Research & reports

Giovanni Allegretti, Stefania Barca, Lúcia Fernandes · Portuguese National Funding Agency for Science, Research and Technology (RCAAP Project by FCT) · Global

This article reviews contemporary experiences in small-scale sustainable agriculture worldwide, framing urban and peri-urban farming as a form of "popular art/craft" practiced in response to the modern agricultural dilemma's alienation of most people, particularly urban residents, from the natural world. It surveys the variety of forms, spaces and social actors involved, focusing on the rise of agricultural gardens in urban areas and the neo-rural transition movement, and discusses the frequent involvement of artists and designers in urban gardening initiatives before closing with critical observations on the state of research on urban agricultural practices.

Carlos Alexandre Rodrigues Pereira, Juliana Valéria de Melo, André Luís Teixeira Fernandes · BRAZILIAN JOURNAL OF AGRICULTURE - Revista de Agricultura · Brazil

A study of Santa Fé, a community about 30 km from the city center of Uberaba in Minas Gerais, Brazil, home to roughly 200 families as of 2011, examined how the transition from rural to urban status affected local livestock and farming activity. A socio-environmental survey using a semi-structured questionnaire, combining quantitative and qualitative methods, was conducted from 15 August 2009 to 19 January 2010. It found that only 33% of interviewed families practiced agropecuária (farming/livestock), and these households reported difficulties accessing markets, technical support, infrastructure, and incentive or financing policies. The study concludes that national agricultural policy does not formally recognize urban farming activity or offer it means of incentive or support, making the activity's development constrained primarily by this political-structural factor.

Lawrence B. de Graaf · Journal of American History · United States (California)

A book review of Post-ghetto, edited by Josh Sides and comprising ten essays by fourteen authors, examines South Los Angeles's (formerly South Central) long history of poverty, gangs, and violence, and changes since the 1992 riots, including a proliferation of nonprofit service providers and a declining crime rate. Three of the essays focus on "food justice" — the idea that everyone deserves healthy food — arguing this goal could be reached through more supermarkets, improved local stores, community gardens, and campaigns against liquor and junk food stores. Other chapters cover the absence of large retail and malls, art, black politics, the rising status of blacks in unions, and policy for keeping youth out of gangs.

박진욱, 안계복 · · South Korea

This study analyzes the current state of urban farming in South Korea through its legal system, the implementation status of the urban farming act, on-the-ground conditions, and comprehensive plans, in order to identify institutional improvements. It concludes that securing more space for urban farming and improving the support system for urban farmers are the two essential factors for improvement, and that—beyond these institutional and systematic reforms—enthusiastic engagement from local governments, secured budgets, and cooperation with citizens are necessary to expand sustainable urban farming.

QI Airon · · China

A study of Xi'an, China, built indicators for urbanization and urban agriculture development and applied principal component analysis and correlation analysis to examine their interaction mechanism and quantitative coupling relationship. Urbanization was found to promote urban agriculture's commercialization and scale through market effects and information diffusion, but rapid urbanization's rising population and industrial land use also strained land and water resources and degraded soil and the urban ecological environment, constraining urban agricultural development.

Vesna Popović, Jelena Živanović Miljković · Institute of Agricultural Economics eBooks · Europe

A study analyzing trends in community gardening in Europe, with particular focus on Belgrade, Serbia, in relation to permaculture design principles. It notes that while intensive urban agriculture carries ecological risks related to soil, water, air, climate, biodiversity, and landscape, citizens seeking healthy food and closer contact with nature are turning toward extensive, often organic, forms of urban agriculture such as community gardening based on permaculture design, and it discusses the role of such gardening in smart-city development and its establishment potential in Belgrade.

Simon Jorgenson · Australian Journal of Environmental Education · Australia

A phenomenological study interviewed three Australian primary school teachers — Laura, Meredith, and Clare — to investigate the internal processes behind teachers' rationales for incorporating school gardens into their teaching. Analysis showed that teachers form a strong rationale by reading their own, often idealized, childhood memories against their observations of children today, a rationale reinforced by opportunities the garden itself affords for enacting deep beliefs about teaching and learning and resisting external control. The study also provides evidence that school gardens readily evoke nostalgia, and re-theorizes this nostalgia as part of the "cultural logic" of school gardens.

Marc Christiansen, Natalie Marie Marquardt, Katie Picchione, Thomas Sullivan · Digital WPI · United States

In Worcester, Massachusetts, an urban farmers' group called "The Shop" built a greenhouse for year-round produce, but it became too cold to sustain plant growth during winter. Drawing on the group's composting experience, a project examined using biogas -- methane from anaerobic digestion of organic waste -- to heat the greenhouse, calculating the energy needed to heat the space and the expected energy yield from different available substrates using data from case studies and other sources. The results verified biogas as a viable way to heat the greenhouse at The Shop.

Vanessa Aparecida Camargo, Maria Christina de Mello Amorozo, Marcos Aparecido Pizano · Cadernos de Agroecologia · Brazil (São Paulo)

A study of urban agriculture in Charqueada, São Paulo state, Brazil, georeferenced all 97 cultivated vacant lots in the urban area; 77 were selected for farmer questionnaires characterizing the population and the lots, and a subsample of 30 lots was surveyed in detail for all crops via a guided walkthrough. Results showed 80% of farmers were men over age 50 with low income, though the activity was not essential to their subsistence. Among 75 types of food plants cultivated, cassava (mandioca) was present in over 90% of lots, with a preference for crops requiring little investment. The activity was practiced informally, motivated by a desire to grow plants, without any public or private support.

