Research & reports

Kelly Donati, Christopher Taylor, Craig J. Pearson · · Australia (Melbourne)

Australian policy initiatives address threats to food production from climate change and petrochemical dependency, as well as socio-economic disadvantage. In Victoria, natural disasters like droughts, bushfires, and floods have increased food costs for low-income households. This case study explores farmers markets and community gardens in Melbourne as potential localized food systems, collecting data between 2009 and 2010 using GIS-based land use descriptions and interviews with local producers.

Pian Pian Wang, John G. Nevius · Environmental Claims Journal · Global

This article discusses the role of insurance in promoting urban agriculture, which is increasingly important due to population density and climate change. It suggests that insurance, public policy, and land use law must be combined with financial support to help urban agricultural initiatives flourish. The article proposes adjusting existing insurance, establishing local programs, and incorporating risk analysis into urban land use planning to encourage urban agriculture.

Afton Halloran, Jakob Magid · Environment and Urbanization · Tanzania (Dar es Salaam)

Urban agriculture in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, has received little political support from central and local governments over the past 30 years due to its informal status, leading to land insecurity for many urban farmers. The incorporation of urban agriculture into the Dar es Salaam 2012-2032 Master Plan (unapproved as of June 2013) and its legitimization processes were examined. It was noted that legitimization through policy could also further marginalize urban farmers cultivating open spaces within the city.

Philani Moyo · Journal of Human Ecology · Zimbabwe

This study qualitatively examined the role and contribution of urban agriculture to household food security, employment creation, and income generation among low-income working-class and urban poor households in Bulawayo townships, Zimbabwe. It was found that urban food production significantly contributes to household food access and security, improving dietary diversity and nutritional intake. However, the potential of urban agriculture is constrained by factors including land tenure insecurity, erratic water access, small plot sizes, inadequate capital for optimizing plot productivity, and ambivalent application of urban land-use laws.

Priyanie Amerasinghe, Vajira Hettige, K. V. A. H. P. Wijenayake · Documents & Reports (World Bank) · Sri Lanka

Agricultural development for food, nutrition, and livelihood security is a high political priority in Sri Lanka. National priorities include developing food-secure and resilient cities, with the Western Province initiating its urban agriculture campaign in 2000.

Michael R. Hoadley · Illinois Digital Environment for Access to Learning and Scholarship (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign) · Global

A talk by Michael Hoadley, founder of Chicago firm Fewzion, discussed challenges in vertical farming and controlled environment agriculture. The presentation emphasized the importance of framing discussions within the context of economically self-sustainable models, free of dependence on policy subsidy and philanthropy. This highlights concerns about policymakers' over-zealous view of urban agriculture as a panacea for social ills.

Zhang Qiu-lin · Modern Agricultural Science and Technology · Global

This study summarized the design features of modern urban agriculture park architecture by analyzing specific examples. The aim was to explore architectural forms that better align with the style and features of agricultural parks.

Patrick F. Banga · · Zimbabwe

Unsanctioned urban agricultural activities in Emakhandeni High Density Suburb of Bulawayo, Zimbabwe, negatively impact biodiversity. Researchers interviewed 100 people and conducted field visits, finding that the majority of cultivators operate outside existing laws and guidelines. This leads to progressive land degradation, massive deforestation, soil erosion, dried wetlands, lowered water table, and compromised groundwater quality due to pesticides and inorganic fertilizers.

С Н Кириллов, Ю. С. Половинкина · CyberLeninK (CyberLeninka) · Russia

This article presents the results of an environmental assessment of Volgograd's public green spaces. Integrated environmental assessment coefficients were calculated for the main green areas, and recommendations for optimizing urban gardening were provided.

