Research & reports

Filip Schilla, Gaga Mumladze, Jana Soukupová, Ľuboš Smutka · Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems · Global

This study simulated basement and ground-level room conditions — temperature, humidity, light exposure, and air quality — for cultivating Agaricus bisporus (white button mushrooms) as a form of urban agriculture, and calculated the associated costs and profits to compare feasibility between the two environments. The basement environment proved more favorable, with more stable temperatures and higher humidity reducing energy requirements, and economic analysis showed basement cultivation had lower initial and operational costs than ground-level cultivation.

João Manoel da Silva, Maria Celia de Paula Rocha, Mariana de Aquino Freitas, Érika Sabrina Felix Azevedo, Rafael Balbino Cardoso, Vitória R. R. de A. R. Ramalho · Revista de Gestão e Secretariado (Management and Administrative Professional Review) · Brazil

This project diagnosed the socioeducational profile, prior knowledge, and training needs of residents in several municipalities of the Alagoas semi-arid region (sertão alagoano) of Brazil, using an electronic questionnaire and a quali-quantitative analysis of responses, followed by thematic training cycles on "Cultivation in Small Spaces," "What to Plant," and "Ecological Management" to spread agroecological practices in urban, peri-urban, and backyard-garden settings. Results showed most participants already had some cultivation space and strong interest in sustainable practices such as composting and organic fertilization, though some showed technical limitations; women and young people predominated among respondents, and all participants expressed interest in further training, prioritizing digital materials such as explanatory videos and educational booklets.

Mysha Clarke · EDIS · Global

This extension publication outlines the potential benefits of urban gardens for nearby neighborhoods, the broader urban community, peripheral communities, and visitors to a city, aimed at urban planners, residents, and community members planning new gardens or maintaining existing ones. It presents guidance rather than original study data or measured outcomes.

V. S. Manivasagam, G. V. Saai Shreyaa, Shriienidhie Ganesh · Computational Urban Science · India

This study built a geospatial framework using open-access geospatial datasets to assess the economic feasibility of rooftop gardening, rainwater harvesting, and photovoltaic installations across 368,748 rooftops in Coimbatore, India. Projected revenue estimates were ₹28.58 billion for photovoltaic systems, ₹15.79 billion for rooftop gardens, and ₹0.34 billion for rainwater harvesting; a crop-specific analysis found chillies the most profitable rooftop crop, with potential revenue of ₹38.51 billion, and coriander the least profitable at ₹4.57 billion.

Elizabeth Opiyo Onyango, Destiny Otoadese, Keji Mori, Nkechinyere Chinedu-Asogwa, Joyce Kiplagat, Binita Jirel · Health & Place · Global

A scoping review of existing literature examined how community gardens are used to address cultural food insecurity among immigrant and refugee communities and the neighborhood transformations that accompany them. It identified physical, social, cultural, environmental, and policy-level changes and benefits spanning nutrition, physical activity, psychological healing, and social connection, but found a lack of comprehensive evidence specifically on Canada regarding how neighborhoods are changing to meet these communities' cultural food needs.

Yu Huan, Steffen Nijhuis, Nico Tillie · Journal of Cleaner Production · Europe

Using Rotterdam as a case study, researchers combined machine-learning suitability modeling (XGBoost with SHAP), deep-learning land-use simulation, and monetary ecosystem-service valuation to compare three scenarios for 2030 and 2050: business-as-usual, suitability-based autonomous transformation, and a suitability-based landscape-approach transformation. Suitability-guided scenarios outperformed business-as-usual, with the landscape-approach scenario producing the most stable multi-decadal outcomes for regulating and cultural services, but provisioning services could plateau or decline when ecological protection constraints limited intensive production.

Grace O’Connor, Kimberley Reis, Georgette Leah Burns, Cheryl Desha, Ingrid Burkett · Journal of Rural Studies · Australia

Researchers investigated the lived experiences of 24 small-scale farmers across 16 ecologically sustainable farms in South-East Queensland and the Northern Rivers region of New South Wales, Australia, examining how their experiences shaped participation in societal transitions to sustainable food systems and contributions to social-ecological resilience. Participants' narratives largely aligned with the "new peasantry" movement, and the paper uses a lens of collective autonomy to discuss how shared responsibility between individuals, communities, organizations, and governments could be reperceived through collective paradigm shifts, community-supported agriculture, and universal basic income.