Block K., Gibbs L., Staiger P., Gold L., Johnson B., Macfarlane S., Long C., Townsend M. · Health Education & Behavior, 39(4):419-432 · Australia

A mixed-methods evaluation of Australia's Stephanie Alexander Kitchen Garden Program. It reported social and learning benefits including increased student engagement, confidence and willingness to try new foods, plus experiential, integrated learning and stronger school-community connections.

Guitart D., Pickering C., Byrne J. · Urban Forestry & Urban Greening 11(4):364-373 · Global

Review of English-language community gardens research, summarizing who studies them, locations, methods, plants grown, participants, and the motivations, benefits and limitations, while outlining future research directions.

Forrest M. · Studies in the History of Gardens & Designed Landscapes · Ireland

This historical study documents the government-sponsored urban food production schemes introduced in Ireland between 1917 and 1923 in response to World War I food shortages, tracing how allotment promotion policies were administered by the Department of Agriculture and Technical Instruction and the Local Government Board.

Aleenah Mehta · Undergraduate Journal of Service Learning & Community-Based Research · United States

Framed around the argument that obesity and food insecurity in the United States are increasingly understood as conjoined rather than mutually exclusive problems, this paper introduces the Fruit of Folks Project as an urban farming response to local hunger. The abstract notes that the industrial food model's emphasis on producing ever greater quantities of food can itself threaten food security, defined as a person's or community's access at all times to enough food for an active, healthy life.

· Journal of Hazardous Materials · Bangladesh

In an arsenic-contaminated area of Bangladesh, residents ingest carcinogenic arsenic daily through home-grown vegetables and drinking water, posing a documented health concern.

Grewal S., Grewal P. · Cities · Cleveland, United States

Using Cleveland as a post-industrial case study, three maximal scenarios achieved food self-reliance of only 4.2-17.7% by weight and 1.8-7.3% by expenditure, showing even ambitious urban production can supply only a small share of a city's food needs.

Scherb A., Palmer A., Frattaroli S., Pollack K. · Journal of Agriculture, Food Systems, and Community Development · USA

National survey of US food policy councils describing their engagement in the policy process. Finds that although councils include policy goals in their missions, their actual engagement in and impact on the policy process is very limited, exposing a gap between stated ambition and delivery.

Marit Rosol · Antipode · Germany (Berlin)

Documents how Berlin's municipal policy of promoting community gardening was an attempt to outsource public green-space maintenance to unpaid volunteers under 'roll-back'/'roll-out' neoliberalism. Based on empirical research, it shows the outsourcing strategy largely FAILED (volunteers could not sustain provision) while opening space for other private interests.

Winifred Curran, Trina Hamilton · Local Environment · USA (Brooklyn, NYC)

Coins 'just green enough' by showing how conventional green-amenity planning triggers environmental gentrification and displacement of working-class residents; argues greening policy must be deliberately constrained to avoid the speculative development it otherwise unleashes.

Efrat Eizenberg · International Journal of Urban and Regional Research · USA (New York City)

After the Giuliani-era threat to NYC gardens, land-trust/NGO 'rescue' models became the governance solution; the paper shows how this institutionalization altered community space—trading grassroots autonomy for managerial control and revealing the trade-offs of the policy fix.

Catherine Brinkley · Journal of Planning Literature · Global

This article reviewed literature from various fields to evaluate services provided by farms to urban areas. It analyzed mission statements of 130 land trusts, finding a preference for parcels offering ecosystem services, wildlife habitat, and agricultural productivity. A literature review revealed that the market value of farmland services varies from -$37,541 to $124,000 per acre, depending on analysis method and farm location.

Annie Crane, Leela Viswanathan, Graham Whitelaw · Local Environment · Canada (Kingston, Ontario)

This paper examines guerrilla gardening as an example of sustainability in action, using participatory action research methods. Two case studies were developed in Kingston, Ontario: Dig Kingston, a guerrilla gardening project, and the Oak Street Community Garden. The research found that interventions like guerrilla gardening open up unexpected possibilities for conceptualizing sustainability and contribute to producing engaging and sustainable communities.

Pierre Walter · Environmental Education Research · United States

This paper argues that community gardens in the North American food movement serve as rich non-school sites for informal adult learning, despite being under-researched in environmental education. It proposes applying theories of public pedagogy and social movement learning from Adult Education to frame the study of learning within these gardens. The paper reviews empirical research on the benefits of community garden participation to illustrate the potential for further research on the link between learning and these benefits.

Kathryn Colasanti, Michael W. Hamm, Charlotte M. Litjens · Urban Geography · United States (Detroit)

This research explores perceptions of expanding urban agriculture in Detroit, Michigan, through semi-structured interviews and focus groups. While revealing widespread support for urban agriculture as a strategy for food security and urban sustainability, the study highlights contested aspects regarding the extent to which it should occur, its purpose, and the people it would involve.

Joseph N. Cohen, S. Gearhart, Elizabeth Garland · Journal of Hunger & Environmental Nutrition · United States (New York City)

A prospective cohort study in New York City investigated whether Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) participation increased fruit and vegetable consumption and home-cooked meals. Among 583 individuals who completed both surveys, CSA members showed a statistically significant increase of 2.2 servings of fruit and vegetables per week and 4.9 home-cooked meals per month compared to non-members. CSA participation was also associated with subjective reports of increased fruit and vegetable consumption.

Kevin C. Matteson, Gail Langellotto · Cities and the Environment · United States (New York City)

This study used mark-recapture and translocation experiments to assess the residency and movement of the urban butterfly, Pieris rapae, within and among community gardens in New York City. While most marked butterflies used gardens transiently, recruitment and residence time were higher in larger gardens and those with more flowers. The study demonstrated the butterfly's ability to move through developed landscapes and locate floral resources.