Research & reports

Oyewole Michelle T., Pellow David N., Cassels Susie · Environmental Justice · 米国

A study measuring soil lead by X-ray fluorescence at 31 Brooklyn public schools with active garden programmes, sampling both garden beds and adjacent school grounds. Proximity to 306 known environmental hazard sites was mapped geostatistically and combined with demographic data and soil-management surveys. Of the samples, 42% exceeded the US EPA's minimum screening level for child-accessible soils near known lead sources (100 ppm); garden soils showed lower average lead concentrations than adjacent school-ground soils. The authors argue that soil lead in schools, and the disparities in it, have received far less attention than lead in paint and water.

FOVIDA - Fomento de la Vida · FOVIDA (Fomento de la Vida) · Peru

Peruvian NGO FOVIDA (Fomento de la Vida) reported on 11 May 2026 on an award ceremony held 30 April 2026 in Lima Sur (Villa María del Triunfo, Villa El Salvador and San Juan de Miraflores), where more than 30 urban agriculture experiences were recognized through a photo and video contest highlighting home, school and community gardens' contributions to food security and climate resilience. Winner Victoria Arce Arguedas stated that "90% of those of us who participate in the gardens are women," while fellow winner Odilia Delgado said gardening has been a major boost to the mental health of older adults like herself.

Ricardo Robins · Fundación Rosa Luxemburgo (Oficina Buenos Aires) · Argentina

A reported feature tracing the origins of Rosario's Urban Agriculture Programme (PAU) through interviews with founder Antonio Lattuca: the first community garden in the Saladillo Sur neighborhood in 1987, the 1990 municipal ordinance creating the Community Gardens Programme, and the PAU's formal launch in 2002. It reports the programme today spans 12 parks and community gardens across roughly 40 hectares, with over 150 families harvesting about 650,000 kg of agroecological vegetables a year, and profiles the Tablada Park Garden (opened 2008, 3 ha, 20 workers).

Municipalidad de Rosario · Municipalidad de Rosario · Argentina

A Rosario municipal procedural page describing a free training-visit programme for institutions and civic organizations to tour the city's gardens and Park Gardens and learn about agroecological practices, run by the Productive Spaces Coordination unit under the Social Economy Sub-secretariat. Appointments are booked at six district municipal centers on Wednesdays 9:00-13:30, with the programme's legal basis cited as Decree 2561/2004 and Ordinance 9044/13.

Municipalidad de Providencia · Municipalidad de Providencia · Chile

A municipal announcement for the 2026 Harvest Festival (Festival de la Cosecha), organized by the Municipalidad de Providencia in Santiago, Chile. The free family event runs from 10:00 to 18:00 on June 20, 2026, at the Espacio Verde Urbano on Padre Mariano 140, featuring a producer market of seasonal vegetables, seeds, and artisanal products, live cooking demonstrations, a home garden workshop, puppet shows, a giant squash competition, and musical performances.

Aguiari I. · Agriculture and Human Values · イタリア

Debates on food and agriculture have long noted the depoliticising pull of neoliberal governance, technocratic regulation and consumer-oriented solutions. Collective action in grassroots agrifood initiatives is well studied, but how politicisation actually emerges is not. Treating the political as an ever-present dimension of social relations, the author uses political semiotics to trace how politicisation and depoliticisation unfold in everyday communication, drawing on participatory mind-mapping workshops co-created with three community agriculture initiatives in Italy. Politicisation is encouraged where relational interaction, contextual interpretation, symbolic expression and an orientation toward collective action reinforce one another.

Nkrumah B. · Urban Science · アフリカ（都市部・系統的レビュー）

A systematic review of the irony between abundant arable land and persistent hunger in African cities. It asks why a disproportionate share of urban residents do not produce their own food, even as food insecurity rises with heavy reliance on market-bought food, high poverty and rapid urbanisation, screening peer-reviewed literature via PRISMA and five inclusion benchmarks to clarify the debate on low uptake of urban agriculture.

