Murdono, Kezia Natalia, Jonathan Galih Raka Kusuma, Sabrina Ayu, Exvaricha Exvaricha, Yuliana Pratiwi Asti · JMM (Jurnal Masyarakat Mandiri) · Indonesia

In Semarang Regency, Indonesia, a community-service programme delivered adult-learning (Andragogy) lectures and hands-on practice in urban-agriculture-based appropriate technologies to 50 participants, including high school students, high school teachers, PKK (family welfare) members and village officials, to address household-level stunting prevention. Post-activity questionnaire evaluation found 84% of participants gained knowledge related to the material, and 86% became skilled and wanted to apply what they had learned.

Maira Mubashir, Romaina Iqbal, Sabahat Naz · Journal of the Pakistan Medical Association · Asia

A commentary in the Journal of the Pakistan Medical Association argues that 82% of adolescents are at risk of non-communicable diseases due to physical inactivity and low fruit and vegetable intake, citing a Karachi study in which schoolchildren's consumption of discretionary foods exceeded their vegetable intake. The piece presents school kitchen gardens as a strategy to promote dietary diversification and vegetable consumption, describing them as an interactive platform where children plant, tend, and harvest produce while learning about vegetable types, growth, and nutritional value, and cites a prior systematic review reporting improved children's knowledge of food, nutrition, gardening, and science.

Edson Fonseca de Oliveira, René Eugênio Seifert, Thiago Cavalcante Nascimento, Luan Matheus Pedrozo Kolachnek · Revista de Economia e Sociologia Rural · Brazil

A qualitative, descriptive-exploratory multicase comparative study of Curitiba, Brazil, characterized three modes of urban agriculture organization based on Feniman's (2014) typology: Assisted, Vernacular, and Politicized. The Assisted mode was technically driven and dependent on government assistance, favoring production of market-value species, with formalized social structures that limited internal and external social integration and less use of unconventional production technologies. The Vernacular mode had an informal, affective structure valuing ancestral knowledge and traditional practices anchored in strong family ties. The Politicized mode expressed participants' desire to make urban agriculture integrative, alternative, sovereign, autonomous, and innovative, but showed limitations in building a stable communal life.

B. Hari Saptaning Tyas, Condrodewi Puspitasari, Fadjarini Sulistyowati, Widati Widati · JMM - Jurnal Masyarakat Merdeka · Indonesia

A community outreach activity in RT 13 and RT 14 of Kampung Surokarsan, along the Code River in Yogyakarta, Indonesia, facilitated the launch of an urban-farming-based culinary tourism village. Building on a pre-masterplan drafted in 2023 activities, the project socialized the plan, facilitated village deliberation to formulate an action plan, and conducted capacity-building training for residents. Participants included a tourism awareness group, village officials, RT 13/14 leaders, local farmer groups, and resident representatives; questionnaire responses indicated participants found the training beneficial and expressed intent to develop the culinary village concept together with nearby water tourism, and a WhatsApp group was formed for ongoing communication.

Pamela Eduarda Lopes dos Santos Rezena, Luciana Boemer Cesar Pereira, Mariana Ranchuka dos Santos, Anelize Queiroz Amaral, Geisiane dos Santos de Souza · Revista de Gestão Social e Ambiental · Brazil

At a public elementary school (Foz do Chopim Municipal School) in the riverside community of Foz do Chopim, in the municipality of Cruzeiro do Iguaçu, Paraná, Brazil, a university extension workshop run jointly by the Sala +Verde and Hortas projects built a school garden to teach environmental education themes including care for the environment, the society-nature relationship, sustainable societies and food sovereignty. The workshop produced a sense of belonging and care for the garden space among participating students and gave them practical information to take home.

· Civil War Book Review · United States

A Fall 2024 magazine issue profiling research activity at the LSU AgCenter covers researcher Erin Oberhaus's work collecting data to inform Louisiana horse owners about medication use, a water quality specialist's study of whether noneconomic water bodies including agricultural ponds could help generate electricity, results from soybean studies, and success stories from the AgCenter's farm-to-school program involving school gardens across the state.