Research & reports

Ruma Chowdhury · Asian Journal of Advances in Agricultural Research · Bangladesh

A survey of urban agriculture in three Thanas (administrative wards) of Dhaka, Bangladesh — Bashabo, Gulshan, and Pallabi — examined the location, patterns, and processes of the practice. The survey found various types of urban agriculture in Dhaka, including vegetable gardens, ornamental plants, floriculture, pigeon and bird keeping, and dairy and goat farming. For most people it was found to be a hobby motivated by the aesthetic appeal it brings to houses and surroundings, with some residents growing fresh, chemical-free vegetables and fruit in their backyards. The city's agro-climatic conditions were described as well suited to flowers and foliage plants, floriculture was characterized as a new industry in Bangladesh, and dairy farming was reported to be common across every ward amid rising demand for milk.

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.

Esther Reyna Molina, María Xóchitl Astudillo Miller, Yanik I. Maldonado-Astudillo, Ricardo Salazar · Discover Sustainability · Global

A systematic review using PRISMA 2020 methodology examined social innovation and sustainable entrepreneurship practices in the agri-food sector as responses to socio-environmental resilience challenges facing small-scale rural producers and local food systems. It characterized these practices, evaluated their impacts across sustainability dimensions, and identified success factors and barriers. Studies on social innovation predominated over those on sustainable entrepreneurship, with experiences distributed across Europe, Africa, Asia, Oceania and the Americas. The initiatives analyzed included social agriculture, community gardens, inclusive agribusiness models, women's cooperatives and regenerative agroecological projects, with overall positive effects reported for social inclusion, community empowerment, market access, income diversification and improved environmental practices. Facilitating factors included cross-sector collaborative governance, local leadership and the capacity to combine heterogeneous resources; barriers included poorly adapted regulatory frameworks, dependency on external funding, and tensions between economic and socio-environmental objectives. The review concludes that hybrid practices combining social innovation and sustainable entrepreneurship contribute significantly to rural producers' socio-environmental resilience when embedded in favorable institutional environments and supported by public policy and legal frameworks.

Quinton J, Nesbitt L, Connolly JJT, Wyly E · Urban Studies · カナダ（バンクーバー・カルガリー）

Green gentrification describes how greening a neighbourhood — with parks, community gardens and the like — can draw in higher-income households and displace or exclude marginalised residents; the authors note this has rarely been tested empirically, and that the literature has focused almost exclusively on urban neighbourhoods even though the desire for green space is often cited as a reason households move to suburbs. Surveying 104 households in gentrified downtown Vancouver and suburban Calgary new-build neighbourhoods, the study finds green factors were of similar importance to non-green factors such as safety, scenic views and ambience (and, in Vancouver, proximity to entertainment and transit). Proximity to green space mattered more than overall neighbourhood greenness, and private green space mattered more in the suburbs. Greening, in other words, is not the sole driver, and green-gentrification research needs to widen its geography beyond dense city environments.

Liz Ignowski, John Luis Lagdameo, Liel Gonzalez, Arma Bertuso, Pepijn Schreinemachers · Urban Agriculture & Regional Food Systems 11(1) · Philippines (Quezon City, Metro Manila)

A quantitative survey of 300 urban food producers in Quezon City, one of the 17 cities of Metro Manila, examining who practises urban agriculture, the methods and technologies used, the challenges met and the benefits gained. Production is mainly small-scale and subsistence-oriented, with commercialisation limited except among those with access to agricultural land. Self-produced food does increase access to fruit and vegetables, but participation reflects economic vulnerability rather than food sufficiency, and both scale and commercialisation depend strongly on land access — a structural barrier in dense cities. The authors conclude that urban agriculture in Quezon City acts as a safety net rather than an income source, while also providing enjoyment and stress relief, and that urban food-security policy should be realistic about the limited role of urban food production.

