Research & reports

Sara Nicholls, Special Collections, Fleet Library · Digital Commons - RISD (Rhode Island School of Design) · United States

"Silty Loam" is an informational pamphlet exploring various methods of food cultivation in urban environments and the motivations behind them. The pamphlet examines how city residents have challenged the separation of agriculture and urban life through initiatives like community gardens, community land trusts, and rooftop gardens. It is part of the "Brain Washing From Phone Towers" series, produced by hand using letterpress and relief printing to combine text and images.

Christy Gene Somsen · Digital Commons - USU (Utah State University) · United States (Utah)

Farmers’ markets, Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) programs, and community gardens, while aiming to help low-income families access fresh produce, often assist more middle-class families. In Utah, these programs could be improved, as the state does not utilize the WIC Farmers’ Market Nutrition Program or accept WIC Cash Value Vouchers, and has few Farm to School Programs.

Manuela Maluf Santos, Paulo Eduardo Moruzzi Marques · Estudos Avançados · Brazil (São Paulo)

This article conceptually explores the "locavorism" food activism movement, noting that its practical application can have diverse and even antagonistic effects. To analyze these contradictions, two farmer organizations in São Paulo involved in local consumption circuits were interviewed to understand the potential social and environmental effects of this purchasing model. The abstract does not present the findings of these interviews.

Ana Júlia Maia Mairink, Alice Menezes Monteiro, Rejane Magiag Loura, Tiago Almeida Nogueira · · Brazil (Belo Horizonte)

This study provided academic and technical support for designing low-environmental-impact solutions to infrastructure deficiencies at the "Coqueiro Verde" Collective/Community Urban Agriculture Production Unit in Belo Horizonte, Brazil, to develop urban resilience strategies. A participatory diagnosis identified problems such as water scarcity and mismanagement, lack of sanitation, and the need for easy implementation and low cost. Primary solutions selected were the dimensioning of an Evapotranspiration Tank and the modular design of a support point based on soil-cement blocks.

Rebecca Amato · Amsterdam University Press eBooks · United States (New York City)

This chapter discusses the historical production and perception of "empty space" in New York City, from settler colonialism to gentrification, driven by techniques like filtering and declaring vacancy. It highlights how the acceleration of development to maintain world city status threatens alternative visions like cooperative centers and community gardens. These alternative uses are presented as models for inclusive cities, despite being under threat.

Karen Besterman‐Dahan, Sarah Bradley, Nora B. Arriola, Kiersten Downs · Wellbeing Space and Society · United States

In collaboration with a local garden, an evaluation explored the perceived benefits of gardening for veterans from two Veterans Affairs (VA) programs in the United States. Using focus groups and photovoice methods, four main benefits of participation were revealed: supporting mental and emotional wellbeing, improving socialization and comradery, nurturing life and identity, and learning new skills.

Brian Bartell · Rethinking Marxism · United States

This essay in Rethinking Marxism revisits the writings and Detroit urban agriculture activism of James and Grace Lee Boggs, arguing that their 1960s theorization linked automation, land and racialized dispossession under racial capitalism, and that they called for postgrowth, postscarcity economies built on urban land marked by Fordist-era waste and toxicity.

Athayde Leite de Sá Filho, Mariana Gomes Kottas, José Edilson dos Santos Júnior, Vivianni Marques Leite dos Santos · Journal on Innovation and Sustainability RISUS · Brazil

This literature-based review of urban gardens (hortas urbanas) in Brazil describes the sector's evolution, challenges and outlook, arguing that Brazil has favorable natural conditions and that urban gardens are among the fastest-growing components of the country's agroecological sector, while identifying the need for incentive policies, public awareness, farming-space planning and greater research investment as conditions for further consolidation.

Daniel Remley, Glennon Sweeney, Julie Fox, Laquore Ja Meadows · Journal of Human Sciences and Extension · United States

U.S. Cooperative Extension is positioned to address suburban food insecurity, citing data that low-income populations in the country's largest metro-area suburbs grew twice as fast as in primary urban cities between 2000 and 2013, and that a 2018 Pew Research Center report found poverty rising more sharply in suburbs than in urban or rural counties. Stigmatization of food assistance, lack of transportation, limited access to food pantries and limited community gardens are identified as challenges specific to suburban poor communities, with Extension proposed to address the problem through community-engaged research and education across family and consumer sciences, community development, agriculture and natural resources, and 4-H youth development.

