Research & reports
Peer-reviewed research and reports on community urban agriculture, food education, composting, welfare and more.
Theme
Critical findings
11393 results(453 / 456)
Small scale irrigation using collector wells. Pilot project - Zimbabwe. Fourth progress report April 1994 - September 1994
1994Chris Lovell, M. Murata, M. W. Brown, C.H. Batchelor, Douglas Thompson, Timothy Dube, A. J. Semple, P.J. Chilton · NERC Open Research Archive (Natural Environment Research Council) · Sub-Saharan Africa
This is the fourth progress report (April-September 1994) on an ODA technical-cooperation pilot project for small-scale irrigation using collector wells in Zimbabwe, begun in October 1992. Six project schemes are now complete, with 1,319 families obtaining domestic water from ODA-funded schemes and about 577 families holding allotments on the community gardens; water shortage was the principal problem reported at all sites, while the Chivi District scheme, completed in 1991, recorded an average gross margin of Z$19,900 per hectare per year over three years, with Muzondidya (Z$18,204) and Gokota (Z$25,444, based on less than a full year) also showing high gross margins.
CommunityEconomicsUrban agriculture in South Africa: Policy issues from the international experience
1993Christian M. Rogerson · Development Southern Africa · South Africa
This paper argues that urban agriculture is an important issue for South African policymakers, noting an increase in urban food gardening and cultivation of vacant land in South Africa's metropolitan peripheries. It reviews research on informal agriculture in Asian and African cities to offer suggestions for policy debates and research in South Africa.
PolicyUrban–rural linkagePeri-urban agricultureUrban Agriculture in Kenya
1993Pyar Ali Memon, Diana Lee-Smith · Canadian Journal of African Studies / Revue canadienne des études africaines · Kenya
Based on a recent survey by the Mazingira Institute in Nairobi, this article analyzes the nature of urban agriculture in Kenyan cities, focusing on food supply as part of the informal urban economy. Urban agriculture, involving crops and livestock, is a common activity in African urban centers and a key element of poor households' economies, despite being often overlooked by urban planners. The article argues that African urban theory must incorporate this vital aspect of urban reality.
EconomicsFood sovereignty & justiceWelfarePolicyUrban agriculture in Kampala: Indigenous adaptive response to the economic crisis
1993Daniel Maxwell, Samuel Zziwa · Ecology of Food and Nutrition · Uganda (Kampala)
This study examines urban agriculture in Kampala, Uganda, as an adaptive response to economic hardships. It identifies significant constraints, including institutional obstacles to accessing underutilized urban land, municipal bylaws that suppress urban agriculture, and urban officials' indifferent to hostile views. The study found that these bylaws and views are based on misleading or false generalizations about urban agriculture.
Governance failurePolicyEconomicsFood sovereignty & justiceCommunityCONSERVATIONOF FARMLAND IN URBAN AGRICULTURAL PROMOTION AREA
1993Hiroshi AIZAWA, Kensuke Inoue, Masazumi NOMA · Journal of Architecture Planning and Environmental Engineering (Transactions of AIJ) · Japan
This study explained the reasons for non-cultivation in urban agricultural promotion areas and examined future subjects for conserving normal farmland surrounded by urbanization promotion areas. The occurrence rate of wasteland and infringement on agricultural land diversion in non-cultivated land differed according to city planning regulations and cultivating forms. The reasons for non-cultivation were found to be greatly related to farmers' workers, land ownership scale, and planning law, with owners of large landholdings who had no workers due to advanced age showing little intention to maintain agricultural operations or conserve farmland.
Governance failurePolicyUrban–rural linkageEconomicsSupplying the City: The Role of Reservoirs
1993Indian Urban Landscape · · India
This study focuses on the diversity and complexity of agricultural production organization in urban landscapes of nonindustrial societies, specifically analyzing the role of reservoirs in the agricultural landscape around Vijayanagara, southern India. Vijayanagara's agricultural facilities and strategies were diverse in both form and scale, ranging from vast canal irrigation to small rain-fed plots. Reservoirs, as a single morphological type, crosscut traditional agricultural categories, indicating significant variability in productive organization and suggesting that ecological and organizational contexts, beyond facility typology, are crucial for understanding production.
Urban–rural linkageFood sovereignty & justiceEconomicsFurther Report on the Surrey Docks City Farm in London, England
1993Joyce Anstey · Environmental Conservation · United Kingdom (London)
An abstract is not available for this content.
CommunityFood educationRecognizing Ethiopia's urban farmers.
1993Lee M · PubMed · Ethiopia
In Ethiopia, urban agriculture faces significant challenges due to government disapproval of public land use for farming and difficulty in obtaining credit. A 1983 survey in Addis Ababa found that 17% of 1352 households produced their own food on less than 25 sq. meters, with 90% of non-farmers citing lack of land. Despite urban agricultural cooperatives demonstrating 70% higher member income, their lack of government legalization prevents access to loans for productivity improvement.
