Research & reports

Jovana Čikić, Marica Petrović · DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals) · Serbia

This paper analyzes the female labor force on family farms as a factor in urban agriculture development in the urban and peri-urban area of Novi Sad, Serbia. The study examines socio-demographic indicators of female labor, specifically economic activity and education level, as a development potential. The analysis aims to highlight the main characteristics of female economic activity and education level that contribute to urban agriculture development.

Nicoletta Rolla · Projets de paysage · United States (New York City)

This paper introduces the backgrounds of Michela Pasquali, a landscape architect and botanist, and Franco La Cecla, a cultural anthropologist and author of the preface. Pasquali has worked on several garden projects in the United States and Italy, and published the book "I giardini della diplomazia" in 2000.

Yuji Hara, Takashi Furutani, Akinobu Murakami, Armando M. Palijon, Makoto Yokohari · Waste Management & Research The Journal for a Sustainable Circular Economy · Philippines (Metro Manila)

This research used solid waste management programs in three Quezon City barangays, Metro Manila, as a case study to assess organic waste recycling and local urban agriculture potential. It measured organic waste and compost production from barangay projects and identified potential compost use on local farmlands and vacant lots. The study found that securing compost buyers is currently difficult, leading to distribution to neighboring farm villages, but concluded that a more local compost recycling system within the barangays is feasible.

Peng Zhi-qiang · Journal of Yueyang Vocational and Technical College · China (Yueyang)

This paper discusses the "Cross-lake Development" strategy for Junshan Mountain District, based on the spirit of Western Union and the district's current status. It proposes that the district government should integrate into the urban consumer demand, accelerate the development of modern urban agriculture, join the inner lake tourism zone, develop eco-tourism recreation, integrate into the city's modern industrial system, and accelerate the construction of an eco-Metro.

C. Clare Hinrichs · · United States (Pennsylvania)

This paper argues for sociologists' engagement with sustainable food systems, illustrating the urgency of agricultural and food issues through sketches. One sketch highlights the 2009 tomato blight in the Northeast, which devastated crops from commercial to home gardens. This blight was traced to tomato starts from large nurseries supplying major retailers, demonstrating how local food can be linked to large-scale industrialized agriculture.

Geisy Hernández, J. Pérez Pérez, Roberto Martínez, Teresa López · DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals) · Cuba

This study investigated irrigation water management for guava cultivation under urban agriculture conditions at UBPC Celia Sánchez in Habana del Este, Cuba. Using a drip irrigation system with fixed doses and intervals, results showed that initial irrigation doses need adjustment based on crop demands. During the development period, the used doses and irrigation frequencies were acceptable, with an average 90% irrigation efficiency. Maintaining high soil moisture significantly impacted guava yield and size, producing more large fruits and yields up to 36.7 t/ha.

이양주 · · South Korea

This paper proposes a promotion plan for urban agriculture in Gyeonggi-do, South Korea, in response to increasing interest and existing initiatives in other cities like Seoul, Incheon, Gwangmyeong, and Suwon. While Seoul has an ordinance, its implementation system is underdeveloped, and Incheon's private sector-led efforts face land acquisition limits. The plan suggests establishing a public-private network centered around the Gyeonggi Agricultural Research & Extension Services' urban agriculture team, collaborating with other regional organizations to conduct research, technology development, education, and pilot projects, with specific roles and timelines for 2010.

Los Angeles and Seattle · · United States

This study examines two case studies of urban farms in the United States: the South Central Farm in Los Angeles, California, and Marra Farm in Seattle, Washington. These sites and their embedded political and social processes reveal much about current food systems and struggles for justice. The research focuses on the conscious strategies immigrant communities utilize to reinvent space in these urban sites, forming place-based resistance and project identities.

Louiza M. Boukharaeva, Marcel Marloie · VertigO · Russia

This article examines collective urban gardening in Russia, practiced by city dwellers on various land types, as a significant reference for urban agriculture theory. This non-commercial family urban agriculture, supported by the state, businesses, and the population, acts as a crisis buffer by combining food production, health, recreation, leisure, child education, and artistic creation functions. The right to build housing on garden plots democratized urban access to land and nature, addressing poverty by extending a middle-class lifestyle element to the entire urban society.