Juan Miguel Moreno Alvarez · Dialnet (Universidad de la Rioja) · Cuba (Ciudad de La Habana)

This doctoral thesis aimed to establish a system of urban soil quality indicators for Havana, Cuba, under different land-use scenarios (agricultural, parks/gardens, wooded areas, idle/underutilized spaces). Researchers selected 35 urban soils in Havana, described their morphological profiles, and determined physical, chemical, and biological properties. Eight variables were selected as soil quality indicators using principal component analysis, and a soil quality index, including one for heavy metals, was defined and evaluated for different uses. The studied soils, heavily affected by human activity, were classified as Urbic or Garbic Technosols and showed high heterogeneity in properties.

Krešimir Škuljević · · Croatia

This study addresses the topic of student economy and school gardens in Croatia between 1848 and 1880. With a special focus on the school in Sibinj, the effects of legal changes and problems in their implementation were examined. It is noted that existing literature rarely elaborates on related concepts such as teachers' obligations and rights, characteristics of school gardens, the role of local political administration, and the purpose of gardens.

Sumita Ghosh · · Global

This paper aims to measure and compare the morphologies and spatial dimensions of three typologies of small local food production spaces—urban small farms, community gardens, and home gardens—in two low-density suburban residential neighborhood case studies in Sydney and Miami. Miami's integrated form-based zoning code, "The Transect," provides design and planning guidelines for six zones from urban to natural areas. Results indicate that morphological analysis can significantly assist in the design and planning of built environments and the formulation of planning policy.

LI Xiao-shuan · Anhui nongye kexue · Global

Urban agriculture development patterns at home and abroad were studied, combined with actual cases, to discuss future urban agriculture development patterns. This study aims to provide a reference for the planning of modern urban agriculture parks.

Simon Underhill, Underhill, Simon · Asian Journal of Agriculture and Development · Cambodia

This paper reported on trends in urban agriculture (rice, vegetables, cattle, swine, and poultry) in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, since 1993. Approximately 20% (125 square kilometers) of the municipal area of Phnom Penh is used for agriculture, supporting nearly 300,000 livestock. Between 1993 and 2011, livestock populations declined but increased in 2011, while vegetable production and cultivated area decreased, and rice production increased.

Stefano Pascucci, Alessia Lombardi, Luigi Cembalo, Domenico Dentoni · Data Archiving and Networked Services (DANS) · Global

This paper discusses the concept of the food community network (FCN) — an organizational model in which consumers and farmers use membership-based contracts to pool resources and assign decision and property rights for credence food transactions, combining democratic and communitarian elements with few market or bureaucratic elements — and applies new institutional economics and organizational science arguments to case studies of community-supported agriculture reported elsewhere, finding a wide variety of FCN organizational forms.

Fran Tonkiss · City · 欧州

Engages austerity urbanism through temporary designs and provisional uses of vacant urban space in European cities, questioning orthodox development timescales, planned uses and value capture. Provides a theoretical frame for interim vacant-lot gardening such as Sakanoen’s for-sale-site allotments.

Ramón Isidro Cieza, Claudia Cecilia Flores, Lía Nora Tamagno, María Margarita Bonicatto, Natalia Agustina Gargoloff, María Luz Blandi, María J. Lermanó · Americanae (AECID Library) · Argentina (Buenos Aires)

The potential of urban and peri-urban agriculture (AUP) is increasingly recognized in cities across Latin America and the Caribbean, according to this 2013 piece on Argentina, because large quantities of food are produced in urban peripheries.

Alan Hallsworth, Alfred Wong · Journal of Agriculture Food Systems and Community Development · Global

A short commentary on urban gardening. It states that although urban gardening is highly popular among civic politicians and some vocal advocates, there is no basis to expect this food-supply concept could ever deliver fresher or lower-cost food to most people living within the structure of a modern urbanized society.