Isabel Cristina Carvalho, Raquel Luz Sousa, David Leite Viana · Americanae (AECID Library) · Brazil

The informality of urban agroecological space is examined through methodologies from transdisciplinary border zones, particularly the arts, framing the practice of gardening as an act of creation. Ecosophical, aesthetic and artistic concepts (community eco-art practices and digital eco-art) are integrated with socio-economic-political concepts (strengthening production, citizenship and digital literacy) in the context of informal urban agriculture, sketching an application scenario for inclusive community-resilience methodologies.

André Ruoppolo Biazoti, Angélica Campos Nakamura, Gustavo Nagib, Vitória Oliveira Pereira de Souza Leão, Giulia Giacchè, Thaís Mauad · Sustainability · Brazil (São Paulo)

Amid a COVID-19 outbreak that caused 15,587 deaths in São Paulo city through December 2020, this study examined effects on urban agriculture from April to August 2020, drawing on two government surveys (2,100 farmers in São Paulo state, 148 in São Paulo city) and two qualitative surveys of volunteers from ten community gardens and seven urban farmers. Fifty percent of farmers reported being affected by the pandemic through drops in sales, particularly those who depended on intermediaries, and 22% said obtaining inputs had become difficult. No municipal support was provided to urban agriculture in São Paulo, and pre-existing problems worsened; activity in community gardens declined, though none closed permanently.

Luciana Francisco de Abreu Ronconi, Bernadete de Lourdes Bittencourt, Gabriel Bertimes Di Bernardi Lopes · Revista Ibero-Americana de Ciências Ambientais · Brazil

This qualitative study analyses social innovation in urban agriculture in Florianópolis, Brazil, using the Centro de Estudos e Promoção da Agricultura de Grupo (Cepagro) as its case. It finds that Cepagro, through networks of diverse actors, has placed urban agriculture on the public agenda and produced significant social innovations linking urban agriculture, food security and community development, contributing to the drafting and implementation of public policy and participating in the city's public policy councils.

Denise Junqueira Matos, Fernanda Pinto Ferreira, Natália Ingrid Pezzoti, Luana de Melo Scardovelli, Italmar Teodorico Navarro, Letícia Santos Balbino, Gabrieli Dutra Gonçalves, Kátia Denise Saraiva Bresciani · Brazilian Journal of Development · Brazil

A 2021 study examined environmental management conditions and the occurrence of Escherichia coli in irrigation water, helminths in vegetables, and protozoa (Cryptosporidium spp., Giardia spp. and Toxoplasma gondii) in soil, fertilizer, water and vegetables from community gardens in Araçatuba, São Paulo State, Brazil, covering all six gardens registered with the city's Agro-industrial Development Secretariat. An epidemiological questionnaire was administered to garden workers, and each garden was sampled for 40 liters of treated water or 10 liters of untreated water, about 10 g of soil, 10 g of fertilizer, and one bunch each of lettuce and another vegetable. E. coli in irrigation water was detected using the Colilert Kit (IDEXX Laboratories); helminths and their eggs in vegetables were assessed by optical microscopy; and Cryptosporidium spp., Giardia spp. and T. gondii were assessed by PCR in water, soil, fertilizer and vegetable samples. Results showed that an urban location, use of treated water, absence of open pits, area limits set by walls or fences, and absence of domestic animals in the community gardens were together sufficient to prevent detection of E. coli in irrigation water, helminths in vegetables, and Cryptosporidium spp., Giardia spp. and T. gondii in water, soil, fertilizer and vegetable samples.