김진환 · 대한건축학회지회연합회 학술발표대회논문집 · South Korea

A literature review and questionnaire survey were conducted to analyze the implementation of urban agriculture utilizing idle land in cities. It was found that citizens use various types of urban agriculture for healthy hobbies and small-scale food production, and the demand for urban agriculture using idle land is increasing. Both public sectors, centered on local governments, and private sectors are implementing various urban agriculture projects, and it was concluded that the government needs to provide administrative assistance for further utilization of idle land.

Amy Linzie · School for International Training Digital Collections (School for International Training) · Cuba (Havana)

This paper explores how urban agriculture (UA) addresses urban food security and re-establishes food sovereignty in Havana, Cuba, and Mexico City, Mexico. Havana has developed sustainable UA methods addressing organic food access, while Mexico City's D.F. struggles to establish UA's relevance amidst poverty, resource shortages, and pollution. The study examines UA development in these two societies and its relevance to regaining food sovereignty.

Juan Yun · Guangdong nongye kexue · China (Tianjin)

This article provided suggestions for the development of urban agriculture and the "vegetable basket project" in Tianjin, China. The recommendations included constructing urban agriculture in mountainous areas and the Tianjin Binhai new developed area, improving vegetable transportation and fresh-cut vegetable wholesale markets, and establishing retail auction supermarkets and market information websites. These suggestions were based on Tianjin's current agricultural and market levels, geography, and urban construction status.

Wang Cheng-yong, Wang, Cheng-Yong · AgEcon Search (University of Minnesota, USA) · China

This study analyzed the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats (SWOT) of developing urban agriculture in the Pearl River Delta area, China. Strengths included natural resources, geographic, and technological advantages. Weaknesses involved land resources, labor costs, industrial scale, and personnel quality. Opportunities were identified in potential clients, favorable policies, and markets, while threats included conceptual factors and the urban-rural income gap. Based on this analysis, countermeasures and suggestions for urban agriculture development were proposed.

Sarah Rabkin · eScholarship (California Digital Library) · United States (California)

This interview, conducted by Sarah Rabkin at Jim Nelson's home at Camp Joy Gardens in Boulder Creek, California, on August 20 and October 23, 2008, features Nelson discussing the founding and early days of the UCSC Garden, his experiences with Alan Chadwick, the creation and evolution of Camp Joy, and his philosophy as a farmer-educator. Camp Joy Gardens is a 4.5-acre farm in Santa Cruz County that organically cultivates crops using biodynamic principles and supplies produce to twenty-five local families through a community-supported agriculture program.

Felipe de Jesús Cruz Celis, Héctor Montiel Campos · · Global

This study aimed to propose sustainability in urban agriculture through the use of hydroponic technology for agricultural production. Through documentary research and expert interviews, diagnostic criteria and sustainability indicators were determined, making hydroponics an option for producing food in reduced spaces. The results indicate that urban agriculture, due to its spatial scope, has limited possibilities for scaling up to the formal market, but can respond to family self-consumption needs and improve nutritional and higher quality foods.

Jung‐Min Choi · Journal of Korean Society of Rural Planning · South Korea

This study conducted basic research for the development of a Korean-style community garden (Kleingarten) model, referencing Japanese Kleingarten, in response to increased demand for green tourism. Theoretical research and interviews with site surveys of Kleingarten in Japan were carried out. Results indicated that, from a hardware perspective, facilities and size should be adapted to Korean conditions and long-term green tourism demands, including adequate lodging facilities. From a software perspective, administration needs to make efforts to obtain understanding and cooperation from local residents.

Laura Whitzling, Michelle M. Wander, Ellen Phillips · Journal of Agriculture Food Systems and Community Development · United States (Chicago)

This study profiled soil quality, including lead levels, in 10 Chicago community gardens, comparing raised beds to non-raised beds and adjacent bare soil. The overall mean soil lead level was 135 ppm (n=86) by EPA method, with a range of 10-889 ppm. While most gardens' lead levels were not a concern, higher lead in adjacent bare soil suggested contamination risk. Use of raised beds reduced lead levels, but further study is needed.

