Research & reports

Bianca Jacqueline Silva · · Brazil

This study describes a project for implementing a community garden at the Itabira campus of the Federal University of Itajubá. The project began with dialogue among campus workers and aims to foster greater involvement with the university community and local population. The garden is planned as a space for observation, cultivation, and leisure, potentially contributing to education and activities on ecology, environmental education, and integrated management of solid and organic waste, with positive impacts on the local environment and participants' health.

Nikhil Villani, Jack Stambaugh · ScholarWorks@UMassAmherst (University of Massachusetts Amherst) · United States

The UMass Carbon Farming Initiative (CFI) at the Agricultural Learning Center (ALC) involves Stockbridge School of Agriculture students and faculty researching and practicing regenerative food production. Initiated in Spring 2018, students designed and installed a chestnut-sheep silvopasture on a two-acre site. The first season involved starting a chestnut nursery, planting chestnuts, and rotationally grazing six sheep between rows.

Bruce G. Ferguson, Helda Morales, Kimberly Chung, Ronald Nigh · Agroecology and Sustainable Food Systems · Mexico

A case study of the LabVida school gardens program in Chiapas, Mexico, explored the potential and limitations of scaling agroecology through formal education. Educators gained an appreciation for agroecology and learned practices, though their understanding of agroecological principles and scientific processes remained limited. The program's greatest impact was on educators' eating habits and their perception of the value of local knowledge. The study demonstrates that garden and food-system work can leverage institutional resources to improve educational outcomes, including agroecological literacy.

Martin Jayo, Eduardo de Lima Caldas · kult-ur revista interdisciplinària sobre la cultura de la ciutat · Brazil (São Paulo)

A study in São Paulo, Brazil, examined recent forms of appropriation of the urban agriculture agenda, using a historical analysis of urban agriculture practices by Caldas and Jayo (2019). It was observed that traditional urban agriculture discourses have been captured by new actors, including parts of the public sector opportunistically appropriating the theme and the real estate market promoting an imitation of urban agriculture as a marketing tool.

August John Hoffman, Jordan Seitz, Anthonie Collins, Rich Downs · Journal of Prevention & Intervention in the Community · United States

This study describes the experiences of two community psychology students participating in "green" volunteer sustainable programs. One student worked with young men in a youth detention facility maintaining a vegetable garden, while another organized a community apple harvest in Wyoming, MN. Participants were interviewed about their subjective experiences and how these programs improved understanding of diverse cultures and the value of outdoor "green" voluntary programs.

Matheus Martins Mendes, André Victor Sales Passos, Carol Rebouças da Silva · · Brazil

This internship experience, guided by popular extension university principles, focused on knowledge exchange between scientific and popular communities in the San Francisco settlement, Jose de Freitas, Piaui, Brazil. A partnership between the Federal Rural University of the Semiarid Region, REAPI, and local farmers led to the implementation of a women-maintained community garden and the recovery of four springs. Agroecological activities also highlighted the role of women farmers in agroecological transition.

André Ruoppolo Biazoti, André Ruoppolo Biazoti · LA Referencia (Red Federada de Repositorios Institucionales de Publicaciones Científicas) · Brazil (São Paulo)

This paper analyzes the mutirão (collective work) practices established in some community gardens in São Paulo city. Mutirão is observed as a practice with an inherent political and insurgent character that promotes not only food production but also shared management of public spaces, community building, and the production of the common as a political principle of self-governance.

A Noussia · Research Open (London South Bank University) · Brazil

This paper discusses urban agriculture on city peripheries within a scenario of urban expansion, focusing on the Guaratiba neighborhood in Rio de Janeiro. It argues that the city's urban expansion process does not invest in the inclusion of urban agriculture activities within the area's socio-environmental dynamics.

Fábia Massarani, Marta Citelli, Daniela Silva Canella, Josely Correa Koury · PeerJ · Brazil (Rio de Janeiro)

This pilot study evaluated the eating habits of 83 adolescent athletes in an experimental school in Rio de Janeiro from 2013 to 2016. Following the implementation of a school garden, experimental kitchen activities, and health promotion classes, the frequency of raw salad and fruit consumption increased, suggesting that integrated healthy eating promotion programs may improve eating habits.

Franklin Wagner, Lindsey Payne · Purdue Journal of Service-Learning and International Engagement · United States (Lafayette)

In summer 2016, Purdue University researchers collaborated with Lafayette's GrowLocal Urban Gardens Network in Lafayette, Indiana, to conduct a baseline analysis of current community gardening initiatives. Using qualitative and quantitative data collection methods, they identified motivations and barriers to participation through stakeholder interviews and focus groups. The study indicated that urban gardens as community spaces may serve a greater purpose than providing fresh food, and its results informed a planning document for GrowLocal with strategic recommendations for governance, communication, event integration, and collaborative grants.

