Research & reports

Philani Moyo · Journal of Human Ecology · Zimbabwe

This study qualitatively examined the role and contribution of urban agriculture to household food security, employment creation, and income generation among low-income working-class and urban poor households in Bulawayo townships, Zimbabwe. It was found that urban food production significantly contributes to household food access and security, improving dietary diversity and nutritional intake. However, the potential of urban agriculture is constrained by factors including land tenure insecurity, erratic water access, small plot sizes, inadequate capital for optimizing plot productivity, and ambivalent application of urban land-use laws.

Annisya Noer Wiyanti · · Indonesia (Surabaya)

A descriptive qualitative study investigated the implementation of an urban farming program for the Sumber Trisno Alami group in Bulak District, Surabaya City, which began in 2011. The program aimed to meet food needs, improve nutrition, and boost the economy for 6000 poor households. However, the program's implementation was not considered successful in achieving its poverty reduction goal, with some suggesting its discontinuation.

Glenda Dimuro, Esteban de Manuel Jeréz · POLI-RED (Revistas Digitales Politécnicas) (La Universidad Politécnica de Madrid) · Brazil (São Paulo)

This paper presents the 'Cidades sem fome' project, a citizen initiative in São Paulo's degraded areas. Through urban agriculture, this project enables residents to satisfy basic needs, regain control over their lives, and challenge market-driven growth processes. It aims to reduce hunger and unemployment, foster social mobilization, and rehabilitate degraded urban areas, offering an alternative to current urban production and management models.

Max Pearlstein · · Cameroon

Rachel Gilbert, Grace Lange, and Sarah Wright, alumni of Dickinson, founded Cameroonian Roots. This program disseminates microfinance opportunities and education in urban agriculture and women's empowerment.

Cortnee Martin · · United States (Indianapolis)

This piece about a refugee-tended urban farm on the west side of Indianapolis, primarily sourced from an interview with the farm's creator, highlights how it helps a marginalized community maintain their culture and traditions while integrating into a new home. The project is described as an effort to assist a vulnerable population.

Stephanie Larson · Open Scholarship Institutional Repository (Washington University in St. Louis) · United States

This project located West End community gardens in relation to select social determinants, including income level, occupier's ownership status, ethnic diversity, and population density.

Sara A. Quandt, Janae Dupuis, Caitlin A. Fish, Ralph B. D’Agostino · Preventing Chronic Disease · United States

This randomized, controlled feasibility study evaluated the feasibility of a Community-Supported Agriculture (CSA) intervention in an underresourced urban community in the United States. Fifty low-income women with children participated, with the intervention group (25 participants) receiving fresh produce and educational sessions for 16 weeks. A significant increase in household fruit and vegetable inventory was observed in the intervention group, but increases in consumption were not significant. Challenges included transportation and work schedules, yet most participants expressed interest in continued participation.

김효정 · 한국여성학 · South Korea

Through in-depth interviews and participant observation research targeting women's activist organizations established since 2010, the characteristics of urban agriculture cases led or participated in by unmarried women in their 20s and 30s were analyzed. Unmarried women activists met the growing demand for safe and healthy food among single-person households through community farming in urban areas, practicing agriculture not only for food production but also as a lifestyle pursuit and recreational culture. However, their practices face limitations such as urban space constraints, difficulties for unmarried women to relocate to rural areas, excessive ecological value attribution, and a lack of solidarity with rural communities.

Marcos José de Abreu, Renato Barretto Barbosa Trivella, Letícia Oliveira de Melo, gisa Garcia, Alexandre Cordeiro, Óscar José Rover · · Brazil (Santa Catarina)

The Vida Nova community garden, established in 2009 in Jardim Janaina, Biguaçu, Santa Catarina, Brazil, serves women from rural and urban areas facing food and social insecurity. This project aimed to disseminate participatory agroecological methodologies in urban agriculture. It resulted in a 36-page educational booklet and a course, leading to group strengthening, increased community gardens, and diversified cultivation in the neighborhood.

