Research & reports

John Ikerd · Journal of Agriculture Food Systems and Community Development · Global

Cooperation is presented as a key concept in the sustainability movement, particularly in food systems, as a response to economic competition. Food-related cooperatives include various models like regional food hubs and CSAs. While cooperation is vital, the text also acknowledges the human tendency to compete, arguing that unrestrained competition is unsustainable.

Nicole C. List · EchoGéo · Senegal (Pikine)

Based on fieldwork in Pikine, a rapidly urbanized city in Senegal's Dakar region, two interconnected conflict cases concerning the development of urban agricultural land for middle-class and elite housing were analyzed. The analysis indicates that public and private actors, including producers, traditional authorities, real estate developers, and local/central government officials, are abandoning old forms of governance in favor of "territorial alliances" to promote their own urban development projects. These alliances lead to new relationships between local/central government members and civil society, impacting urban Senegal's land registry, property rights, and public infrastructure.

Mr Frank Lewis · Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research) · Uganda (Kampala)

This study investigated urban agriculture best practices in Kampala's suburbs, Uganda, employing semi-structured interviews and focus group discussions with local farmers, government officials, and community leaders. It found that urban agriculture is critical for food security and community cohesion, with women constituting over 70% of participants in surveyed households and making vital contributions.

Neil Harris, Fiona Nicole Rowe Minniss, Shawn Somerset · International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health · Global

A cross-sectional study conducted semi-structured interviews with twelve African humanitarian migrants participating in a campus-based community food garden. The study explored how involvement in the garden supported their connectedness with their new country. Thematic analysis revealed three important benefits: land tenure, reconnecting with agriculture, and community belonging.

Nobuhle Sebata, Clifford Mabhena, Mkhokheli Sithole · IOSR Journal of Humanities and Social Science · Zimbabwe

A qualitative study in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe, using data from 30 women, 5 key informant interviews, and 2 focus groups, examined urban agriculture's role in women's poverty resilience. While urban agriculture significantly improved food availability and access, its nutritional contribution was low due to a focus on maize, and income generation remained very low due to subsistence production.

Kizito K. Mwajombe · · Tanzania

This study investigated urban agriculture (UA) produce marketing in three Tanzanian municipalities. Findings showed UA farmers lacked pre-arranged contracts with buyers, limiting their marketing, and faced problems including poor packaging, bylaws, taxes, and difficulty meeting consumer preferences. Farmers also lacked direct links to retail and consumer units like supermarkets.

Jonathan Crush · · Global

Cities in the global South face a deepening crisis of food inaccessibility, characterized by food poverty, hunger, and malnutrition. This urban crisis is largely invisible to policy and research communities, with less attention given to urban food security than in the 1990s. Urban agriculture is the only aspect of urban food security receiving significant attention, though it is improbably seen as the key to achieving food security in these cities.

Brînduşa Bîrhală, Judith Möllers, Bîrhală, Brînduşa, Möllers, Judith · 2014 International Congress, August 26-29, 2014, Ljubljana, Slovenia · Romania

This study investigates Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) in Romania as a viable rural innovation for small-scale farms and consumers. Based on three case studies of pioneering CSA farmers in Western Romania, the research found that consumers are motivated by value-based considerations like healthy diets, while farmers find CSA attractive for price premiums and market access. Both farmers and consumers engage in CSA partnerships to compensate for market failures.

Gregory Mintz, Phil McManus · Australian Geographer · Australia (Sydney)

This research in Sydney, Australia, evaluates and compares the quality of community garden policies with the distribution of community gardens across local councils and broader geographic regions. It identifies areas that could benefit from increased access to community gardens and discusses ways for councils and the Sydney Region to improve their policies. The study aims to determine what elements community garden policies should contain to best promote these gardens and their benefits.

Heidi Thomas · Maryland Shared Open Access Repository (USMAI Consortium) · Global

This paper discusses how urban agriculture can repair environmental and sociocultural divisions within urban communities, which often manifest as racial and class barriers. It posits that the convergence of environment and foodways through urban agriculture fosters a culturally democratic co-development process. This process, involving the growing and sharing of food, can sustain existing cultural communities and inspire new forms of community aligned with sustainability.

