Research & reports

Kristen McIvor, Craig Cogger, Sally Brown · Compost Science & Utilization · United States (Tacoma)

A study in Tacoma, Washington, evaluated the effects of two biosolids-based soil products, Tagro and GroCo, on soil physical and chemical properties in three urban community gardens over two growing seasons. Amendments were applied at 200 Mg ha−1 dry weight in the first year, with half receiving an additional 200 Mg ha−1 in the second year. Biosolids did not significantly affect total soil metal concentrations, but increased water infiltration rates from 10.1 ± 0.95 ml min−1 to 51–212 ml min−1, decreased bulk density from 1.07 ± 0.01 g cm−3 to 0.51–0.77 g cm−3, and increased total carbon, nitrogen, and available phosphorus. Biosolids addition also decreased soil pH from 6.43 to 5.35–5.75.

Catherine Rwamba Githuku · Abstracts of postgraduate thesis · Kenya (Nairobi)

This study investigated soil and crop pollution levels resulting from untreated wastewater reuse for irrigation in Kibera and Mailisaba wastewater irrigation farms in Nairobi, Kenya. Analysis of irrigation water, soil, and crop samples (maize, kales, black nightshade, arrowroots) revealed that the Electrical Conductivity (EC) of irrigation water at Mailisaba exceeded recommended levels. Farmers reported adverse effects on crops due to wastewater quality, and despite awareness of health risks, many farmers confessed to not using protective clothing.

Anna‐Katarina Schilling, Helmut Hotzel, Ulrich Methner, Lisa D. Sprague, Gernot Schmoock, Hosny El‐Adawy, Ralf Ehricht, Anna-Caroline Wöhr, Michael Erhard, Lutz Geue · Applied and Environmental Microbiology · Germany

This study investigated the presence of zoonotic agents in small ruminants kept on city farms in southern Germany, sampling feces and nasal liquid from 48 animals (28 goats, 20 sheep) across 7 city farms and one activity playground. Findings revealed that 100% of sampled sheep and 89.3% of goats carried Shiga toxin-producing Escherichia coli (STEC). Staphylococcus spp. were detected in 75% of both sheep and goats, and Campylobacter spp. in 25% of sheep and 14.3% of goats. Neither Salmonella spp. nor Coxiella burnetii was found.

Mulala Danny Simatele, Tony Binns, Munacinga Simatele · Journal of Environmental Planning and Management · Zambia (Lusaka)

This paper, based on recent field-based research in Lusaka, Zambia, examines the relationships between urban agriculture (UA) and extreme weather conditions, and their impact on the livelihood options of the urban poor. Despite its significance as a source of food and income in many sub-Saharan African cities, UA has not been integrated into urban development and planning policy and has come under increasing pressure from extreme weather events like droughts and flooding over the last two decades.

Qiu Yan · Journal of Quanzhou Normal University · China (Quanzhou)

This article analyzed Quanzhou City's past ten years of three production sectors, labor structure trends, and their influence on the Strait West Coast economic area's industrial structure. Using GDP proportion, contribution rate, structural similarity, and comparative labor productivity, it suggested that Quanzhou should optimize its industrial structure and promote cross-strait economic zone development. Optimization suggestions included advancing agricultural multi-function transformation, forming regional urban agriculture, fostering strategic emerging industries, and strengthening modern service industries.

Huang Xue-qun · · China (Tianjin)

This paper analyzed the development status of Tianjin urban fishery, finding it to be in an early stage. Problems identified included a low level of industrial development, an unscientific development mode, and weak innovation capability. The study proposed development paths and measures for industrial transformation and upgrading.

Wenjuan Hu · Tianjin Agricultural Sciences · China (Nanchang)

This paper analyzed the competitive power of Nanchang urban agriculture using the Diamond model. The analysis considered production factors, demand conditions, related and supporting industries, business strategies and structure, and horizontal competition. The study presented countermeasures and suggestions, including developing low-carbon agriculture and optimizing organizational forms.

Batanai L Sammie, Charles Nyamutowa, Munyaradzi Gwazane · International Journal of Scientific Research · Zimbabwe

This study used FGDs and case studies to identify perceived causes of failure of NGO urban agriculture initiatives in Zimbabwe. The study identified the principal-agent relationship between NNGOs and LNGOs as the epicenter of all initiative failures.