Hadi A.A., Pratiwi P.I., Budiarti T., Arifin H.S., Pratiwi N.K., Alhakim M.A. · Tájökológiai Lapok · インドネシア・ボゴール（都市部・近郊）

Set against urbanisation that has cut farmland and limited access to fresh vegetables, this study evaluates garden towers as a vertical landscape element for community-based vegetable production. Using a descriptive-evaluative approach, it assesses 105 garden-tower units distributed to 21 women farmers groups in and around Bogor, Indonesia, and discusses their contribution to food availability and social-ecological resilience in dense settings.

Rao X., Zahid A., Ye X., Jain D., Duffield N. · Urban Informatics · 国際（論考）

A Perspective arguing that controlled environment agriculture (CEA), driven by venture capital and profit-maximising imperatives, has delivered limited scalability, narrow crop diversity and minimal engagement with spatial equity — the fair distribution of food infrastructure across urban geographies. It calls for repositioning CEA not as a standalone technological fix but as a component of urban infrastructure delivering co-benefits for food justice, public health and environmental resilience.

Hinch J. · Southeastern Geographer · 米国フロリダ州タンパベイ

This study builds an equity-focused, GIS-based multi-criteria decision analysis model integrating socioeconomic, logistical and environmental variables to assess community garden suitability across census tracts in Tampa Bay. High-suitability tracts cluster somewhat in Hillsborough and Pinellas Counties, existing gardens align moderately with modelled suitability, and the paper shows both the utility and the limits of spatial models in equitable urban agriculture planning.

Noxolo B.M., Kanosvamhira T.P. · Urban Agriculture & Regional Food Systems · 南アフリカ・ケープタウン（低所得地区）

Surveys and interviews assess whether hydroponics, of interest because dense settlements leave little space, is actually viable in Cape Town's low-income urban areas — deliberately supplementing a literature skewed towards Global North cities. Farmers perceive benefits in improved yields, water conservation and efficient land use, all valuable in a water-scarce, space-constrained city, but high setup costs and limited government support remain significant obstacles. Drawing on urban political ecology, the paper argues these financial and institutional barriers are rooted in historically produced inequality and ongoing capitalist dynamics of urban development. It concludes that while hydroponics has potential as a sustainable alternative, its high costs hinder broader applicability, and it is not yet a viable large-scale route to food security where resources are unequally distributed; supporting actors must first address financial feasibility and local expertise.

Ceccanti F., Bischi A., Desideri U., Baccioli A. · Energy Conversion and Management · 国際比較（トロンハイム・上海・ドバイを想定したモデル計算）

Filling a gap left by studies that assessed vertical-farming energy use and cost-effectiveness with simplified models, this paper isolates how individual input parameters drive efficiency, sustainability and economic viability using a detailed modelling framework with sensitivity and correlation analyses. It evaluates 162 scenarios combining three levels of temperature, photosynthetic photon flux density (PPFD) and CO2 concentration across the socio-environmentally distinct Trondheim, Shanghai and Dubai regions, at two insulation thicknesses. Because of HVAC and dehumidification, crop productivity stays optimal regardless of insulation or external climate. PPFD dominates growth (correlation 0.85), ahead of CO2 (0.36) and temperature (0.22), and also drives energy consumption (0.73). Lowest specific energy consumption coincides with lowest productivity (55 kg/m2), and the cheapest levelized cost of lettuce came at 24 degC, 250 umol/m2s PPFD, 1400 ppm CO2 with insulation (102 kg/m2). Only decarbonised energy systems can support vertical farming without raising CO2 emissions relative to imported lettuce.

Darrow S., Kathi S., Liebe R., Cline L.L., Moss J.Q. · Urban Agriculture & Regional Food Systems · 米国オクラホマ州（農村・都市・近郊）

Oklahoma's specialty crop sector is in decline — vegetable operations fell from 799 in 2007 to 482 in 2022 — yet regional fruit and vegetable producers remain the primary supply foundation for farmers' markets, food hubs and direct retail serving urban and peri-urban communities, so producer viability is itself an urban food access and public health concern as food deserts expand. Five semi-structured focus groups with 29 experienced producers from rural, urban and peri-urban Oklahoma were analysed by open coding thematic analysis in NVivo, with saturation confirmed iteratively and rigour established through member-checking, peer review of codes and field note triangulation. The 180 initial codes were organised into 10 parent codes and three themes: the countercultural philosophy of production, the lack of accessible resources, and industry barriers preventing development — compounding disadvantages at cultural, institutional and structural levels. The authors call for a statewide local food system plan, a growers' association and dedicated local-food-system extension roles.

