Research & reports

P. van Lune · Netherlands Journal of Agricultural Science · Netherlands

A study analyzed cadmium (Cd) and lead (Pb) in soils and crops from 57 allotment gardens in potentially contaminated areas of the Netherlands. The median Cd and Pb concentrations in the soil samples were found to be higher than those in soils used for arable farming and horticulture. However, Cd and Pb concentrations in the crops themselves were normal.

Williams, Patrick Neal. · K-State Research Exchange (Kansas State University) · United States (Manhattan, Kansas)

A five-month study of children gardening in the Manhattan Community Garden, Manhattan, Kansas, investigated differences in self-esteem, horticultural knowledge, and garden quality. Children without other siblings gardening showed higher self-esteem, gained more horticultural knowledge, and had better appearing gardens than children with other siblings gardening.

Yuzo Uchida · Journal of the City Planning Institute of Japan · Japan

This study aims to clarify the situation and types of community farms in Japan, their usage patterns, and their impact on the lives of urban residents. It notes the strong demand for community farms for cultivating vegetables and flowers among urban residents. Various types of community farms exist, including allotment gardens, Japanese Kleingartens, self-supplying community farms, and full-scale orchards in the countryside.

Lin Whitifield · Community Development Journal · United Kingdom

This is a journal article published in Community Development Journal (UK), Volume 22, Issue 3, July 1987, pages 242–245, written by Lin Whitfield, Education Officer for the National Federation of City Farms in the United Kingdom. Only bibliographic information and the author's affiliation are available; no further content is given.

和彦 武内, 洋一 松木 · Institutional Repositories DataBase (IRDB) · Japan

The available abstract for this 1987 Japanese paper consists only of a repository description (the University of Tokyo's institutional repository, UTokyo Repository) rather than the paper's content, so no findings, methods, or data about farmland's green-space value or the role of urban agriculture can be reported from it.

Christine Furedy · Water Science & Technology · India

This 1986 paper argues that sociocultural factors — the attitudes and behaviors of both planners/administrators and service recipients — need more attention in waste disposal and treatment policy in developing countries, drawing examples from Calcutta and Lucknow, India, and contending that more research on informal waste reuse practices, including in aquaculture and urban agriculture, could inform how reuse is integrated into community waste disposal systems, which would require changes in officials' attitudes toward established informal practices.

· Food and Nutrition Bulletin · Global

Urban cultivation is an innovative response by the urban poor to insufficient real income, viewed as a form of long-term investment. This investment requires a minimum threshold of predictability of return, and most households need seven to eleven years of urban residence to gain access to land. Variations in cultivation patterns result from differences in land access and the need to maximize the return on domestic labor time. Policy implications include encouraging cultivation, providing legal land titles for land access, and increasing the productivity of rainy-season gardens.

Bishwapriya Sanyal · Food and Nutrition Bulletin · Zambia (Lusaka)

Urban agriculture in Lusaka, Zambia, is an innovative response by the urban poor facing insufficient income. Low-income households view urban cultivation as a long-term investment, requiring permanent urban residence (7-11 years) and access to land to ensure a return. Variations in cultivation patterns result from relative differences in land access and the need to maximize the return on domestic labor time.

Michael S. Jamison · Sociological Quarterly · Global

This study assesses the organizational cultures of collectives and bureaucracies within the urban gardening movement, finding serious underlying differences despite government assistance. Although government agencies provided resources and established projects, collectives and bureaucracies interpreted the urban gardening experience differently. This divergence in understanding the benefits and structuring the experience reveals a source of potential bureaucratic/collectivist conflict.

Allan Bunch · Global Knowledge, Memory and Communication · Global

A short 1984 review (Global Knowledge, Memory and Communication) of the third edition of the "Community festivals handbook," published by Community Projects Foundation. The review describes the handbook as a practical guide to organizing local, day-to-multi-day community festivals, covering committees, publicity, legal and site-management aspects, and notes it is also relevant to other community-based activities such as barbecues, fundraising, adventure playgrounds, or "setting up a city farm." The review does not report any study, data, or findings specific to urban farming.