Md. Nur Alom Sarkar Mithun, Saifur Rahman, Md. Asifur Rahman, Md. Hasan Sabit, Joseph L. Donaldson, Shonia Sheheli · Urban Agriculture & Regional Food Systems 11(1) · Bangladesh (Mymensingh — Kewatkhali and Aqua)

A study of perceived barriers among 100 randomly selected rooftop gardeners in Kewatkhali and Aqua, Mymensingh, Bangladesh, interviewed with a structured protocol between September and November 2023 and analysed with descriptive statistics, rank order, correlation coefficients and multiple linear regression. Every participant perceived substantial barriers. The most prominent concern was the complexity of the technologies involved; neighbours' negative attitudes ranked least significant. Age, rooftop garden area, income, experience, contact with extension media and gardening knowledge were all negatively and significantly related to perceived barriers, with garden area and knowledge the strongest predictors in the regression. The authors argue that research, demonstrations, extension activity and training to build residents' skills and understanding are the way to lower those barriers.

· Wikipedia · Global

This article describes green roofs as roof structures covered with vegetation and growing media that provide stormwater retention, insulation, urban heat island mitigation, and biodiversity benefits. Installation costs vary widely by system type, from $108-248/m2 for extensive systems to $355-2,368/m2 for intensive systems, with long-term economic benefits such as extended roof lifespan and increased property value offsetting high upfront costs.

· Wikipedia · Cuba

This Wikipedia article covers Cuba's 'Special Period' economic crisis following the Soviet Union's collapse. Oil imports fell to about 10% of pre-1990 levels, GDP shrank 35%, and imports and exports both fell over 80%. Agricultural production fell 47%, construction fell 75%, and manufacturing capacity fell 90%, driving the need for agricultural transformation.

· Wikipedia · Cuba

This Wikipedia article on Cuban agriculture states the Soviets provided 63% of Cuba's food imports and 90% of its petroleum before 1990; after the collapse, agricultural production fell 54% between 1989 and 1994. By 2002, 35,000 acres (140 km2) of urban gardens produced 3.4 million metric tons of food, 90% of Havana's fresh produce came from local urban farms, and by 2003 more than 200,000 Cubans worked in the expanding urban agriculture sector. More recently, cooperatives and family farmers manage about 69% of Cuba's agricultural land.

· Wikipedia · Cuba

This Wikipedia article on the Cuban economy states Cuban GDP declined at least 35% between 1989 and 1993 due to the Soviet collapse and loss of Eastern Bloc trade. Liberalized agricultural markets, letting state and private farms sell above-quota production at free-market prices, were introduced in October 1994. Reforms from 2011 onward expanded usufruct leasing of fallow state land to residents, with more than 150,000 farmers registered by 2012 leasing land from the government to grow surplus produce.

· Wikipedia (スペイン語) · Cuba

This Spanish-language Wikipedia article on Cuba's 'Special Period' states GDP contracted 36% between 1990 and 1993 following the Soviet collapse, and daily caloric intake fell from 2,845 kcal in 1989 to 1,863 kcal in 1994, below the recommended minimum of 2,100-2,300 kcal. Loss of access to Soviet oil drove a shift to permaculture and organic agriculture (the rise of organopónicos) with help from international technicians. Recovery began in 1994, with GDP reaching 1990 levels again by 2007.

Global Network of Lighthouse Farms (Wageningen University & Research) · Global Network of Lighthouse Farms (Wageningen University & Research) · Cuba

This profile of Organopónico Vivero Alamar from Wageningen University's Global Network of Lighthouse Farms describes a UBPC (Basic Unit of Cooperative Production) founded in 1997 by 5 cooperative members, starting as an 800 sqm manually irrigated tree nursery. It has since grown to 10.14 ha with 150 cooperative members, 42 of them women, including nurseries, a 0.45 ha greenhouse, a rustic lab for breeding entomopathogens, a mycorrhizal fungi propagation center, and small-scale fruit and vegetable processing facilities. The page notes the farm has had to close due to COVID-19-related economic hardship and wildfires.

· Wikipedia · Global

This Wikipedia article on the Haber (Haber-Bosch) process for industrial ammonia synthesis states that, as of 2018, the process produced 230 million tonnes of anhydrous ammonia per year, and that 'nearly 50%' of the nitrogen found in human tissues originated from it. Ammonia production is said to account for 1-2% of global energy consumption, 3-5% of natural gas production, and 3% of global carbon emissions, while nitrogen use efficiency is typically less than 50%, with farm runoff from excess use disrupting biological habitats. The article also credits the process with supporting global population growth from about 2 billion in the early 20th century to over 8 billion today.

