Research & reports

Rocío Pérez-Campaña · European Planning Studies · Spain

This research analyzed land-use transformations of peri-urban agricultural deltas and vegas in Andalucía, Spain, focusing on medium-sized cities between 1956 and 2007. It also assessed their consideration in regional spatial planning. The findings indicate that these landscapes are changing land use and sometimes disappearing, receiving meagre attention and vague consideration in spatial planning.

Haoluan Wang, Brent Swallow · 2015 AAEA & WAEA Joint Annual Meeting, July 26-28, San Francisco, California · Canada (Edmonton)

This research aims to assess the multiple values of agricultural land in the Alberta Capital Region, Canada, where significant agricultural land conversion has occurred. The study's objectives are to estimate residents' values for conserving land in different agricultural uses, explore links between these values and residents' affinity for ecosystem goods and services, and identify public interest areas for agricultural conservation. The methodology began with focus group discussions.

Gioia Gibelli · TERRITORIO · Italy (Milan)

Agriculture has long been an important resource for Milan and its surroundings, with its significance increasing in recent years. Agricultural areas near the city can enhance urban metabolism and citizens' quality of life through ecosystem and landscape services, providing cultural and environmental services, and improving urban resilience. In this context, two important initiatives, the Agricultural District of Milan (DAM) and 'Parco delle Risaie', have been underway in Milan since 2008.

Giuseppe Cinà, Francesco Di Iacovo · PORTO Publications Open Repository TOrino (Politecnico di Torino) · Italy

This paper examines urban and peri-urban agriculture (UPA) in Italy, identifying challenges in its planning, including the traditional exclusion of agricultural areas from territorial planning and the lack of local agricultural policy. The study highlights a disconnect between top-down policies and bottom-up practices, noting that numerous autonomous initiatives have emerged due to insufficient regional and local planning solutions. The authors conclude that overcoming the limitations of the top-down planning system, particularly in governance and inclusiveness, is a primary challenge for Italy.

Valerio Moretti, Adele Sateriano, Marco Zitti, Luca Salvati · · Europe

This article discusses the relationship between landscape and peri-urban agriculture and its implications for rural area management in the northern Mediterranean basin. It proposes a framework to evaluate the links between agro-forest systems and expanding urban settlements. The study advocates for a sustainable land management perspective in policies to preserve fringe land from excessive settlement scattering and landscape fragmentation, contributing to systemic and multi-scale approaches for territorial policies and integrated management of peri-urban agricultural landscapes.

Pay Drechsel, Keraita, Bernard N. · CGSPace A Repository of Agricultural Research Outputs (Consultative Group for International Agricultural Research) · Global

A CGIAR (Consultative Group for International Agricultural Research) perspective piece on food and water challenges at the urban-rural interface amid global urbanization. It states that in low-income countries, investments in waste management and sanitation are not keeping pace with population growth, so the urban "return flow" of waste is not adequately managed. Where polluted water is used for irrigation to feed cities, food safety becomes a crucial component of food security. The piece explicitly states that urban and peri-urban farming systems — often run by the informal sector — are the systems most affected by this resource competition and pollution. It describes CGIAR's Water, Land and Ecosystems (WLE) research program as working at the interface of agriculture and sanitation to address these urbanization-related challenges and opportunities.

I Ketut Sardiana · Bumi Lestari Journal of Environment · Indonesia

A field survey using subak (traditional Balinese irrigation) units as sampling points, with soil properties analyzed by standard laboratory methods, evaluated land suitability for horticultural and medicinal crops in Denpasar, Bali, Indonesia, to support agricultural planning that protects the subak system amid land conversion to tourism development. Land was found "very suitable" (S1) for rice, and "suitable" (S) for vegetables, fruit and medicinal plants with two limiting factors — poor drainage and fine soil texture — leading to recommendations for drainage improvement, organic matter addition, and zoned land-use planning by season and location (rice in the rainy season, flowers in the north, fruit and vegetables in the central area, and vegetables and secondary crops in the south).

