Research & reports

Vargas Sandoval, Norma Constanza · · Colombia (Bogotá)

This descriptive qualitative research project analyzes how urban agriculture processes in Bosa, Bogotá, contribute to social construction through community development. It characterizes the social structure used by participants, identifying dimensions of community organization, systems supporting social dynamics, and relationships articulating actors for network building. The documentation of these urban agriculture experiences serves as a tool for local and district program planning and execution.

Heidrun Moschitz, Christoph Kueffer · GAIA - Ecological Perspectives for Science and Society · Global

This paper argues that while urban agriculture might be considered a passing fad, it is a vehicle to deal with many urgent topics of societal transformation towards a sustainable future. It discusses the potential of urban agriculture to change agriculture and urban life.

Diana Paola Vargas Huertas, Juan–Carlos Ruiz · Ciudad Paz-ando · Colombia (Bogotá)

This case study analyzed the creation process of an agricultural-based socio-economic network (orchards) in the Altos de la Estancia sector of Ciudad Bolívar in Bogotá, from the perspective of social resilience. Using participatory design accompaniment methodologies, the study examined resilience variables, vulnerability, and alternative economies within urban agriculture, and analyzed the social actors involved in the network's formation. The research revealed diverse capacities to face environmental adversity within risk management and community building processes, supported by district institutions, academia, and popular collectives.

A. Sempere · Americanae (AECID Library) · Global

This paper argues that the concentration of people in urban areas poses significant ecological and social challenges, such as how to supply food to large population centers that grow at the expense of surrounding agricultural land. According to the United Nations, over half of the world's population currently lives in cities, projected to reach 66% by 2050. Current cities rely on food imported from increasingly distant places rather than food produced in their geographical environment, resulting in cities and citizens disconnected from their ecological and sociocultural context.

Rada Betancourt, Bibian Andrea · · Colombia (Bogotá)

This document, based on an action research methodology, aims to provide informative, conceptual, and methodological bases for formulating an agroecological urban and peri-urban agriculture (AUPA) program in Bogotá. It describes the context of urban and peri-urban agriculture in the capital district, projects its future in Bogotá, and formulates foundational principles based on previously obtained results.

Kimberley Curtis · Journal of Agriculture Food Systems and Community Development · Global

This book review covers Steven McFadden's "Awakening Community Intelligence," presenting his argument for the exponential expansion of Community Supported Agriculture (CSAs). McFadden believes CSAs have the potential to become "community cornerstones" and function as a "network of light-giving impulses" through digital networking, addressing 21st-century challenges.

Monroy Quevedo, Katherin Mayerli · · Colombia (Bogotá)

A mixed-methods study in UPZ Marruecos, Rafael Uribe Uribe Locality, Bogotá, Colombia, investigated the impact of urban agriculture on the food and nutritional security of participating families. Based on interviews and surveys with 10 participants, urban agriculture was found to contribute to families' food and nutritional security by increasing the availability of safe food and improving physical access. Participants perceived higher consumption of vegetables, fruits, tubers, cereals, and legumes, leading to greater dietary diversity.

Ranjan Datta · Cogent Education · Global

Community garden activities play a significant role in bridging formal and informal learning, especially in urban children's science and environmental education, by promoting relational methods that integrate food security, social interactions, community development, environmental activism, and cultural integration. An auto-ethnographic study revealed that community garden-based practices adhere to forms of agency such as embracing diversity, sharing power, and trust building as part of everyday learning.

Stefan Hebold, Andrea Frömel · edoc Publication server (Humboldt University of Berlin) · Global

This study aimed to address the lack of scientific documentation on the forms and effects of urban agriculture by investigating the health of urban-produced plant-based foods. Raised beds were established at urban, peri-urban, and rural locations, planted with identical species, and compared with the yields from an ECF container farm hydroponic system. Yields were compared between the hydroponic system and raised beds, while raised beds were compared among themselves based on heavy metal accumulation.

Ida Åberg · · Global

This abstract introduces urban agriculture (UA) as a potential solution to the challenges of feeding rapidly growing cities sustainably and addressing unsustainability and poverty.

