Research & reports

Blesilda M. Calub, Leila S. Africa, Bessie M. Burgos · · Global

A chapter on the School-Plus-Home Gardens Project (S+HGP) in the Philippines, which promotes greater parent engagement in home and school gardening to sustain nutritional gains under the Department of Education's nationwide School Garden Program and School-Based Feeding Program (SBFP). At the end of a 3-month feeding period, 62% of severely wasted and 70% of wasted child beneficiaries reached normal nutritional status; however, 9 of 14 surveyed schools had repeat beneficiaries from the previous year's SBFP (36–38%), and 14% had been repeat beneficiaries for three consecutive years, due to lack of food at home during the rest of the year, severe illness, and parents' attitudes and values. Factors contributing to successful parent engagement included regular parent-teacher consultations, a participatory development approach, training, parent-child cooking contests using garden produce, and collaboration with local government units.

Irmane Mze Ali, Mohd Wajdi Mohd Feham, Yahia Siddique, Abdul Rahman Ahmad Dahlan · · Malaysia

As part of Malaysia's "University-of-the-Future" (UotF) concept, this paper designs an approach to improving the wellbeing of low-income (B40) youth by normalizing an urban farming programme and expanding economic opportunity through digital entrepreneurship, using a literature review together with a Business Model Canvas (BMC), a Value Proposition Design Canvas (VPC), and surveys of participants for feedback. It reports using these tools to formulate both an initial and a validated version of the BMC and VPC.

Todd C. Wehner, Rachel P. Naegele, James R. Myers, Narinder P. S. Dhillon, Kevin M. Crosby · CABI eBooks · Asia

This book chapter covers the cultivation and uses of numerous minor cucurbit crops — including Benincasa hispida (wax gourd), Coccinia grandis (ivy gourd), wild Cucumis species, wild Cucurbita species, Luffa species, several Momordica species, Praecitrullus fistulosus, Sechium edule (chayote), Sicana odorifera, Telfairia species, and Trichosanthes species. It states these cucurbits are primarily cultivated by smallholder farmers in Asia and are often grown as part of home, school, and community gardens.

Kim Viborg Andersen, Jakob Ohme, Camilla Bjarnøe, Mats Joe Bordacconi, Erik Albæk, Claes H. de Vreese · · Global

This book chapter examines how participation in local communities varies by generation, finding that local community participation is highest among older generations and lowest among the youngest. Political news exposure has a positive effect on this type of participation, particularly among Baby Boomers, mediated through political interest and efficacy. Citizens engage with their local communities in various ways, including through local organizations such as an urban gardening community or by attending local meetings. Using the authors' Engagement-Participation-Information-Generation (EPIG) model, the chapter tests whether the positive effect of political news exposure on local community political participation is mediated through three dimensions of political engagement — interest, knowledge and efficacy — and concludes that the EPIG model is useful for understanding local political participation.

Yumiko Fujiwara, Kaoru Matsuo, Shigeaki TAKEDA, Hiroyuki KAGA · Proceedings of The City Planning Institute of Japan Kansai Branch · Japan

A literature review and interviews with resident-led edible landscape initiatives in Japan examined the role of edible landscape in regional revitalization. Edible landscape was found to have taken on a comprehensive regional-revitalization role encompassing food security, educational effects, economic effects and community regeneration. Across the process from planting to eating edible plants, the edible theme appeared able to draw in collaboration with public bodies, businesses and resident groups beyond existing local community ties.

Francesca Grazioli, Muhabbat Turdieva, Chris J. Kettle · · Global

A book chapter (2020) discusses how school gardens can engage children in documenting the diversity of socioeconomically important tree species around their school and community, and highlights the role schools can play in ex situ conservation of tree genetic resources through school arboreta, seed orchards, and nurseries. It presents case studies and a proposed framework for incorporating this into school curricula, without reporting quantitative outcomes.