Glaros A., Newell R., Pizzirani S., Newman L. · Urban Transitions · カナダ・ブリティッシュコロンビア州ローワーメインランド（都市圏）

Using the Lower Mainland of British Columbia, Canada as a case study, this paper defines and assesses the tradeoffs across six common scenarios for controlled environment agriculture (CEA) implementation. Land use considerations and operational priorities define the scenarios and weight the modelling criteria. Geospatial modelling estimates the share of the population within walking distance of potential CEA sites that could be supplied with their daily intake of leafy greens, alongside associated yields, energy use, water use and potential land sparing. Across all scenarios, between 4% and over 100% of nearby populations could be served, demonstrating both the promise of hyper-local food provisioning and how sharply outcomes swing with siting and operational goals.

Kanosvamhira T.P., Magidi M. · International Journal of Agricultural Sustainability · 南アフリカ・ケープタウン／ジンバブエ・ノートン

A qualitative case study comparing the motivations, operational dynamics, land access challenges and legislative contexts of urban agriculture in two contrasting cities — Cape Town (South Africa) and Norton (Zimbabwe) — through stakeholder interviews and policy analysis, guided by social capital theory. In Cape Town urban agriculture is semi-institutionalised, backed by governmental and civil society actors and framed within wider food justice and community development agendas, yet practitioners face significant constraints from land access, urban policy fragmentation and competition over space. In Norton it is largely informal, a survivalist response to persistent socio-economic hardship with minimal formal support but relatively flexible regulation, where land-tenure insecurity and the threat of eviction are the pressing concerns. The paper argues that context-specific legislative frameworks, secure land rights and inclusive urban planning are the enabling conditions, situating urban agriculture within debates on land governance and urban informality.

Kissoly L. · Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems · タンザニア・ダルエスサラーム

An exploratory qualitative case study and policy analysis of urban agriculture's current landscape and possible futures in rapidly urbanizing Dar es Salaam, drawing on targeted literature and document review, a policy and regulatory scan, and 52 key informant interviews with municipal actors, urban farmers and food-system practitioners conducted between April and September 2025. Urban agriculture is valued for household food supplementation, small-scale income and fresh-food provisioning through short-cycle vegetable production close to consumers, but remains shaped by tolerated informality, insecure land access, fragmented regulation, contamination risks, weak institutional coordination and pressure on peri-urban land. Five evidence-informed trajectories are proposed — managed river-corridor cultivation; sacks, buckets and roofs for dense-ward micro-production; institutional land clusters; peri-urban foodshed belts with circular-resource hubs; and small-scale aquaculture with insect-based feed — presented explicitly not as tested feasibility models but as differentiated options requiring further technical, environmental, spatial and economic assessment. The paper argues the future depends not on a single large-scale model but on risk-sensitive, institutionally grounded forms of support.

Olabode K., Lewińska K., Komorowicz I. · Environmental Geochemistry and Health · ポーランド南部・ズウォティストク（旧鉱山地域）

Quantifies total arsenic, gastric-phase in vitro bioaccessible arsenic (IVBA) and direct-soil-exposure risks for children and adults in mining-affected allotment gardens in Złoty Stok, southern Poland, applying deterministic calculations and Monte Carlo simulation to incidental soil ingestion, dermal contact and inhalation of resuspended particles. Total As ranged 433–1148 mg/kg and IVBA 4.5–23.5%. Under the total-As multi-pathway scenario median hazard indices were 5.50 for children and 0.62 for adults (P05/P95: 2.26/15.18 and 0.29/1.89). Median total cancer risk was 1.78×10⁻⁴ for children and 1.06×10⁻⁴ for adults, with 80.0% of simulated child profiles and 54.0% of adult profiles at or above 10⁻⁴. Ingestion and dermal contact accounted for nearly all modeled risk while inhalation was negligible; applying IVBA to the ingestion pathway alone cut the median ingestion-related hazard quotient and cancer risk by 89.3%. Total soil As and soil ingestion rate were the principal positive risk drivers, body weight inversely associated.