Hua Zhu, 杨军 · 青海社会科学 · China (Xining)

This paper studies the current status, existing problems, and development countermeasures for peri-urban agriculture in Xining City's Chuanqian villages. By analyzing agricultural development in Nilongtai Village, it discusses development models and policy suggestions for peri-urban agriculture in Chuanqian villages. Xining City's Chuanqian villages are a key area for urban agriculture development during the "12th Five-Year Plan" period.

Lijie He · · Netherlands (Delft)

This study investigated urban agriculture development within city planning, using the Dutch city of Delft as a case study. It developed a dynamic model for land allocation in urban agriculture by applying Multi-criteria Evaluation (MCE) to assess its relation to other city development factors. MCE and Geographic Information System (GIS) were integrated to create suitability maps, providing references for urban agriculture land utilization for planners and policymakers.

Mahbubur Meenar, Jeffrey P. Featherstone, Amy Laura, Julia McCabe · · United States

A paper examining urban agriculture in United States post-industrial cities, which since the mid-20th century have experienced dramatic loss of population, community resources, and economic growth even as their wider metropolitan areas continued to grow, and which are characterised by high levels of crime, substance abuse, unemployment, poverty, food insecurity, vacant land, and urban blight. Many such communities rely on urban agriculture as a means of food security and sustainability as well as community resilience, vacant-land remediation, and neighbourhood development, yet the paper argues that urban agriculture has been treated as a temporary, informal land use, with land tenure conflict causing the untimely demise of many projects. In terms of urban design, it further argues that urban agriculture projects in many cities have developed as a "patchwork," lacking physical connectivity to other gardens, open spaces, and community infrastructure.

Community Gardening Works! ACGA 2011 Conference, Mara Gittleman, Kelli Jordan, Eric Brelsford · Cities and the Environment · United States (New York City)

This paper is a case study of Farming Concrete, a community-based project in New York City, which has more than 500 community gardens, over 80% of which host food production according to a 2010 GrowNYC survey. Using citizen science methods in which gardeners and researchers jointly designed and conducted the research, the project measured how much food was grown in New York City community gardens in 2010 and 2011.

Hui Wang · Anhui nongye kexue · China

This paper examines the internal mechanism for discipline building and characteristic collection at urban agriculture colleges, and proposes a technical approach for constructing characteristic collections.

Kai Zhang · Journal of Changjiang Vegetables · China

This paper analyzes the Netherlands' experience in developing modernized, specialized, and marketized urban horticulture, and discusses development goals for the horticulture industry in China's metropolitan suburbs on that basis. Drawing on the concept of modern agricultural development, it proposes strategies including developing advanced technology and equipment, innovating greenhouse production technology, optimizing the organizational forms of agriculture, improving industrial systems, increasing overall benefit, and achieving agricultural modernization.

Sarah Schindler · Faculty publications · United States

This article addresses the conflict between local governments and "locavores" seeking to use private property to produce food — for personal use and for sale — and municipal zoning ordinances that separate agriculture from residential uses. It examines the police power rationales behind ordinances disallowing urban homesteading in urban and suburban communities, then argues that public health, civic virtue, and free market principles can justify ordinances expressly permitting these activities. It discusses problems associated with industrial agriculture — food insecurity, food deserts, obesity tied to processed foods, monoculture-induced environmental harm, harm to animals, and greenhouse gas emissions — that could be partly alleviated through urban agriculture, noting that some local governments have already begun passing ordinances expressly allowing gardens, chickens, and the sale of produce in residential areas.

Batanai L Sammie, Munyaradzi Gwazane, Charles Nyamutowa · International Journal of Scientific Research · Zimbabwe

A 2012 questionnaire survey of 40 cultivators in Gweru, Zimbabwe, collected baseline demographic information on urban open field cultivation. It found that 58% of field owners were men, 76% were between 25 and 65 years old, and children contributed 35% of the labor; education levels were 15% tertiary/university, 5% "A"-level, 48% "O"-level, and 27% primary. The study concludes that open field cultivation is a family practice engaged in across all social classes and recommends legitimizing urban agriculture as an integral part of Zimbabwean urban life.

배민기 · 충북 FOCUS · South Korea

A 2012 policy report reviews the state of neighborhood parks and green space in Chungcheongbuk-do, South Korea, and argues for strategic planning to expand and improve them. Noting that since 2005 the quantity of park and green space has increased but its variety remains limited and its distribution regionally uneven, it recommends actively expanding park-type urban agriculture (housing-based, neighborhood-based, downtown, farm-and-park, and school-education urban agriculture parks), expanding roadside green strips and street greening, closing service gaps in park and green space provision, rooftop greening tied to building characteristics, soft measures such as box gardens, seedling distribution, and urban ecosystem education programs, and using green-space-use contracts, "green owner" systems, ordinance development, and budget allocation.