· Wikipedia · Global

The URL for 'Peak phosphorus' now redirects to the Reserves section of Wikipedia's 'Phosphorus' article. Per a 2023 USGS estimate, world commercially extractable phosphate rock reserves are 72 billion tons, against 2022 world mining production of 220 million tons — implying roughly 300 years of supply at zero growth. Before new deposits were discovered in Norway in 2023, Earth's commercially affordable phosphorus reserves were expected to be depleted in 50-100 years. Reserve estimates are described as contested: a 2010 IFDC report is criticized by a 2014 review as presenting 'an inflated picture of global reserves,' particularly for Morocco, where largely hypothetical and inferred resources were simply relabeled 'reserves.' The article also states that a shortage in rock phosphate or significant price increases might negatively affect world food security. Mitigation measures cited include reducing agricultural runoff (no-till farming, contour tilling, windbreaks), incinerating phosphorus-rich sewage sludge and recovering the ash, and recovering phosphorus-rich materials such as struvite from waste — though current recovery technologies are described as not yet cost-effective given phosphorus market prices.

· Wikipedia (English) · Singapore

English Wikipedia entry on agriculture in Singapore. The country imports about 90% of its food. The 2019 'Singapore 30 by 30' goal (30% of nutritional needs grown locally by 2030) was revised in November 2025 into a new target of 20% for produce like leafy vegetables and 30% for protein (including seafood and eggs) by 2035. As of 2024, there were 225 farms (153 land-based, 72 sea-based) with total production value of S$231 million.

· Wikipedia (English) · Singapore

English Wikipedia entry on the Singapore Food Agency, established on 1 April 2019, consolidating the food-related functions of the former Agri-Food and Veterinary Authority (AVA) along with parts of the National Environment Agency and Health Sciences Authority. The '30 by 30' goal — raising home-grown food from 10% to 30% of nutritional needs by 2030 — was announced on 8 March 2019, and was revised again in 2025.

· Wikipedia · Singapore

This Wikipedia article on food security in Singapore states that about 90 percent of the country's food comes from overseas imports, and that the government set the '30 by 30' goal to produce 30% of its nutritional needs locally by 2030. It further states new targets for 2035 to produce 20 per cent of the country's fibre consumption and 30 per cent of protein consumption (eggs and seafood) domestically, and that as of 2024 eight per cent of fibre and 26 per cent of protein consumed in Singapore was produced domestically.

James Comtois · Institutional Investor · Global

Signatories to the UN Principles for Responsible Investment grew from 63 institutions with $6.5 trillion under management in 2006 to 2,450 with $80 trillion in 2019. The article reports a research paper by Demirer and Zhang arguing that institutional ESG investing is largely herding driven by fad, reputational concern and fund flows, and has improved neither corporate ESG engagement nor investment performance. At the time of writing, global ESG fund inflows had fallen 50 per cent over the previous year, with a record $12 billion withdrawn in a single quarter.

· Wikipedia · Global

The GIIN is a New York nonprofit founded in September 2009 by Amit Bouri and Antony Bugg-Levine, publicly unveiled on 25 September 2009 by Bill Clinton at the Clinton Global Initiative. It exists to scale and professionalise impact investing, running conferences and market research and managing the IRIS impact-measurement standards (launched 2009, succeeded by IRIS+ in 2019) and the Operating Principles for Impact Management. It had 421 member organisations as of June 2025, revenue of $16,484,237 and total assets of $16,968,824 in 2022, and 186 companies across 40 countries had signed the Operating Principles as of March 2025.

Chifunda Emmanuel Felix, Kifunda Christina Felix · Cogent Food & Agriculture · タンザニア

A paper on urban and peri-urban agriculture in Dar es Salaam examined through the gender dynamics of the people working in it. The bibliographic record (authors, journal, DOI) was verified at the source, but the abstract could not be retrieved, so only the scope of the topic is described here.

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).

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.

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.