Lana Slavuj Borčić, Cvitanović Marin, Aleksandar Lukić · · Croatia (Zagreb)

Community gardens have long existed in Zagreb, Croatia, where residents have transformed underused public urban areas into gardens. While these activities largely occurred outside formal government frameworks, the "City Gardens" policy was adopted in 2012 to allocate urban public parcels to interested citizens. This policy increased participation in community gardening, and previous research indicates that community gardens offer multiple benefits and positive impacts on individuals, local communities, and urban spaces.

Milica Koscica · Journal of international affairs · Global

This article traces the history of urban agriculture and analyzes current practices and policies to argue for its role in addressing food insecurity in developing cities, noting that more than half the world's population is urbanized and that global food demand is projected to rise 70-100% as urban population reaches a projected 70% by 2050; it frames urban agriculture as a means to expand access to land and water for food production through innovative growing techniques, without presenting new primary empirical data.

Jonathan Crush · · Global

This article argues that cities of the Global South are experiencing a deepening crisis of food inaccessibility, marked by growing food poverty, hunger and malnutrition, lack of dietary diversity, child wasting and stunting, increased vulnerability to infectious and chronic disease, and a growing obesity epidemic. It states that this urban crisis remains largely invisible to the policy and research communities concerned with global food security, noting that there was more research and policy debate on urban food insecurity in the 1990s, when the Global South was less urbanized than today, and that concern with urban food security has since been displaced by the new international food security agenda and its pervasive anti-urban bias. It observes that the only aspect of urban food security currently commanding significant attention is urban agriculture, which it describes as widely, but improbably, seen as the key to achieving food security in cities of the Global South.

이숙미, Kim In Ho · · Global

Aiming to develop approaches for enhancing the self-support capability of vulnerable groups, this study analyzed foreign cases in which urban agriculture activities were used for self-support. The analysis classified urban agriculture activities into four types depending on participants' level of self-support capability and employment status: a healing type that helps mind and body recover through engagement, a self-consumption type that supports healthy eating and cuts food expenses, a social-relation type built around interaction with the community, and an occupation type providing jobs and income through production activities.

Christine Aubry, Jean-Noël Consalès, Leïla Kebir, Bernard Barraqué · Espaces et sociétés · Global

This joint interview with Christine Aubry and Jean-Noel Consales addresses debates around the resurgence of urban agriculture in cities of the Global North, where public, private, associative and entrepreneurial initiatives are spreading. It notes broad enthusiasm about the range of services urban agriculture provides, food as well as social and environmental roles, alongside dissenting views that dismiss non-professional agriculture as peripheral to meeting citizens' food needs, a passing fad, or urban leisure rather than real agriculture. The interviewees point to the great variety of urban agriculture forms as a breeding ground for innovation and a possible sign of major transformation in the agricultural world.

US Yannick, BL Louis, KL Antoine, AB Lukangila, MK Matthieu, KM Nathan, MKL Jerry, MM Mpundu, KL Nyembo · Journal of Applied Biosciences · Colombia

In Lubumbashi, Democratic Republic of the Congo, researchers analyzed the fertilizing value of different types of biowaste used in urban market gardening through principal component analysis of grower profiles, chi-square analysis of practices, and physico-chemical analysis of the waste materials. Most market gardeners were married women over 18 without land title; half the biowaste used was purchased chicken manure (with some pig manure), applied raw and buried in the soil, and while 33% of growers expected spreading it to increase productivity and improve soil physico-chemical properties, 48.3% expected it to improve vegetable growth appearance and boost yield.

Muhammad Bello Ibrahim, Nobaya Ahmad · Universiti Putra Malaysia Institutional Repository (Universiti Putra Malaysia) · Global

This review paper examines the concept and role of peri-urban agriculture (PUA) as a contributor to solving urban food crises in developing countries. It reviews the historical development and current state of PUA across different parts of the world in relation to rising urban vegetable demand, noting that agricultural communities engaged in PUA make multifunctional contributions to national economies. As approaches to PUA vary by country, the paper argues it is the community's role to identify the functions that benefit local people most, and discusses how PUA, through community and rural development, can boost urban food supply and serve as an income-generating option for farmers in developing countries.