Keith Sterling Miller · University of Minnesota Digital Conservancy (University of Minnesota) · Global

This literature review was conducted to support the design of a Community Garden Social Impact Assessment Toolkit. Its first section reviews key literature defining social capital, including its forms, distinctions, and conceptual limits; its second section reviews the most relevant research literature on social capital and community gardens. The review played three roles in developing the toolkit: providing a conceptual foundation for social capital, informing an interview guide used with community garden stakeholders, and shaping reflection exercise questions within the toolkit. To make the toolkit accessible to a wide and diverse audience, it deliberately avoids the phrase "social capital," instead using language that captures its essence and meaning as defined in the literature.

Wang You-hui · Hubei nongye kexue · China

Land-use issues in urban agriculture in Changsha City, China, were examined by analyzing and comparing the city's annual statistical data alongside data from related government departments, given the close relationship between land use and the healthy development of urban agriculture. The results indicate that Changsha's urban agriculture land-use planning needs to be formulated and completed, the land-use system needs to be completed, the land-use structure needs to be optimized, and land-use functions need to be expanded, with corresponding countermeasures proposed for these issues.

Lucien Armel Awah Manga, D. Kovačević · · Cameroon

Using survey data collected by the French Agricultural Research Centre for International Development (CIRAD) among urban-farming households in the lowland area of Yaounde, Cameroon, a multinomial logit model analyzed the factors affecting choice of solid waste disposal method. Household size and accessibility of the residential area increased the probability of choosing municipal infrastructure (bins and garbage trucks) over recycling or illegal dumping, while longer years of residence, more agricultural experience, and greater distance to communal containers promoted illegal dumping or recycling instead. Given low waste-collection rates in the area, the study recommends building waste transfer stations in or near the lowland areas to support both household waste management and farming activities.

Sima Patel, Rod MacRae · Journal of Agriculture Food Systems and Community Development · Canada

A land parcel analysis in Toronto, Canada identified 77 parcels totaling 1,270 acres (514 hectares) of potential land for community supported agriculture (CSA) farming — about 1 percent of the city's surface area — with much of it located in northeast Toronto. Five commercially viable scenario types were constructed with varying land use, zoning, institutional and residential characteristics, but considerable challenges remain for widespread implementation, leading to policy and program recommendations including pilot projects, institutional linkages, program supports, training and extension.

Andrea Calori · TERRITORIO · Global

The essay traces how agriculture has long been part of the urban planning policies of many cities and international institutions, while noting that agriculture and rural development only recently entered planning debates, delayed as part of the broader development of planning shaped by the 'overcoming of the rural' made explicit by 'modern' development. It connects several key turning points in how the role of the rural has been reconstructed globally in recent decades, offering new content for future action plans.

孟兴 · 中国乡镇企业 · China

A news report describes the Binhai Eco-Agriculture Science Park in the Tanggu new town of Tianjin's Binhai New Area, China, where a large glass roof had been completed and interior fitting and climate-control testing were underway ahead of its planned opening for the October 1, 2012 National Day holiday as a 100,000-square-meter urban agriculture park. The park is described as offering dining amid tropical plants, water play in what is called the world's largest indoor hot spring, and organic fruit and vegetable picking and agricultural learning in large greenhouses.

楼文龙 · 农村金融研究 · China (Beijing)

A Chinese policy study examining how the financial sector can support the development of the "three rural issues" (agriculture, rural areas, farmers) in a major metropolis, using Beijing as the example. Drawing on the coordinated practices between Beijing's banking sector and related parties, and on a review of relevant policy measures, the author presents a preliminary analysis.

O. Yusuf, Idowu Innocent Abbas · DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals) · Nigeria

A study of resource use and productivity among 70 urban farmers drawn from the two main cultivator groups—Fadama and Okiti—in Ilorin, Kwara State, Nigeria, using focus group discussion, non-participant observation, and a questionnaire survey. Multiple regression analysis identified pump-machine use, vegetable-plot harvest, use of modern inputs, and labor type as determinants of efficiency, together accounting for 89.6% of the contribution to land use, the main resource. Fadama cultivators operated at a larger scale with correspondingly higher profit than Okiti cultivators, and although both groups faced similar environmental and input-access constraints, the two systems differed fundamentally in scale and production efficiency.