David DyckFehderau, Nicholas L. Holt, Geoff D.C. Ball, Noreen D. Willows · PubMed · Canada

A study in Alexander First Nation, central Alberta, Canada, used asset mapping with children to understand how community factors shape the lifestyle behaviors of First Nations children living on reserve, who are estimated to be 4.5 times more likely to be obese than Canadian children generally. Participants were a convenience sample of two high school students working at the local health centre and seven grade six children, who used maps, photographs and a town tour to identify 25 activity- or food-related places and spaces. Breakfast, lunch and snack foods (such as chocolate bars and potato crisps) were obtained at school, food and snacks at cultural gatherings, and snacks at the local store, with healthy food choices found to be limited; only two locations beyond the town site were identified for physical activity, and youth recommended building a leisure centre, selling healthier food at the local store, and developing a community garden and berry farm.

Rob Porter, Heather McIlvaine-Newsad · Leisure/Loisir ·

This ethnography examines the origins and growth of a rural community garden through the lenses of food security, leisure and social capital within an environmental justice framework. Community residents, including low-income populations, people with disabilities and senior citizens, came together with support from local leaders to grow healthy produce out of concerns over produce cost and commercial growing practices; participants entered mainly for food security but came to recognize leisure benefits such as socializing, and the external social networks that facilitated the garden also generated internal social capital, including increased gardening knowledge and shared skills.

Iris T. Stewart, Elizabeth K. Purner, Patricia D. Guzm ́n · Children Youth and Environments · United States (California)

In Santa Clara County (SCC), located at the southern end of the San Francisco Bay Region and marked by high income disparities and an ethnically diverse population, this study used surveys and Geographic Information Systems (GIS) to examine links between the presence and use of school gardens and the socioeconomic and ethnic composition of surrounding neighborhoods. Statistical analysis found that school gardens in SCC are more likely to exist in economically stronger and ethnically less-diverse neighborhoods, showing that garden provision is not equitably distributed. School gardens can be maintained with relatively modest resources — a coordinator, planting area, small budget, and school-community support — yet securing these resources can itself be a significant barrier for some schools. Because natural play areas suited to environmental exploration were not typically found at SCC schools, the study suggests school gardens can play an important role in reconnecting children with the natural world.

Nsikak-Abasi A. Etim, Glory Emmanuel Edet · · Nigeria

A study of 80 peri-urban farming households in Uyo, Nigeria, sampled through a two-stage procedure with a structured questionnaire, using the Foster-Greer-Thorbecke weighted poverty measure to decompose poverty into sub-groups. Among peri-urban farming households, 0.48 were found to be impoverished, with the poorest of the poor at 0.29. Male-headed households were poorer than female-headed households. The incidence of poverty increased with the household head's age and household size, and decreased with years of formal education.

Sylvester Jatta · Munich Personal RePEc Archive (Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich) · Global

A paper using a newly compiled dataset combining comparable, nationally representative household survey data from 15 developing or transition countries to analyze, in comparative international perspective, the importance of urban agriculture for the urban poor and food insecure. The potential for urban agriculture to play a substantial role in reducing urban poverty and food insecurity should not be overemphasized, the study finds, as its share of income and of overall agricultural production is often quite limited. At the same time, its role should not be too easily dismissed either: particularly across much of Africa, agriculture provides a substantial share of income for the urban poor and constitutes an important livelihood source for the households that rely on it. The study finds fairly consistent statistical evidence of an association between engagement in urban agriculture and dietary adequacy indicators.

Ruth Stewart, Marcel Korth, Laurenz Langer, Shannon Rafferty, Natalie Rebelo Da Silva, Carina van Rooyen · Environmental Evidence · Global

This is a systematic review protocol — not a completed review — that sets out methods for identifying, appraising and synthesizing evidence on how urban agriculture programs affect food security and nutrition in low- and middle-income countries. It notes urban agriculture is widely promoted as providing the urban poor with food and income while improving the urban environment, but also carries potential disadvantages: use of wastewater can contaminate produce, intensive irrigation can spread malaria and water-borne disease and strain limited water supplies, and soil erosion and intensive fertilizer/pesticide use can pose health risks and environmental damage. Despite the current policy drive to promote urban agriculture, the paper states that the evidence base for its benefits and harms is not well understood. As a protocol, it reports planned search, screening, bias-appraisal and synthesis methods rather than results.