Irene H. Reti · eScholarship (California Digital Library) · United States

María Inés Catalán was born in Santa Teresa, Guerrero, Mexico, in 1962, immigrated to the United States in 1986, and picked broccoli and carrots in California's Salinas Valley; her father was also a migrant farm worker, while her grandfather had farmed his own land in Mexico. In 1994 she entered an organic farming training program at the Rural Development Center in Salinas (an earlier incarnation of ALBA, the Agriculture & Land-Based Training Association), after which she became the first Latina migrant farm worker to own and operate a certified organic farm in California and the first Latina in the country to found a farm distributing produce through a community-supported agriculture (CSA) program. Since 2001, Catalán and her family have run Catalán Family Farms on fifteen rented acres in Hollister, California, certified organic by CCOF in 2005, growing kale, chard, strawberries, tomatoes, corn, onions, pumpkins, chiles, and carrots for sale through the Laughing Onion CSA and farmers' markets in the Salinas, Monterey Bay, and San Francisco Bay areas, including the Ferry Plaza Market and the Berkeley Farmers' Market. She is also an activist for food security among low-income communities, especially Latinos, having worked with the group P.O.D.E.R. in San Francisco's Mission district to deliver CSA shares, collaborated with schools, churches, and the Homeless Garden Project's CSA in Santa Cruz to deliver boxes to home-bound residents, provided CSA information in Spanish, and set up a farm stand outside the Monterey County government office on WIC pickup days. She also founded the nonprofit Pequeños Agricultores en California (PAC) to help immigrant farmers obtain organic certification and apply for grants and loans.

Carlie Speedlin · Lincoln (University of Nebraska) · United States

A case study at Saratoga Elementary, a K-5 Title I school in Lincoln, Nebraska, with 266 students, 47% minority, 28% receiving special education, and 80% eligible for free or reduced-price meals, where a garden space had been built and an after-school garden club had been running since the previous spring semester. Educators were surveyed on their attitudes toward outdoor classrooms and the cognitive (emotional) benefits of outdoor education, while students self-assessed their emotional state using emotion stickers before and after garden club. The study found no significant difference in students' cognitive (emotional) response before versus after garden club participation, with only a 0.02 increase on a 1-5 emotional scale. Teacher surveys found that 50% of respondents did not include outdoor activities in their curriculum planning and 50% did not use outdoor activities or recess to alter student behaviour; all teacher respondents were aware of the outdoor space (school garden), but only 60% had used it for an activity, and only 53% were assessed as "aware" of the cognitive or emotional benefits of nature for children.

FU Li-hua · 自然资源学报 · China (Shanghai)

A study of Shanghai, China, building an evaluation index system reflecting the characteristics of sustainable urban agricultural development, using a combination of the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) and the information entropy method to determine index weights, and applying it to time-series data from 1993 onward to produce a quantitative, comprehensive appraisal. The results comprise three findings. First, the population subsystem progressively became a main obstructive factor for sustainable urban agricultural development, the economic subsystem gradually became a main contributing factor, and the social subsystem grew more important in raising development capability, while cultivated land resources became increasingly scarce and continued to decrease, constraining improvement, and the heavy burden of agricultural production's self-pollution had a negative effect on the overall upgrade of development capability. Second, the resource (R-D) composite index was not high and declined significantly, averaging 1.9090 over 1993-2006 and falling 6.00% per year from 2.5336 in 1993 to 0.5541 in 2006, indicating growing resource pressure; the environmental (E-D) composite index was smaller and changed little, remaining around 1.0000 in most years, with environmental pressure staying high but stable. Third, after earlier wave-like fluctuations, the overall composite evaluation index entered a sustained, steady climb, with a significant increasing trend in development capability.