Karla L. Hanson, Leah C. Volpe, Jane Kolodinsky, Grace Hwang, Weiwei Wang, Stephanie Jilcott Pitts, Marilyn Sitaker, Alice S. Ammerman, Rebecca A. Seguin‐Fowler · Nutrients · United States

A cross-sectional study in August 2017 surveyed cost-offset Community Supported Agriculture (CO-CSA) applicants (purchasers n=46, non-purchasers n=18) and a comparison sample (n=105) of low-income adults with children. CO-CSA applicants reported better knowledge, self-efficacy, home habits, and diet than the comparison sample. Among applicants, purchasers and non-purchasers had equivalent knowledge, attitudes, and beliefs, but children in purchaser households consumed significantly more fruits and vegetables (4.14 vs. 1.83 cups, p = 0.001).

Candis M. Hunter, Dana Williamson, Melanie Pearson, Eri Saikawa, Matthew O. Gribble, Michelle C. Kegler · Local Environment · United States (Atlanta)

This study used five focus groups with Atlanta community garden leaders to investigate perspectives on composting, hygiene, and mulching, which are practices to reduce exposure to soil contaminants. Gardeners cited a need for more funding, volunteers, and training. A primary barrier to composting and mulching was concern about contamination of source materials, and participants did not directly link these practices to reducing soil contaminant exposure. Hygiene challenges included concerns about beneficial bacteria, inadequate water access, and limited supplies.

Carl Zulauf · EСONOMY FINANСES MANAGEMENT Topical issues of science and practical activity · United States

The Agriculture Improvement Act of 2018, the latest US farm bill, authorized programmatic changes without major spending realignment across its 12 titles. Commodity assistance payments are now more closely tied to market conditions, and commitment to private-public partnerships for environmental issues increased. US land conservation programs are evolving into a pyramid policy approach, and mandatory funding for research, extension, and agricultural export programs saw significant increases. Issues addressed across multiple titles include urban agriculture, organic production, and assistance for various farmer groups.

Joeli Silva de Souza, Ryzia de Cássia Vieira Cardoso, Lídice Almeida Arlego PARAGUASSÚ, Sidione Ferreira dos Santos · Revista de Nutrição · Brazil (Salvador-Bahia)

A cross-sectional exploratory study in Salvador-Bahia characterized community gardens, with five out of seven gardens participating and data collected from 13 horticulturists. 80.0% of gardens lacked land legalization, 100.0% operated without technical support, and 60.0% had no social organization. Major difficulties included lack of funding, volunteers, and water use restrictions, indicating insufficient policies limited technical support and financing.

Daniel Imhoff, Christina Badaracoo · Island Press/Center for Resource Economics eBooks · United States

This piece discusses the growth of the local food movement in the United States, describing consumers increasingly seeking organically grown fruits and vegetables and pasture-raised meat, eggs, and dairy, and using their food spending to support local economies, family farmers, and animal-welfare standards. It states that farmers markets and community gardens are becoming dynamic social hubs in urban areas and are pushing municipalities to change laws to allow more urban farming.

Casey Y. Myers · · United States

This chapter uses a narrative and visual retelling of a "failed" community-based environmental action project to explore how posthuman understandings might reorder how environmental justice materializes with and for children. It examines how an arts organization, a children's theater group, a community activist group, a historical preservation nonprofit, and a city council aligned around two sites — a very old house and an abandoned urban lot turned community garden. Drawing on Morton's concept of the hyperobject, the author examines unseen and unnamable more-than-human forces that continued to exert agency after human narratives "won" or "lost."

Rudy Dunlap, Justin Harmon, Bradley H. Camp · Annals of Leisure Research · United States

An ethnographic study of volunteer participation in an urban farm in Austin, Texas, United States, in which researchers spent three years documenting participants' activities through participant observation and interviewing. Guided by the concept of "civil leisure," the study analyzed voluntary participation as a leisure practice oriented toward civic issues, finding that participation functioned as a means of (1) fostering self-reliance through peer education, (2) establishing and strengthening place-based social networks, and (3) addressing civic concerns related to infrastructure and food security. These findings are interpreted through Zygmunt Bauman's concepts of liquid modernity and liquid fear, and the study offers recommendations for how municipalities might cultivate residents' civic impulses through urban agriculture.

Ellis Cose · · United States (New York City)

This descriptive piece discusses U.S. community energy initiatives as expressions of local self-determination, citing the Banana Kelly Community Improvement Association in New York's South Bronx and the Bronx Frontier Development Corporation, founded by a community activist grandmother, which began by converting vacant lots into community gardens; it also cites the Washington-based Center for Renewable Resources' catalogue of roughly 1,800 community energy projects, supported in part by the Community Services Administration and private foundations.

