Research & reports

Vidyashree K P, Udayabalan B, Shilpa M S, Madhusudhana R, Nandini S, Bhagyalakshmi R, Shivani T J · Journal of Integrated Science and Technology · Global

This research proposed a plant species recognition system based on deep learning technology to guide plant selection and management in rooftop gardening and urban agriculture. The system comprises four steps: image acquisition, preprocessing, feature extraction, and classification. The model was trained on a dataset of 80,000 images of 14 plant species, utilizing transfer learning on a ResNet9 architecture. The model achieved a score of approximately 92 out of 100.

Eri Yusnita Arvianti · Journal of Intelligent Decision Making and Information Science · Indonesia

This study in Indonesia's metropolitan areas examines key determinants influencing the success of urban farming in enhancing local food availability. Using direct surveys, interviews, and statistical analyses, the research reveals that urban agriculture significantly improves access to nutritious, affordable food and promotes socio-economic benefits. Key variables for sustainable implementation include age, education, innovation in human resources, agricultural technology, and community empowerment.

Lovina Yogarajan, Mohammad Masukujjaman, Abdullah Al Mamun, Mohd Helmi Ali · Journal of Agribusiness in Developing and Emerging Economies · Malaysia

An online survey of 250 urban residents across various regions of Malaysia investigated factors influencing the adoption of hydroponic farming. Findings indicate that attitude, hydroponic compatibility, and perceived trust significantly influence adoption intentions, and intention strongly influences actual adoption. However, performance expectancy, effort expectancy, and social influence did not significantly impact adoption intentions.

Nicolás Carrasco-Astudillo, Juan José Medina-Musellas, Kàtia Gaspar, Marta Gangolells, Miquel Casals · Building and Environment · Spain (Catalonia)

This paper evaluates rooftop agrivoltaic systems integrating urban agriculture, photovoltaic generation, and rainwater collection for building resilience and water-energy-food synergies. Tested via EnergyPlus simulations in a reference residential building across nine climate zones in Catalonia, Spain, the strategy showed climate-dependent benefits. The most consistent performance was in the Csa climate (Barcelona), demonstrating robust reductions in energy demand, emissions, and discomfort hours under current and future climate scenarios.

Asra Jabeen, Vaijanatha ., Kiran Lakshmikant Kadam, Kalyan . · International Journal of Agriculture Extension and Social Development · India

A study in Medchal-Malkajgiri District, Telangana, India examined ICT utilization among urban farmers, the relationship between farmer profile characteristics and ICT use, farmers' attitudes toward ICT tools, and constraints on their use. It found smartphones, WhatsApp, YouTube and agricultural mobile applications were the commonly used information sources, with education, age, digital literacy, income and training exposure significantly influencing usage, while constraints including lack of technical knowledge, poor internet connectivity and inadequate training limited effective use of ICT tools.

Mitsuhito HOSAKA, Mitsuyo UEMATSU, Hironori Yagi · Journal of Agriculture Food Systems and Community Development · Japan

A 2026 qualitative longitudinal case study interviewed nine farmers in Tokyo who use real-time image sharing (RTIS) for direct-sales marketing, assessing their information resources, market orientation, and firm performance before and after adopting RTIS. It finds that RTIS use helps farmers accumulate information resources and subsequently adopt a more market-oriented approach, with shipping efficiency improving especially among farmers who initially had limited information resources but some degree of market orientation. Farmers also developed process innovation integrating information resources and market orientation, and those who adopted process innovation after RTIS implementation saw improved farm stand sales through optimized shipping.

Mohammed El-Hajj · Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems · Global

This conceptual paper proposes the Urban Agriculture Digital Twin (UA-DT), a four-layer cyber-physical framework combining IoT sensing, cloud infrastructure and hybrid mechanistic/AI models for real-time monitoring and city-scale food-system simulation, with logical feasibility demonstrated through an illustrative software simulation (Eclipse Ditto, Azure IoT, Python) for a community rooftop garden. The paper cites benchmark ranges — 20–40% water savings, 15–25% fertilizer reduction, up to 30% post-harvest loss reduction, and 3–7 day early-warning lead time — as literature-derived projections that a fully validated UA-DT deployment would be expected to approach, explicitly noting these are not empirical findings of this study.