Coyne D., Nyambura E.I., Atandi J.G., Obebo F., Alam M.J., Kumar S., Arro E.A., Adimassu Z., Bihon W., Schreinemachers P. · Frontiers in Sustainable Cities · エチオピア・アディスアベバ／ケニア・ナイロビ／バングラデシュ・ダッカ／フィリピン・メトロマニラ

A comparative multi-city case study of urban and peri-urban vegetable seedling systems — a neglected component of urban agriculture — in four rapidly growing cities: Addis Ababa, Nairobi, Dhaka and Metro Manila. Data came from 154 stakeholders including urban farmers, nursery operators, seedling suppliers, agro-input dealers and government officers, complemented by secondary literature. Across all four cities urban vegetable production was dominated by small-scale intensive systems growing predominantly leafy vegetables, while seedling systems remained underdeveloped: informal nursery operations, weak quality assurance, open-field propagation, limited technical capacity and fragmented market linkages, driving widespread reliance on direct seeding and low-quality planting material despite strong demand for quality seedlings. Identified opportunities include improved propagation technologies, certification systems, digital marketing, commercialization of indigenous vegetable seedlings and stronger public-private partnerships. As one of the first cross-continental assessments of urban vegetable seedling systems in low- and middle-income countries, it positions seedling systems as a critical but overlooked part of resilient, nutrition-sensitive urban food systems.

Johne P., Rao Bangady Killur R. · Soil and Sediment Contamination: An International Journal · Papua New Guinea

An assessment of trace metals in the soils of peri-urban food gardens at Lae, Papua New Guinea's second city and its main industrial centre, and of the ecotoxicological risk they pose. The subject — food growing on the fringe of an industrial city — is barely documented anywhere in the South Pacific. Published online 28 June 2026; the publisher does not make the abstract openly available, so only the study's scope is recorded here.

Huq F.F., Deacon L. · Discover Sustainability (Springer), 6:696 · Global

A systematic review of 37 studies examining how community gardens affect food access, urban resilience, and community well-being, with research interest peaking during the COVID-19 pandemic. It identifies inequitable access and weak policy integration as key barriers and calls for inclusive, interdisciplinary, long-term planning.

· 日本建築学会計画系論文集 90巻832号 pp.1219-1230 · Japan

A paper clarifying the value of community gardens created on vacant land and the factors that generate that value; focusing on intergenerational exchange and collaborative activity, it analyzes the effects of reusing vacant spaces in complexes and neighborhoods on local community.

· Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems · Spain (Barcelona)

A study analysing both the agronomic and the organisational dimensions of Barcelona's community gardens, examining empirically how citizen-led urban gardens are managed and run.

· Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems · Global

A thematic review synthesising global trends, innovations, governance frameworks and pathways to sustainability in urban agriculture, mapping the field's current state and future directions including citizen participation, policy support and environmental challenges.

Macharia M.W., Caproni L., Solemanegy M., Takele R., Chiulele R.M., Munisse P., Amane M., Pè M.E., Buizza R., Dell'Acqua M. · Communications Biology 8:834 · Africa

Genotypes 389 cowpea accessions (mostly landraces) from Southern Africa and identifies 36 genomic loci linked to local climate adaptation, highlighting the breeding value of farmer-conserved resources.

Amici A. S., Appicciutoli D., Bentivoglio D., Staffolani G., Chiaraluce G., Mogetta M., Finco A. · Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems 9:1584778 · Italy

Assesses the profitability of two microgreen-producing vertical farms in northern Italy using semi-structured interviews, applying operational margin and cost-revenue ratios to show these systems are economically profitable under current Italian conditions.