Research & reports
Peer-reviewed research and reports on community urban agriculture, food education, composting, welfare and more.
Theme
Critical findings
2067 results(50 / 83)
A Knotty Problem: Arts Based Action Research in and out of a Community Garden
2017Sam Smiley · Catalyst Feminism Theory Technoscience · United States (Provincetown, MA)
This arts-based action research, conducted by media artist and researcher sam smiley, explored the process of building a sculpture from Japanese Knotweed, an "invasive species," in the B-Street community garden in Provincetown, MA, USA. A series of community interventions with gardeners, naturalists, and sculptors were organized during the May 2016 Appearances Environmental Arts Festival. This article debriefs the journey of the Knotweed Sculpture from the community garden to its ultimate destruction in a bonfire on National Seashore.
CommunityBiodiversityUrban Agricultural and Sustainability Program at Houston’s Downtown University: Combining New Curriculum, Hands-on Projects, and a Hurricane
2017Lisa Morano, Vassilios Tzouanas · Journal of Agriculture Food Systems and Community Development · United States (Houston)
The University of Houston–Downtown (UHD) launched an urban agriculture and sustainability program in 2016, engaging undergraduates in hands-on projects like creating aquaponics systems. Qualitative student surveys indicated increased knowledge and impact on career directions. However, the 2017 program plans were disrupted when Hurricane Harvey flooded the school and destroyed student aquaponics systems, necessitating a focus on rebuilding and future resiliency.
Food educationCommunityClimate changeSurvey Data from Utah Urban Agricultural Workshop
2017Tyson J. Sorensen, Kelsey Hall, David Francis, Joshua Dallin · Digital Commons - USU (Utah State University) · United States (Utah)
A survey was conducted among 42 teachers who attended the Urban Agriculture Workshop in Utah to assess the value of various workshop aspects and measure pre-post gains in knowledge, ability, and importance. The survey also measured attitudes, subjective norms, perceived behavioral controls, and behavioral intention, with demographic data also collected.
Food educationCommunity“We Always Say: And Then Came The Water…” 1 Flint’s Emergent Latinx Capacity Building Journey During the Government-Induced Lead Crisis
2017Roxanna Duntley-Matos, Victoria Arteaga, Ángel García, Rafael Arellano, Roberto Montes Garza, Robert M. Ortega · Journal of Community Practice · United States (Flint)
This critically intersubjectively engaged ethnography examines emergent Latinx lead crisis rehabilitation efforts in Flint, MI, focusing on the role of education within multicultural struggles for validation. It employs cultural humility, transformative complicity, and empowerment paradigms, emphasizing organizing strategies that respect faith-based, union, and urban gardening histories. The study's popular pedagogical methods promote agency among detained youths from Kalamazoo, who contribute through protest music, testimonies, and commentaries.
CommunityFood educationLeadership, partnerships, and civic engagement
2017Helena C. Lyson · · United States (California)
This qualitative fieldwork in a large, urban school district in Northern California explored school food reform efforts addressing childhood obesity. Reforms transpired through three processes: sustained involvement of parent-activists, leadership by the school food service director in championing farm-to-school efforts and facilitating partnerships, and widespread community support for funding and implementation. These findings indicate how local social change transformed public school food programs to benefit youth health.
Food educationCommunityHealthPolicyEngaging Past and Future on a Community Supported Agriculture Farm
2017Catherine Villar · Scholarship@Western (Western University) · Canada
This ethnographic study, conducted from August 2013 to August 2014, examined Orchard Hill Farm, an organic, draft-horse powered Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) farm in Sparta, Ontario, Canada. It found that the farm's management approach resulted in a financially viable small-scale farm. The study highlighted that CSA members experience a "re-enchantment" through closeness to food and the farm, while farmers and apprentices demonstrate a commitment to sustainable practices.
CSA & TeikeiCommunityPeri-urban agricultureEconomicsPhotovoltaic powered irrigation system applied to familiar agriculture
2017Rosa Jacob Chilundo, Paulo César Marques de Carvalho, Mário Diniz, Adriano Bezerra · Renewable Energy and Power Quality Journal · Brazil
This paper analyzed the technical and financial feasibility of a stand-alone photovoltaic powered irrigation system applied to a familiar production unit in Brazil. The system was installed at the Center for Teaching and Research in Urban Agriculture (NEPAU) on the PICI campus of the Federal University of Ceará, occupying 134 m² with a 3534-liter water reservoir, a 12 VDC pump motor, and a 135 Wp photovoltaic module. Efficiencies for the photovoltaic module, pump, and global set were 8.4%, 42%, and 3.5% respectively, with an assumed service life of 25 years and capital return after 9.3 years.