Afton Halloran, Jakob Magid · Geografisk Tidsskrift-Danish Journal of Geography · Global

Using participatory action research, this comparative study examined stakeholder interactions and the barriers to conserving existing urban agriculture and pursuing future initiatives in two cities: Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, and Copenhagen, Denmark. It found that urban agriculture is often left out of urban policy and lacks comprehensive, formalized regulatory tools, and that municipal recognition and institutional support are important components in increasing the sustainability of urban agriculture initiatives, with local and central governments playing a role in legitimizing and institutionalizing urban agriculture through facilitating multi-stakeholder processes, policy development, and land conservation and allocation.

Adriana Allen, Alexandre Apsan Frediani · City · Ghana

Drawing on a four-year research collaboration between the Development Planning Unit (DPU), the International Water Management Institute (IWMI), People's Dialogue, and the Ghana Federation of the Urban Poor, this paper examines the trajectories of female and male farmers working under different and rapidly changing land tenure systems across the Accra-Ashaiman corridor in the Greater Accra Metropolitan Area, Ghana. It argues that urban agriculture can be interpreted not merely as gardening for beautification, subsistence, or therapy, but as a means through which marginalized groups actively claim spaces of daily sociability and political voice in the city.

Michiel Korthals · Wageningen Academic Publishers eBooks · Global

A conceptual essay (Wageningen Academic Publishers, 2013) contrasts the "productionist paradigm" in agriculture—criticized for reducing biodiversity, increasing erosion, harming animal welfare, depleting resources and widening rich-poor gaps despite feeding the world—with an "agrosystem" approach rooted in local farming practices, including variants such as agrarianism (farmer-led) and urban gardening (consumer-led). The paper proposes a revised, pluralist agrosystem framework built on negotiation and cooperation between farmers and consumers, redefining justice as fair recognition of diverse farming and food styles rather than fair distribution of outputs alone.

Xuejun Chen · Ziran zaihai xuebao · Global

Introducing disaster-chain theory for mine ecological environments, this paper classifies the secondary ecological-environment destruction chains originating from ground collapse — affecting land, climate, water and artificial ecological environments — into five types, and further divides their interaction mechanisms into seven kinds across four classes. At the Siding lead-zinc mine, 280 collapse pits were brought under control based on ecological restoration and reorganized into landscape ecological function areas comprising urban agriculture and economic forest zones, restoring farmland and 8.47 hectares of forest land. The results indicate the proposed disaster-chain analysis is feasible and could offer a new approach for controlling ground collapse in mining areas.

Ruth Stewart, Marcel Korth, Laurenz Langer, Shannon Rafferty, Natalie Rebelo Da Silva, Carina van Rooyen · Environmental Evidence · Global

This is a systematic review protocol — not a completed review — that sets out methods for identifying, appraising and synthesizing evidence on how urban agriculture programs affect food security and nutrition in low- and middle-income countries. It notes urban agriculture is widely promoted as providing the urban poor with food and income while improving the urban environment, but also carries potential disadvantages: use of wastewater can contaminate produce, intensive irrigation can spread malaria and water-borne disease and strain limited water supplies, and soil erosion and intensive fertilizer/pesticide use can pose health risks and environmental damage. Despite the current policy drive to promote urban agriculture, the paper states that the evidence base for its benefits and harms is not well understood. As a protocol, it reports planned search, screening, bias-appraisal and synthesis methods rather than results.

Forrest M. · Studies in the History of Gardens & Designed Landscapes · Ireland

This historical study documents the government-sponsored urban food production schemes introduced in Ireland between 1917 and 1923 in response to World War I food shortages, tracing how allotment promotion policies were administered by the Department of Agriculture and Technical Instruction and the Local Government Board.

Catherine Brinkley · Journal of Planning Literature · Global

This article reviewed literature from various fields to evaluate services provided by farms to urban areas. It analyzed mission statements of 130 land trusts, finding a preference for parcels offering ecosystem services, wildlife habitat, and agricultural productivity. A literature review revealed that the market value of farmland services varies from -$37,541 to $124,000 per acre, depending on analysis method and farm location.