K. Bondari, E. D. Threadgill, J. Bender · OSTI OAI (U.S. Department of Energy Office of Scientific and Technical Information) · United States

This study conducted two experiments on tilapia culture. Experiment I aimed to determine the potential of Tilapia aurea in an integrated irrigation system for algae removal and resource recovery. Experiment II investigated the potential use of blue tilapia in urban farming, utilizing a passive solar greenhouse, an indoor pond for overwintering, and an outdoor pond for summer growth.

H. B. Tukey · HortScience · Global

Urban horticulture is defined as a scientific field focused on the functional uses of plants to maintain and improve urban environments. These functional uses extend beyond aesthetics to include screening against wind and views, influencing climate, reducing noise, combating air pollution, providing food, and enhancing human well-being in densely populated areas. The audience for urban horticulture includes landscape professionals, plant societies, and amateur horticulturists.

Bundesrepublik Deutschland · gesetze-im-internet.de (Bundesministerium der Justiz) · Germany

The official text of the Federal Allotment Garden Act. Section 1 defines a Kleingarten as a garden used non-commercially for horticultural purposes (including growing garden produce for personal use) and recreation, situated within a site combining multiple individual plots with shared facilities. Section 3 caps a plot at 400 m² and permits a simple garden shed of at most 24 m² (including covered terrace) that must not be suitable for permanent habitation. Section 5 caps rent at up to four times the locally customary rent for commercial fruit and vegetable cultivation.

Bundesrepublik Deutschland · buzer.de (konsolidierte Fassung des Bundeskleingartengesetzes) · Germany

A page reproducing §20 of the Federal Allotment Gardens Act (enacted 28 February 1983, Federal Law Gazette I p. 210, in force from 1 April 1983). Paragraph 1 provides that on the entry into force of the Act the listed provisions cease to apply, and lists thirteen items, of which No. 1 is the Kleingarten- und Kleinpachtlandordnung in the consolidated version published at Federal Law Gazette Part III, classification number 235-1. This is therefore the provision that repealed the 1919 ordinance, with effect from the Act's commencement on 1 April 1983. The remaining items include the provisions on the promotion of allotments of 22 March 1938 (Reichsanzeiger 1938 No. 74), the Act amending and supplementing allotment law of 28 July 1969 (BGBl. I p. 1013), Article 4 of the Act amending the Berlin Aid Act of 23 June 1970 (BGBl. I p. 826), and state-level rules from Baden-Württemberg, Hamburg, Rhineland-Palatinate and Schleswig-Holstein.

Pauline Raphaely · Birkhäuser Basel eBooks · South Africa

Food Gardens Unlimited is an educational project in South Africa that teaches disadvantaged urban populations to grow food in small areas using limited resources. The project provides five-day training courses, step-by-step directions, and subsidized seeds through existing institutions. It aims to deliver physical, emotional, and spiritual benefits to participants.

Bernard Hourcade · Revue Géographique de l Est · Iran (Tehran)

This research investigates the origins and current economy of the Anti-Alborz region, an arid mountain east of Tehran, Iran. Due to military compounds and royal hunting grounds, the expansion of Tehran has been artificially limited, leaving the Anti-Alborz as a remote area. In this region, urban, agricultural, and pastoral economies are growing in conflictual ways, indicating governance challenges in managing land use and development.

W.P. Holtz, H.J. Mooy · OSTI OAI (U.S. Department of Energy Office of Scientific and Technical Information) · United States

A 1982 final report presenting the design and construction of a community greenhouse in Newark, New Jersey, United States. It includes photographs and drawings of the greenhouse construction along with a demonstration of budgeting information.

Earle Barnhart · Birkhäuser Basel eBooks · United States

This paper argues that producing food within a forest ecosystem through careful cultivation of tree crops on hilly, marginal land is a successful and sustainable strategy for conserving soil and nutrients, and holds potential for the northeastern United States, where natural vegetation is predominantly steep, hilly forest unsuited to normal food production. Drawing on forest farming development at the New Alchemy Institute on Cape Cod, Massachusetts, it discusses concepts of ecology, energy use and erosion control in agricultural ecosystems.