Paredes Guzmán, Germán Ricardo · · Colombia (Bogotá)

This project aims to describe different methods of establishing and producing urban agriculture, focusing on sustainability and food security for the vulnerable population of Altos de Cazucá, Soacha municipality, Colombia. This population is affected by forced displacement due to armed conflict, resulting in increased poverty and malnutrition, with a chronic malnutrition rate of 30% in children compared to the national average of 8%. The project proposes to apply participatory action research methodologies and techniques to develop an urban production model that addresses these issues.

Manase Kudzai Chiweshe, Kudzai MacMillan Muzanago · · Zimbabwe (Harare)

This exploratory study analyzed the emergence of sack potato farming as an alternative empowerment platform for urban women in Zimbabwe, using qualitative methodologies and secondary literature. It found that sack potato production, which gained prominence in Zimbabwe in 2013, can increase food security and income for urban households and promotes micro-economic enterprises among urban women.

Laure‐Elise Ruoso, R. Plant, Brent Jacobs, Pierre Maurel · · Australia (Western Sydney)

This study, based on in-depth interviews with farmers in peri-urban Sydney, Australia, examines how changes in these areas impact farmers' place identity and decision-making. It analyzes how increasing urban development, land subdivision, rising land values, and environmental regulations threaten farming activities. The findings indicate that these factors influence farmers' practices, business management, and decisions to continue or relocate peri-urban farming.

Tracey Adams · Lincoln (University of Nebraska) · Global

A University of Nebraska study examined whether urban farming could support future food security through a literature review and hands-on work on small farms. Mapping community garden locations in Omaha, Nebraska against the city's median household income found that urban farming is prevalent even in poverty-affected areas, despite Omaha being surrounded by extensive rural farmland.

E.N. Sabiiti, Constantine Bakyusa Katongole · Water science and technology library · Uganda

Wakiso district, the peri-urban area surrounding Kampala, Uganda's capital city (population about 1.51 million), ranks first nationally in poultry production and second in pig production, accounting for 7.4% and 6.3% of the national chicken and pig populations respectively. The chapter finds that agricultural land in these peri-urban areas is increasingly at risk from urban encroachment, driven by population growth, distorted land values, a construction boom, and expanding recreation and leisure facilities competing with farming for land, which is likely to adversely affect the city's food security.

Insa Theesfeld, Nicole Rogge, Theesfeld, Insa, Rogge, Nicole · · Global

This paper applies collective-action theory to urban gardens, arguing that in developed countries in particular they emerge less from economic competitiveness or a desire for regional food than from a lack of participation in city development and limited opportunities for democratic use of public space and socializing. It presents criteria for describing this development and for distinguishing degrees of collectively used resources across gardens, and demonstrates the criteria's applicability using three pilot case studies, showing that urban garden movements can offer participants the chance to build new regional identities through sharing time, knowledge and participation in public decisions.

B. Borra, R. van Veenhuizen, Marc Schut, Andrew Adam‐Bradford · Coventry University Open Collections (Coventry university) · Global

A report on the collaboration between RUAF (the urban agriculture resource centre) and The Spontaneous City International (SPcitI), begun in 2015 in the context of the Syrian refugee crisis. It focuses on the Mafraq region of northern Jordan, where an inventory of the role of food and agriculture was commissioned by the International Cooperation Agency of the Association of Dutch Municipalities (VNGI). The two organizations describe building partnerships linking urban agriculture and urban planning in cities of the Global South.

Maya MITEVA · AGROFOR · Global

Citing UN (2015) projections that Bulgaria's population will shrink by 27.9% by 2050 (compared with 15.1% for Japan), this case study positions urban agriculture as a planning tool for responding to population decline and urban shrinkage. It analyzes Japan's Kashiniwa program, an innovative local governance system for managing vacant lots in shrinking cities that began in Kashiwa City in 2010, examining Japanese local authorities' approach to declining and aging population and discussing its transferability to Bulgarian planning practice.