Kathryn Jackson · Environmental Justice · United States

Drawing on growing spaces in Camden, NJ, and Philadelphia, PA, this study applies a Critical Environmental Justice (CEJ) framework to examine how radical urban growing spaces contribute to the struggle for Black liberation amid state-sanctioned racial violence, environmental racism, and COVID-19-related health disparities and food apartheid. It identifies two findings: (1) growers create space that confronts and rectifies the violence of antiblack racism, and (2) redevelopment and white space act as a form of violence that undercuts the work of Black liberation.

Mark Paul · Econstor (Econstor) · United States

In-depth interviews with community supported agriculture (CSA) farmers in the Pioneer Valley of Massachusetts, United States, examined their livelihoods. CSA farmers earned more farm income than other US farms and other farms in the region, but their earnings remained far below the median national household income. Despite this income shortfall, CSA farming provided non-market social, ecological and economic benefits tied to feeding the community rather than producing for mass markets, which farmers described as a significant source of well-being.

Harneet Kaur Dhillon, Alyssa Thorman, Jordan A. Franchina · Journal of Hunger & Environmental Nutrition · United States

A report on a community-garden-and-food-pantry project to ease food insecurity among medical students at the University of Utah. Medical students planted and maintained a 400-square-foot garden and hosted numerous skills workshops; volunteers harvested 250 pounds of produce, and the food pantry managed distribution of over 6,500 pounds of other donated food items. The sustainable garden and pantry provided a significant amount of no-cost healthy food to students, and the study states that the scale of student involvement and food utilization demonstrates the need for novel strategies to address medical student food insecurity.

Harine Matos Maciel, Jair do Amaral Filho, Wlisses Matos Maciel · Latin American Journal of Development · Brazil

This case study of Banco Palmas, a solidarity financial system created in 1988 by the Residents Association of Conjunto Palmeira in Brazil, was conducted through documentary and bibliographic research. Banco Palmas pursues local, solidarity-based development in Conjunto Palmeira through microcredit and complementary programs — a training school, an incubator for women at risk, an urban agriculture laboratory, a local currency circulating in neighborhood stores, fairs with local producers, and a solidarity store — and the paper concludes that it demonstrates the feasibility of self-sustainable popular and solidarity development projects through microcredit that stimulates consumption and production within the neighborhood itself.

Paulo Eduardo Moruzzi Marques, Pierre‐Mathieu Le Bel, Vitória Oliveira Pereira de Souza Leão, Roberta Moraes Curan · Revista de Economia e Sociologia Rural · Brazil

This article analyzes the motivations and strategies of actors in urban and peri-urban agriculture (AUP) in the state of São Paulo, Brazil, using justification theory across a sociology-and-geography lens. Drawing on semi-structured interviews, field observations, and document analysis, it examines two cases: the Milton Santos settlement spanning Americana and Cosmópolis, and the Farmers' Association of the Eastern Zone of the São Paulo capital. The right of access to land was found to be absolutely central to AUP; claims to this right, together with conceptions of AUP's roles, mobilize references to justice with ecological contours, which lends growing legitimacy to the cause and generates various kinds of support. However, evidence from the cases studied indicates that AUP is far from having its permanence and growth assured.

Melinda Suto, Shelagh A. Smith, Natasha Damiano, Shurli Channe · Canadian Journal of Occupational Therapy · Canada

Sustaining well-being is a challenge for people with serious mental health issues. Community gardening is used as an occupation to promote clients' well-being, though evidence supporting this intervention remains limited. This paper examined how facilitated community gardening programs changed the subjective well-being and social connectedness of people living with mental health issues. Using a community-based participatory research approach and qualitative methods with 23 adults living in supported housing and participating in supported community gardening programs, data were analyzed inductively from a constructivist stance. Participation in the programs enhanced well-being through welcoming places, a sense of belonging, and positive feelings developed through doing. Connection to living things and responsibility for plants grounded participants in the present and offered a distinct venue for learning about gardening and about themselves. The paper concludes that practitioners and service-users should collaborate to develop leadership, programs, places, and processes within community gardens to support well-being.