Karen Botes, Christina Breed · Land · South Africa

In the Melusi informal settlement of Tshwane, South Africa, researchers used a mixed-methods approach -- semi-structured questionnaires, focus group interviews, and photo-elicitation, analyzed with SPSS and Atlas.ti -- to examine socio-cultural perceptions of modular living wall systems planted with African vegetables as a way to enhance household food security. Key barriers to urban agriculture identified included high maintenance costs, pest control problems, spatial constraints, exposure to extreme weather, and limited access to water and fertilizer, while the community supported living walls with African vegetable crops for their space-saving and biophilic value, with success depending on low-tech, cost-effective, modular systems built from recycled materials using nutrient-dense, compact crops.

Moçambique MANI TESE, Franscisco Monteiro Chimote, Paulo Xavier Tebulo · Revista fisio&terapia. · Mozambique

This study examined the challenges and opportunities in formulating and implementing urban food policies in Mozambique, focusing on the city of Quelimane, drawing on literature review, official document analysis, and observations from multisectoral training that involved the municipality's departments, nutritionists from the health and agriculture ministries, industry and commerce representatives, district services from Quelimane, Maganja da Costa, Mocuba, and Nampula, an Agrofood-link Mozambique representative, urban planning and infrastructure staff, and a Shoprite supermarket. It identified institutional fragmentation, precarious infrastructure, and climate change impacts as factors compromising urban food security, alongside opportunities linked to urban agriculture, participatory governance, and international cooperation.

Ioana | https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4755-779X Florea · OAPEN (The OAPEN Foundation) · Global

This entry is a chapter, "The Political Ecology of Collective Urban Gardening," within the New Routledge Handbook of Political Ecology, but the abstract provided describes only the handbook's overall structure and editorial approach -- 52 chapters across three parts on decolonizing political ecology, activism and praxis, and the making of twenty-first-century natures -- rather than this chapter's specific subject, methods, or findings on urban gardening.

Janine Opitz, Monika Egerer · Renewable Agriculture and Food Systems · Germany

An online survey of 111 responding projects from Germany's urban community gardening network examined the presence and diversity of nut tree species and the motivations and challenges for adopting and expanding them. Nut trees existed in almost half of the responding projects, but in small numbers with low yields, hindered by limited space, local laws and regulations, and interaction with other garden species, and only 50% of projects planned to incorporate more nut tree species in the future.

Eduardo Cesar Silva, Daniel Leite Mesquita, Paulo Henrique Montagnana Vicente Leme · Revista Brasileira Multidisciplinar · Brazil

Using a competitive-intelligence approach drawing on both academic and journalistic sources, this study conducted an exploratory analysis of global urban agriculture trends to identify the main technologies and models in use. It found that urban agriculture is expanding worldwide and is practiced through diverse models, notably community gardens, rooftop gardens, controlled-environment food cultivation, and cellular agriculture.

Wen‐Pei Sung, Ming-Cheng Liao, Hsian-Ling Peng, Chung-Tien Huang, Yun-Jung Chuang, J Wang · Sustainability · Global

Against a backdrop of intensifying urban heat island effects and residents' mental health problems amid urbanization, this study examined the impact of an Urban Food Forest Program on urban environmental comfort, heat island mitigation, and the mental health of middle-aged and elderly residents. Using on-site field measurements and questionnaire surveys, it analyzed the environmental comfort of green spaces in urban heat island hotspots and assessed participants' mental health. The Urban Food Forest Program significantly reduced surrounding environmental temperature, with an average cooling effect of 2.4°C particularly in soil areas, and reduced heat island intensity in the surrounding area by 15%. In the mental health survey, male participants scored significantly higher than female participants (p = 0.017), and middle-aged and elderly participants who took part more than five times per week scored 17% higher, significantly better, than low-frequency participants. The study notes that its relatively small sample size and limited observation period may affect the generalizability of its findings, and that it focused on one specific urban area that may not represent the broader urban context.

Agustin Windianingsih, Mulki Siregar, Estu Mahanani, Aisyah Hikmatur Romadhonah, Nihlah Hariro Romadhona, Urvia Rahmadani, Adinda Putri Salsabila Salvi, Idham Nur Kholiq · Jurnal SOLMA · Indonesia (Jakarta)

This report describes a community-service activity (PKM) conducted by Universitas Islam Jakarta with D'Shafa, a farming community in Jakarta focused on urban agriculture development, aimed at strengthening food security and economic welfare. The activity followed five method stages — education, training, technology application, evaluation, and program sustainability — with the goal of helping the D'Shafa Women Farmers Group (KWT) create value-added processed products. The activity produced value-added products through the use of a vacuum-frying machine for making fruit and vegetable chips, and it broadened KWT D'Shafa members' knowledge of preparing simple and digital financial reports and of digital marketing.