M. Osman, G. Ravindra Chary, S. S. Balloli, Shaik Haffis · Indian Journal of Dryland Agricultural Research and Development · India

This study, conducted in three districts of Telangana State, India (Adilabad, Nalgonda, and Warangal), used net returns from crops, fruit trees, and livestock to identify sustainable and profitable land uses, estimate credit requirements, and formulate a credit investment action plan, surveying 270 respondents (90 per district). Based on system index and benefit-cost ratio (BCR), the study identified profitable crop and livestock enterprises, with BCR ranging from 1.58 for cotton-pigeonpea intercropping in rural Adilabad to 3.98 for soybean-pigeonpea intercropping in peri-urban Adilabad. For fruit trees (15-year lifespan), payback periods of 5-7 years were found, with BCR of 1.61-2.07 and net present values (at 2010 prices) of 267 crore for sweet orange in Nalgonda and 109 crore for mango in Warangal. Returns per rupee invested in large ruminant (dairy) rearing ranged from 3.04 to 3.44, and for small ruminants from 4.05 to 5.54 across the three districts. The study reports large credit demand from the farming community and formulates a district-level investment action plan with policy implications.

Gabriela Civeira Hermida · · Argentina

Peri-urban agroforestry — combining agricultural and forestry species on small urban plots — was evaluated for its potential to sequester carbon and produce electrical and thermal energy at the municipal level across the Buenos Aires Metropolitan Area (AMBA), Argentina. Carbon sequestration was estimated between 200 and 400,000 tonnes per year, thermal energy between 0.5 and 200 MJ depending on the hectares in each municipality, and electrical energy between 10 and 15,000 kW, leading to the conclusion that agroforestry can generate jobs, food, and bioenergy while reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

Joseph Claghorn, Francesco Orsini, Carlos Restrepo, Christian Werthmann · urbe Revista Brasileira de Gestão Urbana · Colombia

A report on a four-phase research and implementation proposal to anticipate and mitigate landslide risk in low-income settlements on the mountainous urban periphery of Medellín, Colombia. A collaboration between a team of landscape architects from Germany and urbanists in Medellín proposes five pilot projects testing risk-mitigation strategies: monitoring and early-warning systems, drainage improvements, urban agriculture, slope forestation, and site development with basic services.

王东升, 刘家琴 · 果农之友 · China

A journalistic feature marks the first anniversary of Beijing's first "urban agriculture science courtyard," jointly established by the Beijing and Changping soil-fertilizer stations and China Agricultural University at the Xinchengyuan fruit cooperative in Changping district. The article describes on-site visits documenting the courtyard's work extending urban agriculture technology, training new-type professional farmers, and hosting researchers and graduate students on-site to provide free, barrier-free, immediate technical services aimed at boosting strawberry yields, resource efficiency, and farmer income, without giving specific quantitative results.

Alejandra S. Coronel, 1 Climatología, Facultad de Ciencias Agrarias Universidad Nacional de Rosario (FCA-UNR), Rosario, Argentina;, Susana R. Feldman, Emliano Jozami, Kehoe Facundo, Rubén D. Piacentini, Marielle Dubbeling, Francisco J. Escobedo · AIMS environmental science · Brazil

Using digital sensors at eight sites in Rosario, Argentina, from September 2013 to August 2014 — three unvegetated sites in the city center, one city-center site with street trees, one urban agriculture site, one public park, and two peri-urban agricultural sites — this study measured air temperature and, defining a comfort range of 18–24°C, analyzed how different green areas used for urban and peri-urban agriculture and forestry (UPAF) affect daily temperature and cooling/heating requirements. Air temperature in the unvegetated city center was higher than at other vegetated sites during both day and night, except at the city-center site with street trees. Temperature effects in the roughly 0.2-hectare urban agriculture garden were similar to those of the larger, 2–3-hectare parks and gardens. Based on cooling degree days, three UPAF types were classified with progressively lower cooling demand — (1) treeless city center, (2) city center with street trees and public parks, and (3) urban and peri-urban agriculture areas — with the opposite ranking found for heating degree days. The authors state the results can inform the integration of UPAF measures into climate-change mitigation and urban planning policy in medium-sized cities in the developing world.