Sarah Rabkin · eScholarship (California Digital Library) · United States (California)

An oral-history interview record with Amy Courtney, founder of the Freewheelin' Farm CSA in Santa Cruz County, California, USA, conducted by Sarah Rabkin on January 16, 2009. Courtney, a 1997 graduate of UC Santa Cruz's Apprenticeship in Ecological Horticulture, started the farm in 2002 using almost no motorized vehicles, incorporating used equipment and recycled materials; CSA shares are still delivered by bicycle-drawn trailer six miles into Santa Cruz, with farming partners Kirstin Yogg and Darryl Wong. Courtney's background includes work with school gardens, the Santa Cruz Homeless Garden Project, the United Farm Workers, the AFL-CIO, and an agricultural extension program in Cuba. The farm collaborates with "Food, What?!," a youth empowerment program based at UCSC's Life Lab Garden Classroom, and hosts a community art show, yoga classes and cooking instruction with Zen priest Edward Espe Brown. At the time of the interview, Courtney and her partners had just signed a lease for an additional parcel, multiplying the farm's acreage eightfold.

Xiaona Li · Nongye huanjing kexue xuebao · China

A study measuring dioxin-like compound (PCDD/Fs) concentrations in 23 surface soil samples collected from different areas of Baiyin City, China, using HRGC/HRMS (high-resolution gas chromatography/high-resolution mass spectrometry). The concentration range of 2,3,7,8-PCDD/Fs was 0.42-8.56 pg I-TEQ/g, averaging 2.28 pg I-TEQ/g. By land-use type, concentrations averaged 3.37 pg I-TEQ/g in industrial areas, 1.31 in urban areas, 1.01 in agricultural areas, and 0.85 in background areas, following the order industrial > urban > agricultural > background. Higher-chlorinated isomers were the dominant contributors to total toxic equivalency (TEQ) in most samples.

John Merson, Roger Attwater, Peter Ampt, Howard G. Wildman, Rosalie Chapple · International Journal of Agricultural Sustainability · Australia

This paper presents an overview of a four-year project examining the western edge of the Sydney basin in Australia — historically a major source of fruit and vegetables for Sydney markets — where rapid urban development expansion has caused a significant reduction in the number of small farms and market gardens. Urban and peri-urban agriculture in the region also serves as an important buffer between urban development and the neighboring Greater Blue Mountains World Heritage Area, with urban expansion and economies of scale identified as contributing to the decline of urban agriculture. The project explored options for supporting these vulnerable farming communities in terms of regulatory factors and economic and environmental sustainability, and investigated the role of agri-industries as landscape buffers to the neighboring World Heritage Area in relation to resilience, communities of practice, and ecosystem services. Working with targeted representative landholders, the study developed tools including an integrated bio-system approach using organic waste conversion and landscape function analysis to help address erosion, nutrient loss, and inefficient water management.

Adam Shiloh Moates · · Uruguay

This 2010 dissertation is a comparative ethnographic study of agricultural and livestock production strategies in peri-urban Montevideo, Uruguay. It examined the factors shaping urban and peri-urban agricultural and livestock enterprises, the conditions under which growers organize collective action, and how municipal politics and institutional linkages affect production practices. The study focused on three populations: displaced urban working-class residents known as neo-pobres, waste-collector communities called clasificadores, and family-run organic grower organizations. The analysis found that all three groups strategically form organizations and collective-action strategies to raise their institutional visibility, secure and improve access to urban resources, and contest or resist municipal land-use policies and the push to "regularize" informal settlements. The research also points to the effects of large-scale political and economic forces on the urban margin and the difficulty of implementing policy there.

Suhrit K. Dey, Chanchal Pramanik, Charlie Dey · Intellectual Economics · Global

A mathematical model built from three interacting ordinary differential equations links population growth, urbanization and food production, with population assumed to grow independently while urbanization and food production both depend on it. Solving the system shows that without an added food-supply term — representing sources such as food substitutes, urban gardening or imports — uncontrolled population growth and urbanization lead to a catastrophic food shortage; the authors note that food affordability, not just availability, remains a separate, unresolved issue.