Governance failureCommunityEconomicsPolicyFood sovereignty & justiceHealthWelfareClimate changeUrban–rural linkagePeri-urban agricultureFood educationBiodiversityCompostDIYElderlyFood lossHeirloom & landraceOrganic cyclePollinatorsFood miles & supply chainCSA & TeikeiDigital agricultureUrban irrigation and cooperative organisations in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia
1993Axumite G. Egziabher · Digital Library Of The Commons Repository (Indiana University) · Ethiopia
This paper summarized the character and role of urban agriculture in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, and the organization of producers for whom urban agriculture is the sole means of survival. While urban agriculture contributes to food provision, employment, and income for producers, cooperatives face the challenge that concerned authorities cannot grant them legal status for credit access due to their urban location.
Urban–rural linkageCommunityEconomicsFood sovereignty & justiceUrban food self-reliance: significance and prospects.
1993L. J. A. Mougeot · PubMed · Global
A news account covering the satisfaction of urban food needs where retail costs are prohibitively high in developing countries, reporting that 50-80% of average income is spent on food in nearly half of developing countries' largest cities, a range of 60-80% confirmed by late-1980s surveys, with urban food costs 10-30% higher than for rural dwellers. Urban household food production is described as a practice dating to Aztec, Inca, and Mayan cities, with records of Javanese and Tigris-Euphrates city dwellers growing their own food; Asian policymakers promote urban food production as critical to urban survival, and its extent is shaped by factors including rapid urbanization, ineffective agricultural policies, inadequate food distribution, subsidy withdrawal, wage reduction, inflation, unemployment, lax urban regulation, civil strife, and drought, with government agencies sometimes acting as obstacles by outlawing the practice. Recent government support is reported in ten Asian, six African, and six Latin American countries; worldwide, 200 million people are reported as urban farm workers and 700 million as beneficiaries of urban agriculture, while 25% of US urban households engaged in urban food production during the 1980s. The account calls for better comparative and longitudinal research on urban poverty and its links to nutrition, income, employment, waste, and environmental issues, states that urban planners may need to incorporate city farming into conventional land-use planning if cost-benefit analysis finds a positive impact, and notes that street food vending is an important income source particularly for women, while urban farming requires efficient use of space and knowledge of relevant technology and planning.
CommunityEconomicsWelfareSurvival Strategy or Business Training Ground? The Significance of Urban Agriculture for the Advancement of Women in African Cities
1993Donald B. Freeman · African Studies Review · Africa
The record consists only of the bibliographic citation for a 1993 article by Donald B. Freeman on the significance of urban agriculture for women's advancement in African cities, published in African Studies Review. No abstract text, study subject, method, or findings are provided.
EconomicsCommunityThe ideology of the nature garden. Nationalistic trends in garden design in Germany during the early twentieth century
1992Wolschke-Bulmahn J., Gröning G. · Journal of Garden History, Vol. 12, No. 1, pp. 73–80 · Germany
Critically analyzes how the 'nature garden' ideology that emerged in early-twentieth-century Germany, while claiming scholarly basis, carried nationalist and native-plant preferences that fed into later Blood and Soil thinking.
PolicyBiodiversitySome Notes on the Mania for Native Plants in Germany
1992Gröning G., Wolschke-Bulmahn J. · Landscape Journal, Vol. 11, No. 2, pp. 116–126 · Germany
Examines how German landscape architects' obsession with native plants produced 'landscape rules' that, under National Socialism, became tied to the planning of occupied territories and acquired xenophobic, ideological character.
PolicyBiodiversityUrban agriculture for sustainable cities: using wastes and idle land and water bodies as resources
1992Jac Smit, Joe Nasr · Environment and Urbanization · Global
This article describes how urban agriculture can transform cities from mere consumers of food and agricultural products into sustainable generators of these products. It focuses on using wastes and idle land and water bodies as resources to achieve resource conservation and health improvement.
CommunityOrganic cycleClimate changeFood sovereignty & justiceLAND USE AND TRAVEL DEMAND
1992James W. Roberts, C Wood · · Global
This paper proposes a three-way study for 1992, building on previous case studies in Milton Keynes (UK) and Almere (NL) that noted substantial differences in travel behavior due to land use. The proposed study would cover Manchester, Berlin, and a low-density, car-dependent suburb in Melbourne, examining travel habits under diverse demographic and land use conditions. It suggests potential changes in travel modes and trip lengths following planned urban structural alterations, such as reduced car space in Manchester, S-Bahn and airport extensions in Berlin, and light rail near Melbourne.