Mirna Meidina, Baroto Tavib Indrojarwo · Jurnal Sains dan Seni ITS · Indonesia

In response to growing interest in urban farming among Indonesian city residents, this design study produced an educational visual guidebook aimed primarily at women aged 20-30 with mid-level income and at least a diploma education who want to start urban farming. The design process involved an experimental drafting and layout study, a depth interview with urban farming practitioner and researcher Dr. Sitawati and a graphic designer, and observation at sites including Eco Green Park Malang. A post-test survey of 45 respondents representing the target audience across two sub-districts assessed preferences for systematics, layout, illustration, hierarchy, and information-delivery efficiency. The result was a 204-page reference book in four chapters covering urban farming basics, garden design, plant care, and miniature garden construction, using color vector illustrations and infographics.

Kyle Richardville · Purdue e-Pubs (Purdue University System) · United States

With Purdue University's campus and much of its surrounding area classified by the USDA as a food desert, this study surveyed graduate students using a voluntary 33-question online Qualtrics survey distributed campus-wide, to identify barriers to purchasing and consuming fresh produce and to participating in local urban agriculture, and to assess how the COVID-19 pandemic affected food access and motivation for healthy eating and community garden engagement. Results show many Purdue graduate students face both individual and structural barriers to accessing fresh fruits and vegetables, with international students particularly vulnerable to structural barriers; lack of access to a personal vehicle was the primary predictor of vulnerability, especially during the pandemic. Students expressed interest in participating in local urban agriculture initiatives but most were unaware such initiatives existed. A second objective of the study tested whether leaf mold compost could improve degraded urban soils.

Elizabeth G. Calamidas, Tara L. Crowell, Laura Engelmann, Heather Watkins-Jones · Health Education Journal · United States

A content analysis of post-grant follow-up reports examined 73 schools in southern New Jersey, USA (Atlantic, Cape May and Ocean Counties) that received edible-school-garden startup funding from AtlantiCare Health System over three academic years, 2014 to 2017. Analyzing responses to 12 open-ended questions, the study documented community partnerships, garden maintenance and harvest outcomes alongside effects on curriculum and policy, changes in participants' knowledge, attitudes and behavior, and areas needing improvement, finding that schools were appreciative of the opportunity and planned to continue their gardens.

Lexi Earl, Pat Thomson · · Global

This chapter explores historical aspects of the current school-gardening movement, showing how gardens were taken up in educational theory by Comenius, Rousseau, Froebel, Pestalozzi, and Montessori, and examining how ideas for children's gardening developed in the late 19th century and how children were viewed as beings to be "cultivated." It discusses how the garden emerged as a further space where children could be civilised -- moulded and shaped into particular kinds of beings -- and analyzes early US school gardens of the 20th century. It analyzes texts produced about and for "children's gardening," focusing on how garden writers sought to encourage gardening and an interest in the natural world.

Lexi Earl, Pat Thomson · · Global

A book chapter examining the discourses encountered in school gardens and how the framing of gardening as "the solution" is entangled in different discursive assemblages. It also attends to the silences of gardening "talk"—what is left out of current conversations about children's gardening—asking what is excluded from a school garden, what goes unsaid in garden spaces, and how this shapes (or fails to shape) a school's identity and its relationships with outsiders and parents. The chapter is a conceptual discussion and does not present empirical findings or data.

Bareng Antolin · Digital Scholarship - UNLV (University of Nevada Reno) · United States

A survey distributed via Farm to School state lead contacts to school garden networks nationwide in the United States collected data on high school-level garden programs, an area with limited prior research compared to elementary and middle school garden studies; 42 respondents completed the survey and were included in the final analysis. Many respondents reported perceiving positive benefits from having a high school garden program, and the study documents current practices, barriers, and implementation and sustainability strategies reported by these programs.

Brian Raison · Journal of Agriculture Food Systems and Community Development · United States

This is a review of "A Garden Experience: Growing Organic," a film about an organic community garden project in Colorado, United States, that centers on a participating gardener's statement, "It's not about the vegetables. It's about community," and is framed as potential inspiration for local food groups, garden clubs or food-and-community events.

Matthew Potteiger · Journal of Agriculture Food Systems and Community Development · United States

A review of The Community Food Forest Handbook by Catherine Bukowski and John Munsell of Virginia Tech, a systematic analysis of 30 community food forest projects — landscapes producing food modeled on forest ecosystem form and function. The review reports that only one of the 30 projects has existed for more than 10 years, and situates the food forest movement, like earlier urban agriculture and CSA efforts, as a grassroots phenomenon that has spread across the country with little coordination among individual projects.