Maegan Krajewski · DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals) · Canada

The North Central Community Gardens, an urban agriculture initiative of the North Central Community Association in Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada, launched the Branch Out Project in summer 2020. Its purpose was to expand the North Central Community Gardens beyond its existing three locations onto additional schoolyard and backyard land. Despite — or perhaps because of — the COVID-19 pandemic, the project's first season resulted in the construction of eight new gardens and positively affected food access, community engagement, and knowledge development and exchange. The commentary has two goals: to provide insight into the process of community garden expansion for the benefit of other practitioners, and to contribute to understanding the possibilities, challenges, and impacts of community gardens generally — and garden expansion specifically — as a counter-neoliberal food sovereignty practice.

James J. Connolly · · United States (California)

This case study examines the leading edge of gentrification along San Francisco's Third Street T streetcar line. Bayview-Hunters Point (B.V.H.P.), the end of the streetcar line's first phase, is an ethnically mixed, working-class neighborhood and the last historic concentration of African American residents in San Francisco. While gentrification-driven change is already visible further up the line, its presence in B.V.H.P. remains comparatively shallow so far. Nonetheless, many residents and community activists perceive that a fast-moving gentrification frontier leaves them with a conundrum: remain in a contaminated, post-industrial, climate-exposed environment, or advocate for their health while risking displacement. The neighborhood has seen greening such as community gardens and a waterfront promenade, alongside inequalities including enduring racial segregation, environmental privilege, green gentrification, luxury development, climate-related health risks, and continued exposure to contamination.

Matt Hare, Ana Peña del Valle Isla · Local Environment · Mexico

Two surveys mapped the distribution of edible plant species growing in publicly accessible interstitial spaces — such as central reservations and pavements — in subtropical central Mexico City (CDMX), walking roughly 20 km of streets and identifying 36 species of edible plants including fruits, herbs and vegetables. Of five feasibility conditions for using these spaces for foraging, three — suitable growing conditions, provisioning capability, and the existence of multiple plant dispersal pathways — could be satisfactorily assessed, while two — usage and a favourable planning environment — could not be judged from the field data. Rather than improving everyday food supplies, maintaining these spaces for emergency foraging was framed as a way to increase urban resilience against extreme food supply shocks. CDMX promotes planting fruit trees along avenues, but the survey found local socio-ecological systems sustain a greater variety of edible plants across a wider range of interstitial spaces.

Sasha Pesci, Catherine Brinkley · Food Culture & Society · United States (California)

A case study of Chez Panisse, the Berkeley, California restaurant founded by Alice Waters in 1971, examining the extent to which a farm-to-table restaurant prompted social and ecological change in the food system. Using archival document review, interviews, surveys, and social network mapping, the study traces how direct market connections between farmers and Chez Panisse grew over time and influenced farmers' growing practices. Chez Panisse was found to have inspired farmers toward more sustainable agriculture practices, but the restaurant was not the only influential actor in the network — local food hub managers and the restaurant's "foragers" served as key intermediaries. The study concludes that social embeddedness within Alternative Food Networks is pertinent to fostering sustainable agriculture, the long-term survival of network actors, and network growth.

Ana Maria Girotti Sperandio, Ângela Alessandra Torezan Silingardi, Giovanna Gastaldo Cifoni, Rafael de Souza Salomão · ˜The œurban book series · Brazil

This chapter reviews Brazilian urban planning responses to COVID-19, connecting concepts of healthy cities, reviews of Brazilian legal frameworks, international documents, and case records to argue that articulation and cooperation among cities were essential to minimizing pandemic impacts. It presents active mobility initiatives, reframed public space use, and the implementation of urban community gardens as practical examples with immediate results during the pandemic, without reporting original quantitative data.

Tatiana de Oliveira Sousa, João Aparecido Bazzoli, Cecília Delgado · Estudos Geográficos Revista Eletrônica de Geografia · Brazil

An exploratory study examined an urban gardening project run by the municipal government of Palmas, capital of Tocantins state, Brazil, analyzing challenges in setup and maintenance, administrative difficulties in production and distribution, and the socioeconomic profile of participating families. Surveying the gardeners' profiles and practices, the study found that the urban gardens promoted social inclusion of participating families, particularly low-income, unemployed, elderly, and women gardeners.