Research & reports

Bianca Jacqueline Silva, André de Carvalho Bandeira Mendes · LA Referencia (Red Federada de Repositorios Institucionales de Publicaciones Científicas) · Brazil

A report on a project to implement a community garden on the Itabira campus of the Federal University of Itajubá (UNIFEI) in Brazil. The proposal originated in dialogue with campus workers, and aims through extension actions to engage both the university community and the local population across social, cultural, and environmental dimensions in the garden's management, implementation, and maintenance. Planning stages include awareness-raising and mobilization, a survey of human and material resources, and exchange of experience among participants, with particular attention to including elderly residents in cultivation activities to transmit cultural knowledge and strengthen group bonds. A management team was formed to prepare the physical space and coordinate maintenance, with the garden planned as a space for observation, cultivation, and leisure.

Cadaval Solà-Morales · On diseño · Mexico

A 2020 "On diseño" award jury statement assessed the CH-REURBANO project in the historic center of Mexico City. Three previously separate, abandoned buildings with differential foundation settlement were structurally unified by removing their central mass to create a shared courtyard that also functions as circulation and ventilation. The mixed-use program was legally justified by citing the buildings' prior history of varied uses in a zone where such mixing is normally restricted.

Carla Rocha, Alanne Rainer Rosa Nascimento, Maristela Marques da Silva · Cadernos de Agroecologia · Brazil

Educational activities on agroecology and environmental issues were reported in rural multi-grade schools (from first grade through high school) in the municipality of Brasil Novo, in the Altamira microregion of Pará, Brazil. Action planning was underway at two schools, one focused on soil as a theme and the other on recycling and the creation of vegetable and school gardens, with farmers holding ecological plant knowledge interviewed as part of the process.

Bobby J. Smith · The Journal of Southern History · United States

A review of Ashanté M. Reese's 2019 book Black Food Geographies: Race, Self-Reliance, and Food Access in Washington, D.C. Focusing on the Deanwood neighborhood of Washington, D.C., the book argues that Black residents who moved north during the Great Migration did not abandon their agrarian roots but used them to build a multifaceted foodscape of community gardens, small farms, corner grocery outlets and community food markets, using this to construct community and self-reliance and to navigate antiblackness, drawn out through spatial, historical and structural analysis combined with ethnographic methods.

Henrique Freitas Alves · Cadernos PROLAM/USP · South America

Based on a literature review selected through the University of São Paulo's Portal Águia metasearch tool, a Brazilian paper presents a panorama of discussions on urban political ecology and urban agriculture. By comparing literature specific to political ecology with pathways into urban agriculture, it shows the need for closer engagement between the two in Latin American academic literature, given the scarcity of studies in the region, and discusses the complexity of the political and socio-environmental relations behind the practice of urban agriculture and the contribution of linking it to political ecology.

Charlotte Glennie · New York University Press eBooks · United States

This chapter traces the history of Seattle's P-Patch community garden program, which resident-activists have kept insulated from development pressure by advocating for it at critical moments. Advocates pursued a pro-growth strategy, framing the gardens as good for a growing city, which fed Seattle's image as green and livable and helped attract high-income residents and raise property values; while the gardens themselves remain secure, low-income and other vulnerable residents are being displaced by this green gentrification.

Laércio Stolfo Maculan, Vera Regina Tângari · Revista Nacional de Gerenciamento de Cidades · Brazil

This study examines how territory-structuring elements, including geophysical support, the Porto Alegre metropolitan region, development corridors and urban-industrial agglomerations, shaped the urban edge of Passo Fundo, a medium-sized city in southern Brazil (Rio Grande do Sul), between 2000 and 2018. It found the metropolitan region influences growth vectors, regional highways concentrate business establishments, and the city's edge hosts industrial and commercial activity alongside urban agriculture tied to the globalized agribusiness matrix.