Javier Melero Llorente · Phytoma España: La revista profesional de sanidad vegetal · Global

This is a profile and interview piece on Adolfo Pérez Esquivel, the Argentine artist, architecture professor, human rights activist, and 1980 Nobel Peace Prize laureate, describing his decades of support for agroecology and social movements defending alternative, ecologically based agricultural production, and covering his October visit to the School of Agricultural Engineering at the Universitat Politècnica de València to inaugurate its fifth course on agroecology, urban agriculture, food sovereignty, and rural development cooperation, shortly after serving as an international observer for Colombia's peace referendum. It contains no research data or study findings.

BibekDhital BibekDhital, Anusha Sharma, Santosh Adhikari · International Journal of Environment Agriculture and Biotechnology · Nepal

Against a backdrop of rapid urbanization and increasing land fallowing in rural Nepal, this case study examined the current state of urban agriculture in Pokhara and Dhulikhel municipalities. It found that a 150 m² area was sufficient to meet the vegetable needs of an urban family of four to five, saving an estimated NPR 6,000-8,000 per year per 100 m².

George R. Smith, Dilip Nandwani, Vanaja Kankarla · International Journal of Sustainable Development & World Ecology · Global

This conceptual article works to validate a common set of parameters and principles for sustainable agriculture, comparing alternative forms of sustainable agriculture with rural-to-urban community resilience and drawing conclusions across multiple sustainable/alternative agriculture systems. It proposes organic agriculture parameters and principles as a conceptual framework and examines best-management parameters of urban and rural sustainable agriculture in the United States and United Kingdom. The article states that urban agriculture is expanding alongside rising demand for fresh, accessible produce, and that evidence supports a symbiotic relationship between sustainable agriculture and rural/urban communities, while also noting that some hold this relationship has not been clearly defined.

François Mancebo, Sylvie Salles · Challenges in Sustainability · Global

This essay-style article surveys urban agriculture projects that have proliferated worldwide since the late twentieth century, reshaping urban landscapes and urban fabric, offering alternatives to traditional urban life, creating new commons, and bringing people together. It cites examples from Singapore (self-reliant in meat), Bamako (self-sufficient in vegetables), and Berlin (80,000 community gardens on communal land with 16,000 more people on a waiting list). It states that vacant and derelict land arising from deindustrialization, population aging and decline (as in Japan and Germany), and emigration (in some African mid-sized cities) creates new opportunities for urban agriculture — citing Detroit, where thousands of hectares of urban land have been given to unemployed workers for food growing, and Britain, where councils in 20 cities have promoted urban agriculture on wasteland. It notes urban agriculture is gradually becoming a planning-policy option, integrated into land-use planning documents in Delft and protected within an inclusive local land development plan in Paris.

Christine Brown-Paul · Practical Hydroponics and Greenhouses · Global

An overview article (2016, no specific region) surveys the varied forms of urban agriculture — from small community gardens to urban farms spanning several city blocks to intensive indoor hydroponic or aquaculture facilities — describing it as a fast-growing phenomenon with the potential to nourish community health and social fabric and create economic opportunities for farmers and neighborhoods, while also coming with its own set of challenges and opportunities.

Iain Black, Deirdre Shaw, Katherine Trebeck · Families Relationships and Societies · Global

An introduction (2016, no specific region) presents two related Open Space articles — "Changing the narrative: Measuring progress by measuring what matters to families" and "Places of prosumption: Community gardens putting the 'we' into neighbourhoods" — describing how the articles explore how spaces can be created that enable relationships not reliant on socially and environmentally damaging consumption, and that help build space for socially, environmentally, and economically sustainable societies.

Efrat Eizenberg · · Global

This chapter discusses the broad, self-generated relations between the institution of community gardens and opportunities both to engage in political practices and to take part in the process of producing space. The self-generative power of this assemblage is described as having a life of its own, continuously producing new participants and sustaining the institution over the long run. The development of political consciousness remakes participants as a different kind of urban resident; paraphrasing Gramsci, the author terms this process the production of "organic residents" — people who may not be defined as citadins but can nonetheless be seen as a step toward utopian urban political subjects. Multiple opportunities for political development are embedded across many levels of the production of space, with the actual space of the gardens serving as the blueprint for a political strategy, and the institution linking vision to space.