Sarah James · Geographical Research · Australia (Sydney)

This paper examined the failure of Sydney's 'green zones' farmland protection policies, which were abandoned due to protests. The failure was attributed to a lack of consultation with Sydney's diverse small-scale farmers, rather than a rejection of farmland protection itself. Farmer interviews suggested that a bottom-up policy-making approach would have been more successful in maintaining farming in peri-urban areas.

Kirstie Cadger, Thembela Kepe · Development in Practice · Botswana

Challenges facing community garden initiatives among the San of Botswana were analyzed through semi-structured interviews and participant observation in two San communities. The study found that the failure of the gardens related to how the San are treated and how they view their situation as destitute people. Forced resettlement, historical livelihood disruption, and government and NGO policies of development through welfare neglecting genuine empowerment were concluded to be responsible for the limited success of the community gardens.

Wakuru Magigi · Journal of Environmental Protection · Tanzania (Dar es Salaam)

This paper explores Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, demonstrating that urban agriculture provides urban ecosystem services and contributes to environmental sustainability. The study highlights the interconnections of environmental justice, urban ecosystem services, and climate change, which influence land governance and productivity. It suggests that with increasing population, a clear spatial land use planning and management strategy is required to enhance food systems and urban environmental sustainability in rapidly urbanizing cities.

邰杰, 汤洪泉, 曹晋, 陆韡 · Acta Scientiarum Naturalium Universitatis Sunyatseni · Global

This study interpreted the guiding principles, development strategies, and design methods of urban agriculture landscapes outside China, drawing from conceptual definitions, international practices, and case insights. The analysis aims to provide a reference for open space planning and green infrastructure construction during China's rapid urbanization. It concludes that urban agriculture holds significant potential across various aspects, including urban ecology and form, food security and supply, natural education, and job opportunities.

Robert Garey Stewart, Marcel Korth, Laurenz Langer, Shannon Rafferty, N Rebelo Da Silva · · Global

This paper is a protocol for a systematic review on the impacts of urban agriculture programs on food security and nutrition in low and middle-income countries. It notes potential disadvantages of urban agriculture, including contamination, spread of diseases, depletion of water supplies, soil erosion, and health risks from pesticides. The review aims to identify, appraise, and synthesize evidence on these impacts comprehensively and transparently, given that the existing evidence-base is not well understood.

Josiah Taru, Hardlife Stephen Basure · Russian Journal of Agricultural and Socio-Economic Sciences · Zimbabwe (Harare)

This study applied Norman Long's interface analysis to understand the causes of conflicts and struggles among urban agriculture (UA) actors in Kuwadzana Extension, Harare. Intensified competition for scarce land and water escalated conflicts, particularly in off-plot agriculture due to its contentious nature outside institutional frameworks. Actors with different power bases used them to dispossess and marginalize others. Conflict resolution mechanisms (mediation, litigation, conciliation) often lacked legal binding or institutional backing, tending to generate more disputes.

Amaya Valero, Sergio Nicolás · · Colombia (Bogotá)

This research analyzes the impact of participatory agroecological farming practices in an urban context, focusing on the integration of organic farming components into educational settings. The case study examines the Jardin la Paz in Bogotá, Colombia, where urban agriculture is developed by children, youth, teachers, and parents on available land. This initiative utilizes urban subsoil properties to produce food, combining rural practices adapted to the urban ecosystem through local and inter-institutional efforts.

Monika Krause · Public Culture · Global

In response to the current situation where the diagnosis of urbanization has lost meaning, the necessity of analyzing sociospatial transformations from the perspective of "ruralization" is proposed. This approach reveals phenomena such as urban agriculture, urban wildlife, boring towns, and farmers in suburbs, as well as new forms of improvisation in the face of failing infrastructures, making visible developments that are not apparent with a narrow focus on urbanization.