Pamela Arnette Broom, Yuki Kato · New York University Press eBooks · United States

This chapter examines the gentrification of foodways in post-Katrina New Orleans, combining the author's own experience as a long-term urban gardener with grower interviews. It argues that the emerging narrative presenting urban agriculture as a new idea obscures the city's long-standing tradition of local food production and procurement, and that the new geographic notion of local tends to dissociate from the social and cultural dimensions of preexisting folk foodways; it concludes that the popularity of urban agriculture among newcomers, though well-intended, had the adverse effect of discouraging many long-term residents from engaging with urban agriculture and from opportunities such as entrepreneurship, community health and urban sustainability.

Vladimir Mikadze · Journal of Urban Design · Canada

A study tracing the inception and development of an unauthorized community garden (guerrilla garden) that emerged from a re-appropriated composting site in a municipal park in Montreal, Canada. It identifies the main reasons and mechanisms that allowed the garden to persist in a high-profile location for a period of time, and examines the garden and its effects on surrounding space in relation to landscape urbanism and its pursuit of a new urban development paradigm.

Zach Mortice · Landscape architecture · Canada

This article covers landscape architect Alexander Cassini's (ASLA) involvement with the Carré Casgrain community garden in the Little Italy neighborhood of Montreal, Canada. The city and Le Carré et sa Ruelle began a process of establishing the site as a real estate reserve, transferring ownership to the city with management handed to the community members who had rehabilitated the land, but the piece reports that the battle over the vacant lot left the community garden in ruins.

Marilyn Sitaker, Jane Kolodinsky, Weiwei Wang, Lisa Chase, Julia Van Soelen Kim, Diane Smith, Hans Estrin, Zoe van Vlaanderen, Lauren Greco · Sustainability · United States

A mixed-methods evaluation examined Farm Fresh Food Box (F3B), a market innovation in which pre-ordered CSA-style produce boxes are sold through rural retail outlets, implemented from 2016 to 2018 in Vermont, Washington and California as part of a USDA-funded multi-state extension and research project. A national market survey found consumers likely to purchase F3B if it offered good value on fresh local produce without requiring a subscription. The model placed additional labor burdens on farmers and retailers and required extra time for relationship-building and record-keeping. Purchasers were generally satisfied with quality, quantity and variety, and a high proportion considered F3B good value for money. As a business innovation it showed only modest profit, though retailers and farmers considered it worthwhile for expanding their customer base, promoting their brand and developing partnerships.

Madeline R. Halvey, Raychel Santo, Sara N. Lupolt, Trent J. Dilka, Brent F. Kim, Grace H. Bachman, Jill K. Clark, Keeve E. Nachman · Food Policy · United States

Researchers built a framework covering authority, policy instruments, and topic areas to catalogue municipal urban agriculture policy in the 40 most populous US cities, compiling recommendations, city plans, regulations, guidance, and city-run programs. The catalogue found wide variation in policy instruments and topics, from accessory structures and composting to public land access and soil safety, and documented a growing use of public-private partnerships that shifts civil society groups from stakeholders to co-governors, raising questions about who leads urban agriculture advocacy and enforcement and how equity and food justice concerns are affected. The study also found most cities lack a clear synthesis of their scattered urban agriculture policies across departments.

Regan Emmons, Kelsey Hall, Roslynn McCann · Digital Commons - USU (Utah State University) · United States

This Utah State University extension workshop outline covers strategies for farmers markets, farm stands, and community supported agriculture (CSA) programs to reach low-income customers by accepting Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits and incentive programs such as Double Up Food Bucks (DUFB). It presents planned workshop content on marketing techniques, the benefits of accepting SNAP and incentives, and ways market managers and CSA growers can incorporate SNAP into operations, without reporting original study data.

Maria Bampasidou, Whitney R. McKinzie, Bampasidou, Maria, McKinzie, Whitney R. · AgEcon Search (University of Minnesota, USA) · United States

This teaching case study examines Red Stick Farm, a family-operated, small-scale urban farm in greater Baton Rouge that has operated for three years, as its operators weigh two mutually exclusive growth strategies: expanding the customer base through a community-supported agriculture (CSA) program or increasing production capacity by acquiring more land. It is structured as classroom material guiding students through strategic business planning practices, including defining a mission statement, assessing strengths and threats, and identifying risks.