Yuvaraja Boovanahalli Kariyappagowda, Khateeja Ambareen, S P Vijaya Vardan Reddy, Chethan Bommalingaiahanapalya Krishnamurthy, Madhu Puttegowda · Journal of Asian Scientific Research · Global

This study developed a machine learning-based leaf-disease detection system to help rooftop gardeners and small-scale growers, aiming to address plant-disease spread and delayed diagnosis that leads many gardeners to abandon increasingly popular rooftop gardening in space-limited urban areas. Using image segmentation as a preprocessing step followed by a classification model, and trained and tested on leaf images from five commonly cultivated species -- guava, jamun, lemon, mango and pomegranate -- the system achieved an overall accuracy of 1.00, with lemon and mango disease classification reaching accuracies of 0.995 and 0.991 respectively and F1-scores exceeding 0.88.

Pesi Suryani, Ratna Marta Dhewi, Vivi Oktari, Demi Primavera · Mejuajua Jurnal Pengabdian pada Masyarakat · Indonesia (Jakarta)

A 2026 community service program based at RPTRA Payung Tunas Teratai in Cipayung sub-district, Indonesia, sought to build resident capacity through technology-based urban farming. Key problems addressed were limited knowledge of modern agricultural technology, low urban farming literacy, and underuse of the RPTRA's function as an education center. Participatory training — including material delivery, hands-on hydroponic and aeroponic practice, group discussion and ongoing mentoring — improved participants' understanding and skills in urban farming techniques, with a harvest success rate exceeding 80% in the first cycle. The Edufarm area was put to use as a community learning center, and a small farmer group was formed to support the program's continuation.

Aprilia Martika, Amelia Sari, Disti Macela Putri, Misbahul Munir · International Journal of Economics and Management Research · Indonesia (Pangkalpinang)

A qualitative case study of Pangkalpinang City, Bangka Belitung, Indonesia, examining urban farming as an adaptive strategy addressing food insecurity and unemployment in an urban area with limited agricultural land. Data were gathered through participatory observation, in-depth interviews and documentation, and analyzed thematically and via SWOT analysis. In Parit Lalang, urban farming was found predominantly on small home gardens and vacant lots using hydroponic and traditional methods, with participants mainly productive-age residents and housewives. The practice increased household food availability, reduced living costs and generated additional income, improving local economic resilience, but the study also reports persistent challenges of limited technical skills, financial constraints and inconsistent government support. It concludes that strengthening training programs, improving financial access and developing subdistrict pilot projects are needed to sustain urban farming as a food-security and community-empowerment strategy.

Yogi Priyo Istiyono, Siti Rokhmanila, Ojak Abdul Rozak · Jurnal Otomasi Kontrol dan Instrumentasi · Global

Researchers developed and experimentally evaluated an IoT-based monitoring and automatic irrigation system for small-scale and urban farming, built around a NodeMCU ESP8266 microcontroller with capacitive soil moisture, soil pH, and DHT11 temperature sensors, transmitting data via Wi-Fi to the Blynk cloud platform with a smartphone interface and 16×2 LCD, and a relay-controlled 5V DC pump triggered by preset soil moisture thresholds. Validated against a reference instrument (ETP-302), the system showed average measurement errors of 3.4% for soil moisture, 4.1% for soil pH, and 2.8% for temperature, and irrigation activated within a dry-soil range of 430-520 ADC and stopped automatically once sufficient moisture was reached.

Dawan Arkini Challam · Asian Research Journal of Agriculture · Global

A low-cost vertical farming system was built from 90 mm PVC pipes arranged in a three-tier frame, using soil as the primary growing medium, to grow strawberries (Fragaria × ananassa) under a semi-controlled microclimate created by 50% shade netting during the vegetative stage. Shading reduced transpiration stress and improved moisture retention, promoting leaf development, and removing the shade at the onset of flowering increased floral initiation and the number of flowers per plant, attributed to improved light availability. This stage-specific light management raised leaf, flower and fruit counts and yield by combining features of open-field and protected cultivation, though the abstract does not report the number of plants tested or whether the trial was replicated.