Lori G. Beaman, Ryan T. Cragun, Douglas Ezzy · · Global

This concluding book chapter, drawing on interviews with community gardeners, reviews the themes of equality and substantiality in what community gardeners can tell us about nonreligion. It argues that community gardeners have a deep awareness of their entanglement with other terrestrial beings — humans, animals, insects, and plants — leading them into a distinct form of ethical engagement driven primarily by relationships and practices rather than by intellectual commitment to abstract norms (though these can sometimes be significant, citing Ezzy 2004). Nonreligion is characterized as being less about the absence of religion and more about substantive content — commitments, practices, and relationships — and the chapter argues that the concept of "lifestances" is the best way to conceptualize this substantive content, and that the religion/nonreligion binary must be transcended to understand humans as entangled in a network of terrestrial relationships.

Hanik Endang Nihayati, Retno Indarwati, Elida Ulfiana · Jurnal Masyarakat · Indonesia

Aimed at creating urban green space and food production through urban farming — framed as an innovative strategy for food security amid rapid urbanization — this Indonesian initiative built urban greening through collaboration among community groups, the PKK women's welfare movement, and village (kelurahan) government officials. It was carried out as a five-stage, one-year mentoring program (socialization, trial, implementation, evaluation, and harvest festival) starting in April 2018. The urban farming program, which involved community members, particularly women, was found to improve quality of life by providing access to quality vegetables in the city center and creating a greener environment. The program is described as providing real benefits to the community, the village government, academics, and higher-education institutions, and as needing to be expanded to other regions with active involvement of women to broaden its impact.

Dhaipule Amritha, B. Nirmala, Ch. Srilatha, K. Supriya · Journal of Scientific Research and Reports · India

This study examines the motivations driving urban gardening, the challenges gardeners face, and how pricing, usability, and support services shape consumer preferences among residents of Hyderabad, India. Using purposive sampling, 80 respondents completed a structured questionnaire with 5-point semantic differential scales, analyzed via mean ranking and multiple linear regression. Most respondents were female, educated, middle-aged, and married, living in nuclear families, with both working professionals and homemakers participating in gardening. Adverse weather and pest problems were the most commonly reported challenges; among package features, material quality was rated most important, followed by price and ease of use. Pricing, usability, and support services significantly influenced consumer preferences (p < 0.01).

Stefan Galley, Rita Saleh, Patrick Bottazzi · Cleaner and Responsible Consumption · Global

This between-subjects online experiment examined how information about the benefits of Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) shapes non-members' perception of those benefits, their perceived relevance, and willingness to join, alongside trust, subjective knowledge, sustainable food shopping behavior, political orientation, and sociodemographics. 754 respondents were randomly assigned to six groups: five each exposed to information on one benefit (nutritional, sustainability, solidarity, transparency, or community), plus a control group. Regardless of the information given, farmers were perceived to benefit most from CSA, followed by society, then the individual; participants themselves ranked individual benefits and environmental sustainability as most important, followed by solidarity with farmers, transparency, and community. Higher perceived overall CSA benefit was associated with higher willingness to join. Information on solidarity, nutrition, and community was most effective for young, educated, and often female respondents, while nutrition-focused information reached environmentally conscious, conservative consumers; information on nutrition and environmental sustainability produced the highest willingness to join overall.

Ratih Hesty Utami Puspitasari · Moneta Journal of Economics and Finance · Indonesia

This study evaluates willingness to pay (WTP) for urban ecosystem services — particularly cultural and provisioning services delivered by urban agriculture (UA) — in rapidly urbanizing Indonesian cities, using a Contingent Valuation Method (CVM) structured survey and logistic regression to identify socioeconomic predictors of WTP, supplemented by a review of comparative case-study literature to contextualize the findings. The results show strong public support for UA, with higher WTP associated with cultural ecosystem services tied to heritage, aesthetics, and community identity. Key predictors of WTP were income, education, environmental concern, and prior exposure to UA, with regional differences reflecting cultural and policy context. The study notes methodological limitations of CVM in capturing intangible values and advocates mixed-methods approaches incorporating ethnographic and participatory tools.