Emanuele Blasi, Clara Cicatiello, Barbara Pancino, Silvio Franco · Agricultural and Food Economics · Italy

Peri-urban agriculture is exposed to pressures toward diversification and multifunctionality, developing differently depending on territorial features. A paper studies the case of Trentino, an Italian Alpine region where the ratio of urban to rural domain is heavily skewed toward the latter and farms face environmental problems that jeopardize their competitiveness in mainstream markets, comparing the development of alternative food chains there with other Italian peri-urban areas. The mountain environment makes it difficult for farms to standardize products to large retailers' requirements, but alternative food chains endorse and communicate to the market the typicality of products and farmers' savoir-faire, the two main factors of added value. Survey data from short food chain consumers show they are inherently more attentive to these product cues, as a result of a lifestyle more attached to identity and origins, and prouder of their territory. These findings confirm that, given its structural and cultural traits, alternative food markets in the Trentino area are meaningful for the survival and development of the local agricultural sector.

Georges Courade · Recherches Internationales · Africa

This essay examines the food challenge facing an increasingly populous and urbanized Africa, worsened by land grabs for biofuels and food production destined elsewhere, climate change and speculative management of food security; it states a quarter of Africans, and more than a third of young children, remain malnourished. It argues that responses from peasant agriculture untouched by the green revolution are insufficient, but points to paths toward food sovereignty: agricultural policy favoring family farms, urban agriculture, diversified agroecological models, stock-based food policy, and peasant organizations.

Imogen Bellwood‐Howard, Volker Häring, Hanna Karg, Regina Roessler, Johannes Schlesinger, Martina Shakya · · Africa

A working paper in the IWMI (International Water Management Institute) series reporting an exploratory survey of urban and peri-urban agriculture characteristics conducted in Tamale, Ghana, and Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso. The available abstract text describes only the series' purpose — recording IWMI researchers' work and findings, including project reports, case studies, conference proceedings and discussion papers — and does not state the survey's specific results.

Roberto Aguilera Peña · OBSERVATÓRIO DE LA ECONOMÍA LATINOAMERICANA · Colombia

This paper argues that an "integral farm" (granja integral) functions as a life project for families in rural communities and in the large cities of Ecuador and elsewhere, offering not only improved nutrition but also an opportunity to live in harmony with nature while conserving and preserving the environment without significant impacts on ecosystem components or biocenosis. Urban gardens are described as contributing to community food provision while also creating business opportunities, and the paper argues for the importance of building alliances between small food producers on integral farms and supermarkets. It describes supermarkets as a distribution channel with growing demand, with much of the fresh food supply coming from urban or rural family and community gardens applying good agricultural practices, creating opportunities for sustainable strategic alliances.

Rosa Maria Vitrano · Nova Science Publishers (Nova Science Publishers, Inc.) · Europe (Italy)

This study of green-envelope building redevelopment in Palma di Montechiaro, in Italy's Agrigento Province, combined testing of innovative products for realizing vertical gardens with the design of guidelines for the architectural and environmental transformation of the Marina Todaro waterfront promenade. The work was framed as a means of defining prospects for Palma di Montechiaro to be considered a green city of Agrigento Province, exploring scenarios of green urban design and urban agriculture still little practiced in the area. Its originality lay in a participatory approach carried out on-site, positioning residents as the primary agents of the environmental regeneration project.

Luisa Pedrazzini · TERRITORIO · Europe

This dossier compiles contributions from an international workshop, "Spatial and Landscape Planning and Design in EU and Lombardy," held at Politecnico di Milano in June 2013. It presents experiences from the EU, Île-de-France, Lombardy, and the United States, highlighting the distinctive features of peri-urban space and landscape and the potential of peri-urban agriculture.

Flavio Lupia, Giuseppe Pulighe · Agriculture and Agricultural Science Procedia · Italy

Using a 2014 Italian Institute of Agricultural Economics (INEA) inventory of roughly 2,700 residential kitchen-garden parcels around Rome, Italy, mapped by photointerpretation of high-resolution Google Earth imagery and field validation, this study estimated irrigation water demand for the April-September growing season under different land uses and two irrigation systems, using average climatic data from 1950-2000, and evaluated a rainwater-harvesting scenario as an alternative or supplement to current water sources, which in Rome include municipal supply as well as legal and illegal well, canal and river abstraction.