Pungky Slamet Wisnu Kusuma, Dyah Hariani, Vivin Andriani, Dicky Surya Putra Pradana Andriani · Jurnal Abadimas Adi Buana · Indonesia

Describes a community-service (PKM) activity centered on an NFT (Nutrient Film Technique) aquaponics system, framed as an urban-farming innovation supporting sustainable urban food security. The activity aimed to analyze the NFT aquaponic system's efficiency and to increase student and public understanding of it through a national webinar. It reports that the NFT system reduced water use by 80-90% compared with conventional systems through closed-loop recirculation, and that integrating catfish (Clarias sp.), water spinach (Ipomoea aquatica) and nitrifying bacteria created a productive system supporting a zero-waste concept. Webinar evaluation showed participant understanding rising by 26 percentage points, from 62% to 88% after the session, with participants reported to show high interest in smart-farming aquaponics applications.

Dina Oktavia, Yuni Amelia, Fitri Ammara Azhar, Radha Alizha, Widya Natasya, Nayla Putri Abdullah · Warta Dharmawangsa · Indonesia

Using descriptive qualitative methods combining literature review, observation, and interviews with urban farmers, mainly in Medan, Indonesia, and other major cities, this study analyzed urban farming business opportunities built on organic waste management as a form of green entrepreneurship. Converting organic waste into compost was found to reduce production costs, increase soil fertility, and support a circular economy, making urban farming a potentially profitable and environmentally friendly business opportunity. Young people play a strategic role in this development through innovation, digital technology use, and strengthening community networks, but limited knowledge, capital, and policy support remain ongoing challenges.

Akhil S Anand, Hannes Pravida, Fredrik Fossan-Waage, Tormod Skorpe Skjolden, Giulia Robbiani, Younes Zahraoui, Emil Wolff Anthony, Jayaprakash Rajasekharan, Sissel Torre, Knut Asbjørn Solhaug, Sebastien Gros · Frontiers in Horticulture · Global

A paper on vertical farming — a controlled-environment agriculture system — examines its potential integration with energy markets. It states that vertical farming's economic viability is constrained by high capital and operational costs, a substantial share of which is energy expenditure, and explores how vertical farms could participate in day-ahead, balancing, and flexibility energy markets by adjusting lighting and climate-control energy use in response to market signals, potentially reducing costs and generating additional revenue. It identifies gaps in understanding of plant responses to variable lighting as a critical barrier to implementation and illustrates these integration challenges through small-scale laboratory experiments.

Muhammad Prakarsa Al Qadr Saleh, Djibran Dirgantara, Adhita Arif Setyawan · Dinasti Information and Technology · Indonesia

A study for the "Buruan SAE" (Healthy, Natural, Economical) urban farming program in Maleer, Bandung City, Indonesia, designed and developed a Business-to-Consumer (B2C) e-commerce website to address marketing and sales problems previously handled through word-of-mouth and manual paper-based records. Citing suboptimal market penetration, stock uncertainty for prospective buyers, and high financial-loss risk given vegetables' perishability, the project used a risk-driven Spiral model methodology, collecting data through interviews, observation, and literature study. Business process analysis identified four main problem areas: product publication, stock management, ordering and transactions, and financial recording. The study reports that a structured web-based e-commerce system can shorten the distribution chain, ensure catalog-stock synchronization, and minimize manual recording errors.

Paul Emile Tchinda, Thi-Thanh-Hiên Pham · Canadian Geographies / Géographies canadiennes 70(3) · Cameroon (one large and one medium-sized city)

Urban agriculture appears in many sustainability agendas yet has been ignored in the public policies of many African countries. Combining multi-scale mapping (city and neighbourhood) with semi-structured interviews in one large and one medium-sized Cameroonian city, this study tests how well those techniques characterise urban agriculture for local decision-making. Mapping from 5-metre SPOT satellite imagery gives a general grasp of the spatial distribution of practices, but crop types, emerging entrepreneurial practices and the temporality of crops are invisible to it and surface only through field mapping and interviews. Echoing critical remote-sensing scholarship, the authors propose a methodological framework for profiling urban agriculture and argue that the choice of research method shapes our understanding of it, so it should be made with each city's specific characteristics in mind.