Caren Freitas de Lima, Silvia Regina Nunes Baptista, Susana Arruda, Cristhiane Oliveira da Graça Amâncio · Revista Campo-Território · Brazil

This article analyzes Henri Lefebvre's concept of the "right to the city" in the context of Rio de Janeiro, a Latin American city, combining Lefebvre's framework with a historical bibliographical review of urban requalification and removals in Rio, analysis of official institutional data, and field research. In the 2000s, neighborhoods with a history of agricultural activity in Rio's West Zone — mainly Planning Area 4 (AP4), covering the Vargens region (Vargem Grande, Vargem Pequena, Camorim, and parts of Recreio dos Bandeirantes, Barra da Tijuca, and Jacarepaguá) — became targets of real estate expansion. The State enabled this expansion through urbanistic instruments such as the Vargens Urban Structuring Plan (PEU das Vargens) and the Land Use and Occupation Law (LUOS), which reduce agricultural areas. Although generally neglected in debates over urban struggles, the agroecology-based Carioca Urban Agriculture Network (Rede CAU), acting through the Articulação Plano Popular (APP Vargens), takes up the struggle for the right to the city and for urban planning, asserting that the right to the city is also the right to plant.

Jennifer A. Nicklay, Kirsten Valentine Cadieux, Mary Rogers, Nicolas A. Jelinski, Kat LaBine, Gaston E. Small · Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems · United States

This paper examines collaboration among growers, policymakers, scholars, and community members around urban farms, community gardens, and home gardens in the Minneapolis/St. Paul (MSP), Minnesota metropolitan area, proposing a "learning framework" that emerged from a five-year community-university partnership. In fall 2019 the partnership conducted its first formal evaluation of its participatory processes, examining (1) what facilitated or barred authentic collaboration and (2) the role of relationships within those processes, through qualitative surveys and interviews with researchers, partners, and students. The analysis found that urban agroecology research created a space for shared learning, facilitated through co-creation of research, embodied processes, and relationships with people, cohorts, and place.

Esther McGinnis, Alicia Rihn, Natalie R. Bumgarner, Sarada Krishnan, Jourdan Cole, Casey Sclar, Hayk Khachatryan · HortTechnology · United States

A workshop report (HortTechnology, 2020) documents a July 23, 2019 session held in Las Vegas by the Consumer Horticulture and Master Gardener Professional Interest Group at the American Society for Horticultural Science annual conference, which discussed terminology resonant with millennials (e.g., plant parent, plant enthusiast, urban agriculture) and featured presentations on social media outreach on Instagram, retail point-of-sale promotions, and botanical garden programming aimed at younger audiences. The group concluded that more consumer horticulture professionals should engage in tailored social media outreach and recommended further research into consumer behavior and retail marketing preferences among millennials.

Lily Edelman-Gold, Meredith Melendy · · United States

A report on Lewiston and Auburn, Maine (2020) compared urban agriculture ordinances and performance standards from cities including Chicago, Illinois; Austin, Texas; and Minneapolis, Minnesota, and analyzed interviews with stakeholders in those cities, finding examples of standards that allow more freedom and equitable urban agriculture practice than currently exists in Lewiston and Auburn. The report's recommendations for Lewiston/Auburn include: combined restrictions for fowl, livestock, and composting (e.g., permitting a set number of chickens on smaller lots with conditional allowances on larger ones); reduced setback requirements for bees with flyway barriers where needed; increased maximum square footage for community gardens, introduction of a "market garden" designation into city code, and allowance of on-site or farm-stand sales; and explicit guidelines on what can and cannot be composted.

