Research & reports

Marcela Galindo Molina, Liliana Patricia Gutiérrez Castro, Luviany Andrea Trujillo Nieto, Marcela Galindo Molina, Liliana Patricia Gutiérrez Castro, Luviany Andrea Trujillo Nieto, Marcela Galindo Molina, Liliana Patricia Gutiérrez Castro, Luviany Andrea Trujillo Nieto · Ciencia Unisalle (Universidad de La Salle) · Colombia (Bogotá)

This study analyzed the case of Cooperativa Multiactiva Sur Oriental, a solidarity association centered on urban agriculture in Bogotá, Colombia. Despite being strengthened with agricultural expertise, this association lacks an administrative scheme for proper resource management to generate surpluses and social development benefits for its members. Through participatory action research, the study aims to strengthen the cooperative's administrative and accounting processes to improve its urban agriculture business.

Dehui Wu · Journal of Xinyang Agricultural College · Global

This article presents advanced experiences in urban agricultural development from both domestic and international contexts. It also discusses the developing trends in urban agriculture.

Rabiul Islam, Chamhuri Siwar · Advances in Environmental Biology · Malaysia

This research analyzed the current situation and future potential of urban agriculture in Malaysia using a literature review. Study participants demonstrated a relatively greater awareness of environmental and community benefits of urban agriculture compared to food security, health, or economic benefits. Malaysian urban agriculture was found to be constrained by a lack of adequate land use planning, weak support for urban farmers, and an absence of an integrated development approach. Major challenges identified included perceptions of limited space, limited resources, and education.

Yves Cabannes · Environment and Urbanization · Global

This action research, conducted by local teams in 17 cities across Latin America, Asia, and Africa, investigated how urban farmers finance their activities. The study found that urban farmers primarily rely on their own resources, and a lack of access to financing is a major bottleneck for maintaining and expanding their operations. It also identified gaps between farmers' needs and existing public and private financial practices.

David M. Hunt, Stephanie Geiger‐Oneto, Philip E. Varca · Journal of Consumer Behaviour · Global

This exploratory field study, drawing on community theory, examined whether engagement in co-production activities in Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) leads to greater product satisfaction for consumers. Results indicated that two types of value co-creation—commitment to co-production and behavioral involvement in product-related activities—were positively correlated with product satisfaction. These findings support the notion that value co-creation provides value for consumers.

Alberto Graglia, Giulia Mazzanti · TERRITORIO · Cuba

This paper reflects on the conditions that enabled the rapid and large-scale spread of urban agriculture practices in Cuba, making it an emblematic example of reducing economic dependency on oil. The success of urban agriculture in Cuba is attributed to the country's unique history and its economic and political circumstances.

Zhu Qing-hai · Ecological Economy · Global

This paper describes a new cultural movement in agricultural food emerging in Western developed countries, driven by concerns over food safety, environmental pollution, global climate change, and inequality. This movement encompasses community-supported agriculture, food miles, and fair trade. These initiatives are presented as ensuring food safety, promoting regional economic development, safeguarding global fairness and justice, and influencing global environmental improvement.

Marit Rosol, P. Schweizer · City · Switzerland (Zurich)

This paper investigated how urban agriculture projects based on Solidarity Economics principles can develop new economic forms as an alternative to neo-liberal capitalism, focusing on the Swiss gardening cooperative ortoloco. For two years, ortoloco, a peri-urban organic farm with explicit political aims beyond food supply, successfully applied and continuously developed these principles in its economic practice. The project demonstrates the potential for developing new economic forms based on solidarity.

Yang Dan-ni · Journal of Changjiang Vegetables · Global

This paper examines the changing functions of vegetable production in urban agriculture and highlights the significance of promoting ornamental vegetable production and marketing. It proposes that the research and development of ornamental vegetables represents a viable urban agriculture production mode, facilitating cultivation shifts from rural areas to cities, enterprises to families, and fields to balconies. Key development areas include cultivar selection, equipment innovation, cultivation technology, marketing, and service system construction.

Fungai Hamilton Mudzengerere · · Zimbabwe (Bulawayo)

This research investigated the contribution of women to food security and family livelihoods through urban agriculture in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe. Primary data collected through observations and interviews showed that women practice urban agriculture more than men and play a crucial role in household food security. While women make decisions on crop types, harvest times, and markets, they face challenges with land ownership, financing, and market access, which negatively affect their agricultural activities.

Lucien Armel Awah Manga, D. Kovačević · · Cameroon

Using survey data collected by the French Agricultural Research Centre for International Development (CIRAD) among urban-farming households in the lowland area of Yaounde, Cameroon, a multinomial logit model analyzed the factors affecting choice of solid waste disposal method. Household size and accessibility of the residential area increased the probability of choosing municipal infrastructure (bins and garbage trucks) over recycling or illegal dumping, while longer years of residence, more agricultural experience, and greater distance to communal containers promoted illegal dumping or recycling instead. Given low waste-collection rates in the area, the study recommends building waste transfer stations in or near the lowland areas to support both household waste management and farming activities.

Sofie Engberg · · Global

This study takes a corporate perspective on urban farming to identify factors enabling value creation, using a qualitative approach combining a literature review with a case study -- document analysis and interviews -- of an urban farming corporation that uses greenhouses for production. Drawing on stakeholder theory, triple-bottom-line theory and hybrid organisation theory, it concludes that urban farming can generate economic, environmental and social value simultaneously, that enabling factors include favourable resource availability and active stakeholder dialogue, and that greenhouse cultivation allows for minimal use of pesticides and fertilizers.