PolicyCommunityTurning sunshine into water: PV water pumping in South Africa
1992Richard Gosnell Richard Gosnell · Waterlines · South Africa
This study assesses the performance of a photovoltaic (PV) pump installed at Sondela Community Garden in South Africa. The garden is a vegetable garden managed by 46 Zulu women in a semi-rural area. The research investigates whether solar-electric water pumping can provide water supplies in a region with abundant sunshine but limited water resources.
CommunityPeri-urban agricultureClimate changeFeeding Africa's Cities: The Role and Potential for Urban Agriculture
1992Christian M. Rogerson · Africa Insight · Africa
Professor C M Rogerson from the Department of Geography, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, assesses the role and potential of urban agriculture in sustaining Africa's rapidly growing cities.
Food sovereignty & justiceUrban–rural linkageEconomicsReviews/Comptes rendus
1992· Canadian Geographies / Géographies canadiennes · Kenya (Nairobi)
This record contains reviews of two books: "The Geomorphology of Canada: An Introduction" by Alan S. Trenhaile and "A City of Farmers: Informal Urban Agriculture in the Open Spaces of Nairobi, Kenya" by Donald B. Freeman. The latter focuses on informal urban agriculture in Nairobi, Kenya.
CommunityFood sovereignty & justiceReceived Concepts and Theories in African Urbanisation and Management Strategies: The Struggle Continues
1992J.M. Lusugga Kironde · Urban Studies · Africa
This paper argues that the various concepts, theories, and attitudes used to define and solve African urban problems reflect assimilated and acquired notions and standards rather than indigenous ones. Over roughly the past two decades, commentators and policymakers have been urged to change their approach, but many have yet to adopt new attitudes. It argues that concepts related to urban sanitation, water supply, urban agriculture, urban transport, and aspects of housing supply need to be redefined to reflect local circumstances.
Peri-urban agriculturePolicyCity and Country: That Awkward Embrace
1991John M. Merriman · Oxford University Press eBooks · France
This chapter emphasizes the “awkward embrace” between city and country in the faubourg and the persistence of an urban agricultural population. It also considers how the troubled relationship between state and city affected the urban periphery and provides an overview of industry's role in faubourg development. To understand the urban periphery in France during the first half of the nineteenth century, it explores the state-city relationship (reflected in town walls), the persistence of rural life at the edge of and within cities, and industry's place in the emergence of the nineteenth-century faubourg.
Urban–rural linkagePolicyCommunityChapter 7: Urban Gardens
1991David R. Coffin · Princeton University Press eBooks · Italy (Rome)
This chapter, authored by David R. Coffin, explores urban gardens in Papal Rome. It contrasts these secular urban horticultural retreats with the cloistered gardens of monks.
CommunityUrban–rural linkageUrban Agriculture in the United States
1991Nelson L. Bills, Bills, Nelson L. · AgEcon Search (University of Minnesota, USA) · United States
A National Agricultural Lands Study (NALS) in the United States did not provide conclusive evidence of serious conflicts between urban development land requirements and the nation's agricultural production capacity. The study was also flawed by faulty data on farmland conversion rates.
PolicyUrban–rural linkageEconomicsMedicinal plants and primary health care: part 2.
1991· PubMed · Global
This paper emphasizes the need for technological infrastructure to maximize the value of medicinal plants within primary health care (PHC). The WHO Programme on Traditional Medicine highlights the importance of appropriate drug availability in PHC and recommends cultivating medicinal plants in home or community gardens. It advocates for strengthening data gathering and analysis capabilities for economic mapping of medicinal flora in developing countries and for clinical research on the safety and efficacy of herbal medicines used by traditional health practitioners.
CommunityHealthDIYUne revue de la littérature scientifique sur l'étalement urbain et sur les relations urbaines-agricoles dans la frange urbaine : le cas de la région métropolitaine de Montréal, dans le contexte nord-américain.
1991Christian Marois, Pierre Deslauriers, Charles F. Bryan · Espace populations sociétés · Canada
This review of the scientific literature on urban sprawl and urban-agriculture interactions in the rural-urban fringe, set within a North American context, uses the metropolitan growth of Montreal since World War II as a case study. It outlines the processes and impacts of urban sprawl and examines the impact of urbanization on urban fringe agriculture, drawing mainly on recent research from Canada and the United States, noting growing interest in farmer behavior and decision-making, and identifying individual farm-level factors that influence agricultural change.
PolicyUrban–rural linkageThe International City Design Competition: Introduction
1990Jeffrey E Ollswang · eScholarship (California Digital Library) · Global
This introduction to the International City Design Competition outlines a vision to humanize cities by implementing tools over time, including narrowing streets, introducing electric mini-buses or light rail, and bold civic gestures. It proposes using pre-industrial town building principles and strategically building on existing character, with a focus on densification, incremental small-scale infill, domestication of highways, and urban food production.
PolicyUrban–rural linkage