· Wikipedia · Netherlands

This Wikipedia article on Wageningen University & Research states it was founded in 1876 as the Rijkslandbouwschool (National Agricultural School), renamed the Agricultural and Forestry College in 1896 and the National Agricultural, Horticulture and Forestry College in 1904, before becoming a degree-awarding institution named 'Rijks Landbouw Hoogeschool' under the Academic Education Act on 9 March 1918 — a date now celebrated as the university's dies natalis. The article states the university is highly ranked globally in agriculture, ranking 1st worldwide in Agriculture and Forestry in the QS World University Rankings 2022, 19th in Life Sciences in Times Higher Education 2022, and 1st in Food Science & Technology in the Academic Ranking of World Universities 2017. It states the university has about 13,564 students.

· Wikipedia · United States

A Wikipedia article on FarmBot, an open source precision agriculture CNC farming project. Started in 2011 by Rory Aronson while studying mechanical engineering at California Polytechnic State University, he began working on it full-time from March 2014 with a grant from the Shuttleworth Foundation. Tim Evers and Rick Carlino joined as core developers. It was a Hackaday Prize finalist in 2015, and after nine design iterations the commercial FarmBot Genesis began preorders in July 2016. It uses the OpenFarm crop database to create optimal planting plans.

Farm Hack · Farm Hack · United States

The official Farm Hack tool library page. Anyone can submit a tool via 'Add a tool', and each tool page carries 'I built (or modified) this tool' / 'I like this tool' voting and a comment section, with tags (e.g. Smart Farm, Post Harvest, Irrigation and Water Management) for browsing and filtering. It functions as a community-accumulated record of member-built and modified farm tools.

Elnazir Ramadan, Suliman Zakaria Suliman Abdalla, Ali Al Ahbabi, Tarig Gibreel, Naeema Al Hosani · City and Environment Interactions · Asia

This study explored factors influencing agricultural technology adoption among small-scale urban farmers in pre-urban areas of the arid Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states. Using a structured questionnaire and ordinal logistic regression, it identified performance expectancy, effort expectancy, social influence, facilitating conditions, trust, and cultural norms as key drivers of adoption. Perceived risk negatively influenced adoption, while compatibility was not statistically significant.

Paul Β. Thompson · · Global

This article discusses urban agriculture, noting that the decline of grocery stores in inner cities and projected vulnerabilities in megacities outside the global West suggest distinct moral imperatives. It contrasts urban agriculture with rural resilience and sustainable intensification, highlighting its focus on consumption and present needs. The article describes two urban agriculture archetypes: one embracing high-tech solutions and another emphasizing local solidarities and urban-based control over the food system.

Rahmawati Setiyani, Esti Dwi Rahmawati · MESTAKA Jurnal Pengabdian Kepada Masyarakat · Indonesia

This community service activity in Indonesia aimed to improve digital marketing literacy among members of the Sugih Waras Women's Farmers Group. The activity involved delivering materials on agricultural commodity production and digital marketing, followed by interactive discussions and evaluations. Results indicated an increase in knowledge among members, who committed to continuing the activity to support food security.

Gokulakrishnan G, Navaneetha Krishnan T, Tamilselvan D, S Sanjeevkumar, Devaganesh A, Janani N, K. Arunadevi, Balaji Kannan · Madras Agricultural Journal · Global

This review explores vertical farming, a method that uses stacked layers in controlled environments for year-round crop production with reduced resource use. It assesses the environmental and economic advantages of vertical farming, while critically examining its limitations, including high energy demands and limited crop diversity. The study highlights that despite its potential, vertical farming faces challenges regarding economic viability due to high energy consumption.

Luh Kadek Pande Sri Astrini, Suluh Dewanto · Agricultural Power Journal · Indonesia

This study analyzed the adoption of verticulture technology within sustainable horticultural systems in major Indonesian production centers, including West Java, East Java, and North Sumatra. Using a descriptive quantitative approach with secondary data, field surveys, and semi-structured interviews, results showed verticulture enhances land-use efficiency by up to 85%, reduces water consumption by 60%, and decreases reliance on synthetic chemical fertilizers by 70%. The technology also contributes to production stability and food security, achieving an average return on investment within 3.5 years.