Amadou Diop, Seyni Ndiaye · Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research) · Senegal

A study replicating earlier field surveys on crop yields and nutritional benefits of urban farming in Dakar, Senegal, using standardized sampling across selected urban villages. Crop yields from the replicated plots showed an average increase of 15% over initial estimates, with significant variation between crop types such as vegetables versus grains. Nutritional analysis found that urban farming increased micronutrient content in staple foods by up to 20%, particularly in leafy greens and fruits.

Rolando León Aguilar, Ramón Liriano González, Dania Bárbara Núñez Sosa · Centro agrícola · Cuba

A study at the intensive garden of the Universidad de Matanzas in Cuba evaluated the effect of organic matter and vegetative ground cover on water resource sustainability for urban agriculture, growing lettuce and cucumber. Using a randomized block design with six treatments and five replicates, soil moisture content and yield components were measured and analyzed with Tukey's test at 95% confidence; organic matter and vegetative cover increased soil water content and retention by more than 10% compared with bare soil, and both applied singly or combined produced a positive response in the yield components of lettuce and cucumber.

André Viljoen, Katrin Bohn · Architectural Design · Global

This piece by André Viljoen and Katrin Bohn of Bohn&Viljoen Architects juxtaposes the organopónicos, or market gardens, of Cuba — which proliferated after the US trade blockade of the 1990s and the resulting fuel shortages — with more recent food-production experiments in North American cities that draw on the Cuban example. The authors argue that in urban agriculture there is a direct connection between scarcity and abundance, with the threat of food shortages repeatedly acting as an effective trigger for food-growing enterprises, and that produce can be grown even with few or limited resources.

Eleni Katrini · KiltHub Repository · Global

A 2012 thesis (KiltHub Repository) reviewed multiple systems -- urban agriculture, decentralized water management and treatment, and energy production from waste -- through literature review and case studies. The goal was to build a toolkit for urban regenerative environments to introduce these systems to designers, with its key component being a quantitative link between each system's spatial demands and its efficiency.

Mkwambisi D. D., Fraser E. D. G., Dougill A. J. · Journal of International Development 23(2):181-203 · Malawi

Evaluates how urban food production in Malawi contributes to food security, employment and income, showing its role as a livelihood strategy for the poor while identifying constraints in land, inputs and institutional support.

Zasada, I., Fertner, C., Piorr, A., Nielsen, T.A.S. · Geografisk Tidsskrift–Danish Journal of Geography 111(1), 59–72 · Denmark

A regression analysis of peri-urban agriculture around Copenhagen, showing that different urbanization processes shape the spatial distribution of multifunctional adaptation strategies (leisure- and environment-oriented).

Koont S. · University Press of Florida (Contemporary Cuba series) · Cuba

This book provides a comprehensive account of Cuba's world-leading sustainable urban agriculture program, documenting a thousand-fold increase in urban agricultural output since 1994 and analyzing how government organizational infrastructure and human capital investment enabled this transformation.

Lesley Acton · Papers from the Institute of Archaeology · Global

This article examines the changing demand for allotment gardens and the motivations of plot holders, refuting the assumption that economic reasons are primary. It finds that while allotments have historically alleviated hunger, the social aspect primarily motivates most plot holders. Allotments are valued by individuals and collectives as part of history and cultural heritage.

Louiza M. Boukharaeva, Marcel Marloie · Espaces et sociétés · Russia

In Russia, the collective management of urban gardens provides places for relaxation and food production, attracting all population categories. These gardens are considered socially compensatory, stabilizing, and therapeutic, acting as shock absorbers for social, economic, and food crises.

Weiming Liu · Economic Research Guide · Global

This paper discusses how urban agriculture accelerates after industrialization and urbanization reach a certain level, keeping pace with the development of industrialization, urbanization, and the economy. It states the importance of recognizing the need for good city planning with reasonable layout and design for urban agriculture, while also strengthening research and exploitation of urban agricultural technology.

Hong‐Yi Chen · Nongye xiandaihua yanjiu · Global

This article discusses the vulnerability of urban agriculture, identifying its performance in human resources, land resources, capital flows, and the ecological environment. The primary reason for this vulnerability is the unreasonable flow of human, financial, and material production factors, driven by opportunity costs, amidst rapid urbanization. Strategies for healthy development include enhancing protection awareness, promoting orderly rural labor flow, improving investment, and strengthening land resource protection.

Rachel Carey, Fanny Krumholz, Kena Duignan, Kathy McConell, Jessica L. Browne, Catherine Burns, Mark Lawrence · Journal of Agriculture Food Systems and Community Development · Australia (Victoria)

This policy analysis examined fruit and vegetable production in peri-urban areas of Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. It highlights that environmental pressures, the loss and cost of peri-urban agricultural land, and a cost-price squeeze due to rising input costs and low farm-gate prices combine to threaten the viability of the Victorian fruit and vegetable industries. These pressures suggest that the availability and affordability of fruit and vegetable supplies cannot be taken for granted.

Leonie J. Pearson, Linda Pearson, Craig J. Pearson · Urban agriculture · Global

This paper reviews research on urban agriculture in relation to its social, economic, and environmental sustainability dimensions. It proposes that urban agriculture comprises three elements: isolated practice, its interface with people and environment, and its contribution to built form design, considering micro, meso, and macro scales. The analysis highlights legal, social, and economic constraints and opportunities, suggesting future research priorities include identifying principles for resilient city design and trialing innovative institutional mechanisms.