Secretaría Distrital de Ambiente de Bogotá · Observatorio Ambiental de Bogotá · Colombia

The Bogotá Environmental Observatory reported on 11 September 2015 that the city, via Acuerdo 605 de 2015, established guidelines to institutionalize a sustainable, low-cost Urban and Peri-urban Agroecological Agriculture program. The program includes eight farming systems -- vertical agriculture, biointensive systems, floating roots, raised beds, agricultural recycling, family farming, biological fertilizer production and biocontrol preparation -- coordinated by the District Secretariat of Environment together with the José Celestino Mutis Botanical Garden and the Secretariats of Social Integration, Economic Development, Government and Health.

Nimoh Fred, Ohene-Yankyera Kwasi, Poku Kofi, Konradsen Flemming, Claude-François Robert · Journal of Development and Agricultural Economics · Ghana

A study in Ghana's Shai-Osudoku district investigated farmers' attitudes toward excreta reuse for peri-urban agriculture, surveying 400 randomly selected respondents. A majority of respondents disagreed that excreta are waste and were willing to use them as fertilizer. However, a majority also agreed that excreta can pose health risks, and perceptions on reuse differed among households.

Inmaculada Marques-Pérez, Baldomero Segura García del Río, Concepción Maroto · Spanish Journal of Agricultural Research · Spain (Valencia)

This paper presented a descriptive approach to the multifunctionality of agricultural systems and described a methodological approach to evaluate social preferences for multifunctional peri-urban agriculture. This approach is based on a review of scientific literature focused on multifunctionality and the goods and services of agricultural systems. The proposed methodology was applied to the "Huerta de Valencia," a rich peri-urban agricultural system with diverse resources, yielding results useful for enriching the political-institutional debate on defining its protection scheme.

Emmanuelle Vaudour, Christine Aubry, Liliane Bel, Laëtitia Bréchet, Philippe Cambier, Yves Coquet, Karim Dhaouadi, Veronique V. Etievant, Benoît Gabrielle, Jean-Marc J.-M. Gilliot, Jean Christophe Gueudet, Dalila Hadjar, Jonas Hamiache, Sabine Houot, Christophe Labat, Patricia Laville, Raia Silvia Massad, Joël Michelin, Paul Emile Noirot Cosson, Jean-Noël Rampon · HAL (Le Centre pour la Communication Scientifique Directe) · France

The PROSTOCK project aimed to spatially assess the potential of recycling organic waste (exogenous organic matter, EOM) to improve soil organic carbon stocks (SCS) in peri-urban agricultural areas. It also evaluated the impacts of EOM use on greenhouse gas emissions and nitrate leaching. The Versailles Plain and Alluets Plateau (221 km²) were chosen as the study region, with field and lab measurements collected from over 250 point locations. The project advanced the use of imaging data for estimating topsoil organic carbon content (SOC) from soil reflectance spectra, but found that medium spatial resolution multispectral satellite images do not discriminate changes in SOC resulting from EOM applications.

Izeldin A. Babiker · Journal of animal research · Saudi Arabia

This study aims to characterize the diversity of camel production systems in Saudi Arabia, with a focus on peri-urban camel production. Socio-economic changes post-petroleum era led Bedouins to settle in urban areas, increasing demand for camel milk from an urbanized population. This stimulated the development of peri-urban camel dairy production, which the study seeks to describe in terms of production orientation, resource endowments, and strategies.

Muhammad Zaman, Faqir Muhammad Anjum, Ali Asghar, Muhammad Sajid · · Pakistan

This study estimated organophosphate pesticide exposure from okra and brinjal consumption in urban populations of Punjab, Pakistan. 90 samples each of okra and brinjal were collected from peri-urban areas of Faisalabad, Multan, and Gujranwala and analyzed for chlorpyrifos, profenophos, and triazophos residues. Findings showed that 85 (47.22%) of the 180 samples were contaminated, and 15 (8.33%) samples had residue values higher than Maximum Residue Limits (MRLs).