Digital agricultureEconomicsClimate changeDrought, water access, and urban agriculture: a case study from Silicon Valley
2017Lucy Diekmann, Leslie Gray, Gregory A. Baker · Local Environment · United States (California)
This case study in Santa Clara County, California, used interviews and surveys to explore the implications of historic drought for urban agriculture (UA). It found that metropolitan California's decentralized water supply and diverse institutional arrangements create an uneven landscape of water access for UA. This results in geographically and socially differentiated pressures on UA water users to change water-consuming practices, with responses varying due to site-specific sociotechnical arrangements and UA purposes.
Governance failureClimate changePolicyUrban–rural linkageGetting the Lead Out: Urban Chicken Keeping as Transformative Neo-Agrarianism
2017Sydney Giacalone · Journal for Undergraduate Ethnography · United States (Boston)
This ethnographic study, conducted in Boston and Somerville in the summer of 2016, investigated how urban chicken keeping might transform keepers’ thinking about food systems and animal relationships. The research revealed the unexpected discovery of lead contamination in urban chicken flocks in the Boston area, which unsettled the imagined simplicity of urban agriculture and exposed a "metabolic rift." This finding prompted keepers to engage more deeply with the history of the soil and opened new ways of thinking about collective metabolism, multispecies living, and food politics.
Contamination & food safetyCommunityHealthFarming in the City: Investigating the Policy Implications for Urban Farming in Regina
2017Osazuwa Osayomwanbor · Open MIND · Canada
This study discusses the concept of urban agriculture in Regina, Canada, its growth, and the implications of municipal bylaws and policies on urban agricultural activities. It uses policy frameworks from other cities to suggest changes needed to improve Regina's urban agriculture landscape and presents practical actions required for urban agriculture to thrive in Regina.
PolicyCommunityFood justice or food sovereignty? Understanding the rise of urban food movements in the USA
2016Clendenning J., Dressler W. H., Richards C. · Agriculture and Human Values 33:165-177 · United States
Through interviews with activists in Oakland and New Orleans, analyzes how food justice and food sovereignty have become embedded as concepts, strategies and practices in the rise of US urban food movements.
CommunityPolicyWelfareCommunity and home gardens increase vegetable intake and food security of residents in San Jose, California
2016Algert S., Diekmann L., Renvall M., Gray L. · California Agriculture 70(2):77-82 · United States
Survey of 85 community and 50 home gardeners in San Jose, mostly low-income. Gardeners roughly doubled their vegetable intake to meet dietary guideline servings, with improved household food security.
WelfareHealthFood systems at the rural-urban interface
2016Proctor, F., Berdegué, J. · RIMISP — Latin American Center for Rural Development · Latin America
A case-based analysis of food systems at the rural-urban interface, detailing—mainly in Latin America—the interdependence of city and countryside in agricultural distribution, processing and market access.
EconomicsLead in Urban Soils: A Real or Perceived Concern for Urban Agriculture?
2016Brown S.L., Chaney R.L., Hettiarachchi G.M. · Journal of Environmental Quality, 45(1):26-36 · United States
A review examining the risk that urban soil lead poses to urban agriculture. It concludes that adding compost, organic matter and phosphorus improves soil properties and reduces both the bioavailability of soil lead and fugitive dust, so urban agriculture is unlikely to raise children's blood lead. The findings support the safety of compost-centred soil management in urban gardens.
CompostHealthPolicyOrganic cycleFood Policy: Urban Farming as a Supplemental Food Source
2016Bessie DiDomenica, Mark Gordon · Journal of Social Change · United States
This study explores urban farms as a secondary food source and examines common themes across the public, nonprofit, private, and academic sectors, using a Northeastern U.S. city that implemented a formal urban agriculture program as its case study. It notes that food systems can be disrupted by external forces (weather extremes) and internal forces (zoning regulations). The authors argue that urban farms offer greater food visibility and access in low-income areas, but conclude that local food alone cannot feed large populations.
PolicyCommunityAvailability and Accessibility of Vacant Lots for Urban Cultivation in Post-Katrina New Orleans
2016Yuki Kato, Scarlett Andrews, Cate Irvin · Urban Affairs Review · United States (New Orleans)
Based on interviews with 44 urban growers in New Orleans, this study examines their experiences establishing urban agriculture projects on publicly and privately owned lots through purchase or lease. It finds that publicly owned lots are easier to identify but insecure to access due to bureaucratic processes and shifting policy, while privately owned lots are easier to lease but hard to identify; neither offers significantly more secure land tenure, raising concerns about the long-term sustainability of urban agriculture.