Amelia Kamila Islami, Henny Nuraini, Bram Brahmantiyo, Eko Handiwirawan, Ferdy Saputra, Nurul Azizah, Cecep Hidayat, Wawan Sulistiono · Brazilian Journal of Biology · Indonesia

This study examines morphometric traits — body weight and measurements of the head, chest, limbs, spine, and ears — of the Bambu Apus rabbit, a breed formed by crossing several rabbit breeds and adapted to the environment of DKI Jakarta, Indonesia, comparing 65 adult Bambu Apus rabbits against secondary data from 40 adult Rex and 40 adult New Zealand White rabbits. Analysis used SAS software v9.4: ANOVA (PROC GLM), Mahalanobis distance analysis (PROC DISCRIM), canonical discriminant analysis (PROC CANDISC), and phenogram construction (MEGA11). Discriminant analysis showed Bambu Apus rabbits differed morphometrically from Rex and New Zealand White rabbits: average body weight was 2473.54±480.13 g, higher than Rex (P<0.05); chest depth was 8.69±1.11 cm greater than both Rex and New Zealand White (P<0.05); and backbone length was 37.84±3.51 cm longer than Rex (P<0.05). Genetic distance and phenogram analysis showed low kinship between Bambu Apus and both Rex and New Zealand White rabbits, which the study suggests indicates potential for developing tropical-climate-adapted broiler rabbits.

B Sreejith, B Maneesh · South Asian Journal of Agricultural Sciences · Global

Set against challenges to social equity, ecological balance, and global food availability from population growth and rapid urbanization, this review paper surveys existing literature linking urban agriculture to multiple Sustainable Development Goals — including poverty eradication, ending hunger, health and well-being, gender equality, economic growth and employment, inclusive urban development, sustainable consumption and production, climate action, land ecosystems, and global partnerships — and discusses policy implications for India. It compiles prior findings associating urban agriculture with locally grown food supply, resource optimization and emissions reduction through urban forestry, rooftop gardens and vertical farming, reduced food miles, and education, skill-building and community participation opportunities including for women and youth. The paper presents no original empirical data of its own.

Emmanouel Arizanis, Dimitrios Kyriazis, Vassilis Barkoukis · Journal of Adventure Education & Outdoor Learning · Europe

This study tested the effectiveness of a specially designed school garden project aimed at improving intrinsic motivation (enjoyment, satisfaction/effort), social skills (responsibility, cooperation), and behavior (attitude, intention) as components of environmental behavior, among 152 fourth- and sixth-grade primary school pupils in Greece (M = 10.89 years, SD = 0.99), assigned to intervention and control groups. Pupils were tested before the intervention, at its end, and two months afterward. Over an eight-week intervention of two hours per week aligned with the Greek school curriculum, the intervention group attended the school garden project while the control group attended unrelated projects. The analysis found the program had a long-lasting effect on pupils' environmental behavior.

Nurul Zakiyah, Andien Putri Amelia, Dini Nurhandini, Lhaeira Hilda Arsheillah, Eka Yunita Putri, Dimas Aditya Riski, Bisyru Maulana Ali, Muhammad Surya Alkautsar · Academic Zeal for Community Innovation Research and Engagement · Indonesia

A community outreach program in Astanalanggar Village, Indonesia (2025) delivered participatory-action-research based education on yard-based urban farming, combined with cultivation of family medicinal plants (TOGA) and training in roselle processing, targeting the Arum Sari Women Farmers' Group and PKK members. The program used field observation, group discussion, education sessions, technical mentoring and planting activities. Reported outcomes were increased community participation and behavioral change toward using yard land and processing local plants for food, health, and household economic value.

Jennifer Jettner · Journal of Social Work and Social Welfare Policy · United States

A qualitative study (Journal of Social Work and Social Welfare Policy, 2025) interviewed ten garden leaders representing nine urban and rural community gardens in Alabama, USA, analyzing themes through a racial capitalism and black geographies framework. It found that health-focused garden efforts were white-led while justice-focused efforts were BIPOC-led, and that all of the gardens struggled to engage a racially diverse membership reflective of their surrounding neighborhood. For white-led efforts, the main impediment was found to be importing racial diversity rather than centering and celebrating BIPOC leadership and knowledge. BIPOC-led efforts held differing interpretations of the impact of historical trauma, possibly linked to a "rural imaginary." All gardens studied struggled to engage youth and expressed fear of losing food and growing knowledge across generations.

Made Dwi Kanaka Sarahswati, Dew Ayu Trisna Adhiswari Wedagama · Penamas Journal of Community Service · Indonesia

A community service program in Dauh Puri Kaja Village, Denpasar, Indonesia (2025) combined urban farming with 3R-based waste management (reduce, reuse, recycle), providing hands-on training at the local Balai Banjar in waste sorting and composting organic waste for use in urban farming, followed by compost distribution at the village's waste management site. Reported outcomes were improved community understanding of using compost for household-scale farming and of proper waste segregation; the program's anticipated longer-term community impact was stated as an expectation, not a measured result.