Sarah Lovell · · United States

This record is a dataset description accompanying a PLOS ONE manuscript by Bennett and Lovell (2019) on landscape and local site variables and pollinators in urban agricultural sites; the data consist of the percentage of each bee pollinator group recorded in bee bowls and through direct observation.

Mónica D. Ramírez‐Andreotta, Abigail Tapper, Diamond Clough, Jennifer S. Carrera, Shana Sandhaus · International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health · United States

Through semi-structured interviews with 17 community gardeners in the Boston area, this study characterized gardeners' intrinsic and extrinsic motivations, their perceptions of soil quality and environmental responsibility, awareness of past land use, and gardening behavior. Gardeners reported knowledge of their garden's historical past and concerns about soil quality, theft, trash maintenance, animal waste, and produce loss to foraging animals. The findings are reported as directly informing environmental health exposure assessment by documenting gardening duration, activities that can lead to incidental soil ingestion, and consumption patterns of locally grown produce.

Meghan L. Avolio, Diane E. Pataki, G. Darrel Jenerette, Stéphanie Pincetl, Lorraine Weller Clarke, Jeannine Cavender‐Bares, Thomas W. Gillespie, Sarah E. Hobbie, Kelli L. Larson, Heather R. McCarthy, Tara L. E. Trammell · Plants People Planet · United States (California)

Several datasets on urban biodiversity in Los Angeles, California, were synthesized covering urban trees, residential yards, community gardens, nursery plant availability and resident attitudes toward plant attributes. Cultivated plant diversity was found to differ drastically from remnant natural areas, with more than double the number of plant species, a higher share of exotic ornamental species, and turnover in functional trait distributions; most sampled tree species were available for sale in local nurseries, and resident plant-trait preferences correlated with the composition of the plant community.

Renate M. Winkels, Rick Artrip, Maegan Tupinio, Susan Veldheer, Smita Dandekar, Daniel R. George · Journal of Adolescent and Young Adult Oncology · United States

The feasibility of a mentored gardening intervention for adolescent and young adult (AYA) cancer survivors in a hospital-based community garden was evaluated as a way to improve diet and physical activity. Over the 2018 growing season, AYA cancer survivors tended a garden plot under the mentorship of an experienced (master) gardener and were successful in planting and harvesting vegetables in partnership with their mentors, with qualitative data used to assess challenges, facilitators, and areas for future programmatic improvement and replication.

Hannah Furniss, Amos Darnell, Timothy A. Brown · Murray State's Digital Commons (Murray State University) · United States

A study on urban soils in Calloway County, Kentucky, aimed at determining the differences between urban soils and traditional agricultural fields to assess the viability of urban agriculture as a food source and whether urban agriculture systems could be modeled for broader application. Using a no-till soybean field as a conventional-agriculture control, the researchers compared a developed urban garden (growing food and other plants) and a managed residential turf lawn, taking 36 disturbed and undisturbed soil samples in triplicate from depths of 0-7.5 cm and 7.5-15 cm, measuring organic matter, water holding capacity, field capacity, bulk density, porosity, and pH. As of the abstract, results were stated to be presented on a poster and no specific figures were given.

Mariana Berlanga, Christine G. Bowden, Tylar Campbell, Eva Wang, Zou, Joe · cIRcle (University of British Columbia) · Canada

A report on a biodiversity installation created by the University Neighbourhoods Association (UNA) and the Land and Food Systems 450 class at Hawthorn Community Garden along Main Mall Greenway at the University of British Columbia (UBC), Canada, aimed at engaging the community with biodiversity and food. Four data collection methods were used: a focus group, an online survey, interviews, and secondary sources. Community members wanted the installation to prioritize enhancing biodiversity and educating children, and showed equal preference between two concept designs—one emphasizing visual appeal, the other information. Expert interviews and secondary sources indicated a successful mason-bee installation should be east-facing with access to food, water and clay, and requires active community engagement.

Athena K. Ramos, Natalia Trinidad, Sonja Bickford, Nate Bickford, Julia Torquati, Maria Mushi · Collaborations A Journal of Community-Based Research and Practice · United States

A study conducted a bilingual online survey to gauge public support for a planned community garden in South Omaha, Nebraska, and to prioritize messaging strategies about its potential benefits. Assessing interest, perceived benefits, purposes, and desired co-located functions, the study identified the value of developing local data, the importance of an asset-based framework, the need to understand community perceptions of potential benefits, the challenge of balancing community research efforts, and the need for partnerships to expand a project's reach.