PolicyCommunityEffects of greening and community reuse of vacant lots on crime
2016Michelle Kondo, Bernadette Hohl, SeungHoon Han, Charles Branas · Urban Studies · United States (Youngstown)
Using a difference-in-differences design, this study evaluates Youngstown's 'Lots of Green' program, comparing crime around newly treated vacant lots—via a cleaning-and-greening 'stabilization' treatment and a 'community reuse' treatment involving mostly community gardens—to matched untreated control lots. It finds statistically significant reductions across crime classes for at least one treatment type, with community-initiated greening associated with greater reductions in serious, violent crimes, alongside spillover reductions in contiguous areas but increases in motor vehicle thefts.
CommunityPolicyEffects of Garden Attributes on Ant (Formicidae) Species Richness and Potential for Pest Control
2016Naim Edwards · Urban Agriculture & Regional Food Systems · United States (Ann Arbor)
This study investigated ant (Formicidae) species diversity in relation to garden attributes at three gardening sites in Ann Arbor, Michigan, along with predation experiments testing biocontrol of Cabbage Looper moths and Squash Bugs. It sampled 19 ant species from 12 genera, finding that soil texture, intense tilling and distance from less-disturbed areas significantly reduced species richness, with less-tilled plots averaging nearly double the species of tractor-tilled plots. Ants consumed Cabbage Looper eggs and larvae, and the authors conclude that reducing disturbance in and around gardens can promote ant biodiversity and beneficial pest predation.
BiodiversityCommunityEvaluation of an Urban Farm-to-Preschool and Families Program
2016Elena T. Carbone, Gloria T. DiFulvio, Toni Susi, Jerusha Nelson-Peterman, Joan Lowbridge-Sisley, Jessica Collins · International Quarterly of Community Health Education · United States (Springfield, MA)
This evaluation examined an urban Farm-to-Preschool and Families program in Springfield, Massachusetts, aiming to identify factors that facilitate its adoption and to offer guidelines for successful implementation of such programs more generally. Using classroom observations of preschoolers, teacher and food-service interviews, and administrator surveys, the findings suggest that a strong programmatic infrastructure, administrative support, and external support from families are important to sustaining the program.
Food educationHealthCommunity Gardens for Refugee and Immigrant Communities as a Means of Health Promotion
2016· Journal of Community Health · United States
A mixed-method evaluation of a church-hosted refugee gardening project serving primarily Karen and Bhutanese populations, using early- and late-season surveys and seven end-of-season focus groups.
WelfareHealthCommunityOrganic farm volunteer tourism as social movement participation: a Polanyian political economy analysis of World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms (WWOOF) in Hawai'i
2016· Journal of Sustainable Tourism · United States (Hawai'i)
Analyzes WWOOF organic-farm volunteer tourism in Hawai'i as a form of social movement participation, using a Polanyian political economy framework.
CommunityOrganic cycleEconomicsUrban agriculture and the sustainability fix in Vancouver and Detroit
2016Walker Samuel · Urban Geography · Canada/USA (Vancouver, Detroit)
Critical analysis of how Vancouver and Detroit governments deployed urban agriculture rhetorically within economic-development narratives as a 'sustainability fix'. Argues municipal embrace of UA was selective and discursive, serving governance legitimacy more than substantive food or equity outcomes.
PolicyUrban agriculture: connecting producers with consumers
2016Carolyn Dimitri, Lydia Oberholtzer, Andy Pressman · British Food Journal · United States
Based on a 2012 national survey of urban farmers in the USA (35 questions), this study analyzed the social missions of urban farms, their extent, and differences and similarities among farms with varying missions. The survey found that food production is an essential mission for all urban farms, and some also have social missions related to food security, education, and community building. Farms with explicit social missions were found to donate a higher share of food and were less likely to own farmland compared to market-oriented farms.
EconomicsCommunityFood educationFood sovereignty & justiceWomen and Children
2016David J. Bettez · · United States
During wartime, the Kentucky Division of the Women’s Committee of the Council of National Defense guided women's efforts, supporting activities like the Red Cross and Liberty Bond campaigns, and pursuing initiatives in child health, schooling, and recreation. Children were also expected to contribute, mainly by cultivating school gardens and promoting the purchase of War Savings Stamps.
Food educationCommunityIntegrating Spatial Technologies in Urban Environments for Food Security
2016Edwin Joseph, Elizabeth O'Dea · Advances in environmental engineering and green technologies book series · United States (South Bend)
This chapter examines South Bend, Indiana, a city facing urban decay and food insecurity among its poor, similar to some developing countries. It reviews the city's history, economic strategies, and efforts by various organizations to alleviate poverty and hunger. The chapter advocates for integrating spatial technologies, such as GIS, to promote collaboration and sustainable urban agriculture among diverse stakeholders to address poverty and malnutrition.
Food sovereignty & justiceCommunityDigital agricultureWelfare