Junji Yamamura, Tatsuo Ura · The New Geography · Japan

Suburban agriculture around large cities has generally been declining under rapid urbanization, but the detailed development process of tourist farms as a form of suburban agriculture has not been well explained. Taking the right bank of the Tama River as a case, this paper examines how the long-established pick-your-own Tamagawa pear orchards adapted to and were transformed by Kawasaki City's rapid urbanization from the mid-1950s onward. In the right-bank area of northern Kawasaki City, despite rapid urbanization, pick-your-own tourist pear orchards remain widely distributed and draw brisk crowds in autumn, coexisting amid residences, apartment buildings, shops, and parking lots as urbanized land use spreads. The tourist orchards developed after 1928, when the Odakyu Electric Railway opened through joint efforts with local farms, and during the decade after 1956, depressed pear market prices led many farms to convert to the tourist-farm model and become profitable; the orchards currently sell 46% of annual production through pick-your-own tourism and 52% through roadside direct sales, while farms are generally sustained with income from real-estate side businesses such as rental housing, apartments, and parking lots. In northern Kawasaki, urbanization tied to residential development has passed its peak but continues steadily, and the tourist pear orchards are gradually decreasing; the paper states their outlook is clouded by deteriorating farming conditions and difficulty securing successors, prompting a new response in the form of Kawasaki City's tourist-farm policy, which includes establishing citizen orchards, fruit parks, and citizen farms.

Abalimi Bezekhaya · Abalimi Bezekhaya · South Africa

The official site of Abalimi Bezekhaya, a non-profit founded in 1982 that provides urban agriculture training, affordable resources, irrigation and soil-building support, and market access in Khayelitsha and Nyanga, Cape Town. It states its Harvest of Hope programme generated R16 million in sales between 2008 and 2019, of which R10 million went directly to about 245 farmers (supporting 1,225 dependants) across roughly 70 gardens.

Rodale Institute · Rodale Institute · United States

A long-running comparative farming trial launched by Rodale Institute in 1981, comparing conventional (synthetic nitrogen fertilizer and herbicides), organic legume, and organic manure systems across 72 plots for over 40 years. In drought years, organic corn yields are reported to be 31% higher than conventional, and water infiltration rates are significantly faster under organic management.

· Nutrition & Food Science · Global

The Institute of Biology held a symposium to assess the value of vegetables for feeding people and livestock. The symposium considered the energy, labor, and monetary inputs required for vegetable production across various scales, from allotments to large market gardens. Discussions also included the role of traditional and unconventional animal species within vegetable growing systems.

Martine Berger, Jean-Pierre Frust, Françoise Plet, Marie‐Claire Robic · L’Espace géographique · Global

The concept of rurbanisation is ambiguous, referring either to population overspill into peripheral rural space or to processes affecting peri-urban rural space that lead to a slackening of urban functions. Studies on peri-urban space focus on land assignment changes, social change, land issues, and the specificity/future of peri-urban agriculture. Peri-urbanisation occurs within interacting systems, including socio-economic, state-specific, and urban region systems.

Ledogar Rj · PubMed · Zambia (Lusaka)

In 1978, a pilot project was initiated in Lusaka, Zambia, by UNICEF and The American Friends Service Committee to expand urban agriculture. This project aims to establish kitchen gardens on residential plots, cultivate road reserves and green belts, utilize idle land during the rainy season, raise small livestock, promote cooperative cultivation of small holdings in the urban periphery by low-income residents, and eventually resettle some urban residents on farms. The goal is for the service to be self-supporting by 1980.

Taizan Oishi, 堪山 大石 · Institutional Repositories DataBase (IRDB) · Japan

This study analyzed the transformation and reorganization processes of suburban agriculture and farmers in urbanizing areas, including "former farmer groups." It examined land conversion, changes in crop cultivation, farmer numbers, and agricultural employment. The research found that rental housing management is not economically viable, and that due to an abnormally high land price appreciation rate, the earlier rental housing management is undertaken, the greater the loss incurred, despite an observed increase in rental housing.