Guitart D., Pickering C., Byrne J. · Urban Forestry & Urban Greening 11(4):364-373 · Global

Review of English-language community gardens research, summarizing who studies them, locations, methods, plants grown, participants, and the motivations, benefits and limitations, while outlining future research directions.

Marit Rosol · Antipode · Germany (Berlin)

Documents how Berlin's municipal policy of promoting community gardening was an attempt to outsource public green-space maintenance to unpaid volunteers under 'roll-back'/'roll-out' neoliberalism. Based on empirical research, it shows the outsourcing strategy largely FAILED (volunteers could not sustain provision) while opening space for other private interests.

Winifred Curran, Trina Hamilton · Local Environment · USA (Brooklyn, NYC)

Coins 'just green enough' by showing how conventional green-amenity planning triggers environmental gentrification and displacement of working-class residents; argues greening policy must be deliberately constrained to avoid the speculative development it otherwise unleashes.

Godfrey Tawodzera, Lazarus Zanamwe, Jonathan Crush · Scholars Commons (Wilfrid Laurier University) · Zimbabwe (Harare)

This study conducted an AFSUN baseline food security survey in Harare, Zimbabwe, in 2008 to investigate the city's food insecurity situation. The survey revealed results sharply at odds with official surveys from 2003-2009, which had indicated food insecurity was not a serious problem. Findings showed that by 2008, Harare had become the most food-insecure city in the SADC region, with extraordinarily high levels of food insecurity as poor households struggled to find income for food. Participation in the informal food economy and urban agriculture for home consumption were major crisis responses.

Redazione · TERRITORIO · United States

This paper presents the basic features of two urban farming projects in Milwaukee and Philadelphia aimed at solving the problem of food deserts in declining inner cities of the US rustbelt. It discusses the forms and relevance of convergences between food culture and food justice, relating them to the debate on the future of urban forms in these inner cities.

Kate Metcalf, Julia Minnear, Tabitha Kleinert, Victoria Tedder · Local Economy The Journal of the Local Economy Policy Unit · United Kingdom (East London)

This practitioner's perspective discusses how the Women’s Environmental Network organizes support and training for community gardens in East London. It considers how these efforts contribute to local resilience against economic and cultural pressures and create greater access to green spaces.

J. McLean · · United Kingdom

This research focused on the re-imagining of identity through volunteer work at Spitalfields Community Farm in Tower Hamlets, London. It specifically investigated how Bangladeshi-Londoni diaspora volunteers contributed to creating this urban rural space and how, through their imagining of this space, they consciously sought to remember their homeland while establishing a new sense of identity in London.

Jenny Calabio, Ma. Luisa Albacete · WVSU Research Journal · Philippines (Iloilo City)

This study, conducted from July 2007 to July 2008 at the Urban Agriculture Demonstration Site in La Paz, Iloilo City, evaluated soil media and ameliorants for container-grown green onion, pechay, and tomato. Pure compost was found to be the best medium for increasing yields. However, the use of IMO and rice hull as soil ameliorants did not increase yields for the three tested vegetables, and rice hull generally reduced pechay yields.

Adetola I. Adeoti, Olufunke Cofie, O. I. Oladele · Journal of Sustainable Agriculture · Ghana (Accra)

A study in Accra, Ghana, analyzed the gender dimensions of urban agriculture's contribution to sustainable livelihoods among vegetable producers. The study surveyed 92 male and 8 female producers, finding male producers had a mean age of 39.4 years and 6.4 years of schooling, while female producers averaged 49.8 years and 7.1 years of schooling. Farm size and access to credit were significant determinants of income from urban agriculture.

Anthony Sutton · DigitalCommons (California Polytechnic State University) · United States (Maine)

This ethnographic communication research supported the Micmac Farms in Presque Isle, Maine, which were established to address food security and community health issues like obesity and diabetes. The study, conducted over three months in summer 2011, identified that administrative power structures, economic constraints, and operational planning issues threatened the farm's efforts to achieve greater economic and food security. The analysis revealed that economic behaviors dominated the data, with grants for the farm centering on economics due to historical farming discourse and business focus.