Janete Webler Cancelier, César De David, Janete Facco · Geosul · Brazil

A paper on Santa Maria, in Rio Grande do Sul state, Brazil (2020) examines vegetable cultivation practice in the city's peri-urban area, arguing that agriculture aimed at food production within urban/peri-urban areas is redefining the use of space, bringing changes to social, environmental, and economic relations and transforming landscapes and production dynamics. Growing demand for quality food has enabled agricultural activity to persist in urban spaces, and a way of life built around a distinctive mode of production with local specificity has gained value; in Santa Maria's peri-urban areas, horticultural production takes place with products sold weekly at fairs, markets, and on producers' properties, and is regarded as a source of household income.

Kyle Richardville · Purdue e-Pubs (Purdue University System) · United States

With Purdue University's campus and much of its surrounding area classified by the USDA as a food desert, this study surveyed graduate students using a voluntary 33-question online Qualtrics survey distributed campus-wide, to identify barriers to purchasing and consuming fresh produce and to participating in local urban agriculture, and to assess how the COVID-19 pandemic affected food access and motivation for healthy eating and community garden engagement. Results show many Purdue graduate students face both individual and structural barriers to accessing fresh fruits and vegetables, with international students particularly vulnerable to structural barriers; lack of access to a personal vehicle was the primary predictor of vulnerability, especially during the pandemic. Students expressed interest in participating in local urban agriculture initiatives but most were unaware such initiatives existed. A second objective of the study tested whether leaf mold compost could improve degraded urban soils.

Elizabeth G. Calamidas, Tara L. Crowell, Laura Engelmann, Heather Watkins-Jones · Health Education Journal · United States

A content analysis of post-grant follow-up reports examined 73 schools in southern New Jersey, USA (Atlantic, Cape May and Ocean Counties) that received edible-school-garden startup funding from AtlantiCare Health System over three academic years, 2014 to 2017. Analyzing responses to 12 open-ended questions, the study documented community partnerships, garden maintenance and harvest outcomes alongside effects on curriculum and policy, changes in participants' knowledge, attitudes and behavior, and areas needing improvement, finding that schools were appreciative of the opportunity and planned to continue their gardens.

Thalita Barbalho, Rita de Castro Engler · Design e Tecnologia · Brazil

A study examining design's contribution to social innovation and sustainability, aimed at showing how the design field can help improve and expand the practice of urban gardens in Belo Horizonte, Brazil. Using service design tools, the study designed a service for the collective "Agroecologia na Periferia" (Agroecology in the Periphery), seeking to understand its current activities and how they could be strengthened. The methodology was a qualitative, applied approach with exploratory and descriptive aims, carried out in two stages: (1) a systematic literature review covering social innovation, service design, relational services, sustainable development, and urban agriculture; and (2) a case study following a four-stage method of exploration, reflection, ideation, and prototyping. The study concludes that service design for social innovation proved to be an approach capable of helping resolve the stated objective and build viable futures, fostering and guiding social innovations toward gradual, meaningful change toward sustainability.

Bareng Antolin · Digital Scholarship - UNLV (University of Nevada Reno) · United States

A survey distributed via Farm to School state lead contacts to school garden networks nationwide in the United States collected data on high school-level garden programs, an area with limited prior research compared to elementary and middle school garden studies; 42 respondents completed the survey and were included in the final analysis. Many respondents reported perceiving positive benefits from having a high school garden program, and the study documents current practices, barriers, and implementation and sustainability strategies reported by these programs.

Brian Raison · Journal of Agriculture Food Systems and Community Development · United States

This is a review of "A Garden Experience: Growing Organic," a film about an organic community garden project in Colorado, United States, that centers on a participating gardener's statement, "It's not about the vegetables. It's about community," and is framed as potential inspiration for local food groups, garden clubs or food-and-community events.

Alex Dias da-Silva · Revista Geográfica de América Central · Brazil

A qualitative, descriptive and exploratory study investigating public policies that promote urban agriculture as an instrument of urban sustainability in the city of João Pessoa, Paraíba, Brazil. Because urban agriculture promotion is a recent phenomenon locally, the study examines whether a specific legislative framework exists for it. It finds that the municipal government has fostered public policies supporting urban agriculture management and improvement since 1993.