F.O. Okechukwu, CL Ezeonyeche, E.J Nnodim, U.I Nnubia, CJ Abonyi, EC Eze · ResearchSpace (University of Auckland) · Nigeria

A cross-sectional survey investigated teachers' perceptions of early childhood education's role in promoting moral and intellectual virtues among pupils in Nsukka urban, Enugu State, Nigeria, drawing a sample of 176 early childhood education teachers from 42 randomly selected schools out of a population of 876 teachers across 82 public and private primary schools. Data, collected via questionnaire, were analyzed using mean, standard deviation, and Pearson's correlation coefficient. Respondents identified group projects, daily morning assembly, tending the school garden, role-playing, picnics, excursions, and community service among the activities that promote virtues in pupils, citing truthfulness, humility, respect, and patience as commonly promoted moral virtues and courage, curiosity, attentiveness, and thoroughness as intellectual virtues. No significant relationship was found among teachers' years of experience, school ownership, educational qualification, perceptions of virtue-promoting activities, and the extent to which they promoted them. Challenges cited included inadequate supply of learning materials, poor educational funding, inadequate adult-child ratio, poor time management, and lack of parental involvement.

Machida D. · International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 16(8):1389 · Japan

A web-based cross-sectional survey of community-dwelling older adults in Japan examined links between community or home gardening and health-related indicators. Gardening with others was significantly associated with exercise habits, physical activity, vegetable intake and neighborly connections, and with higher subjective happiness and sense of purpose, supporting gardens as a means to counter isolation among the elderly.

国土交通省 都市局 公園緑地・景観課 · 国土交通省（MLIT）報告書 · Japan

A Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism casebook compiled to advance both compact urban structure and the 'coexistence of cities with green and agriculture'. It catalogues urban-farming and green-space initiatives — including resident-participation rooftop gardens, allotments and farming-led town-making by private developers and municipalities — and provides the policy backdrop for developer cases.

Ina Säumel, Suhana E. Reddy, Thomas Wachtel · Sustainability, 11(4), 972 · Global

A foundational paper of the EU EdiCitNet project that positions citizen-led food production (Edible City Solutions) as urban infrastructure generating socio-cultural ecosystem services—social cohesion, education, health—alongside regulating services such as stormwater management and biodiversity. It offers a framework in which participatory productive green space underpins social resilience and sustainable food-system transitions.

Akakpo D. B., Achigan-Dako E. G. · Agronomy · Benin

Interviews with 360 respondents across three southern Benin villages on three traditional leafy vegetables, analyzing how use and knowledge transmission from parents to children vary by generation, gender, and village.

世田谷区 · 世田谷区 農業振興計画 · Japan

Setagaya's ten-year agricultural promotion plan adopted in 2019, setting basic policies and concrete measures for municipal urban agriculture including citizen farms and contact farms using the Urban Farmland Lease Facilitation Act, agriculture-welfare collaboration and sixth-industry support.

横浜市 環境創造局 · 横浜市 都市農業推進計画 · Japan

Yokohama's urban agriculture promotion plan, linked to the Midori Up programme, organising policies and results for publicly supported citizen farming infrastructure including diverse citizen farms, cultivation experience farms, harvest farms and Megumi-no-Sato districts.

練馬区, 東京都都市整備局 · 練馬区 農の風景育成地区計画 · Japan

Nerima's landscape conservation plan for Minami-Oizumi and Takamatsu under Tokyo's Agricultural Landscape Conservation District system, positioning ward allotments, experience farms, farm stands and food-education events as integrated public farmland conservation and revitalisation.

Nordhagen S., Thiam K., Sow S. · Food Security · Senegal (Dakar)

A post-project survey in Dakar found that microgardens were largely abandoned (5% continued use) while poultry activities persisted strongly (75%) due to income-generation potential, suggesting urban nutrition interventions must align with economic incentives to achieve lasting adoption.

Juily Phun, Elise Dang · AAPI Nexus Journal: Policy, Practice, and Community · United States (San Gabriel Valley)

This article focuses on a service-learning program at Cal State LA (Food Justice, the Body, and the Environment in the API Community) that partners with schools across the San Gabriel Valley to build culturally relevant produce gardens for students in a region with a large low-income Asian American population. The essay centers on the partnership process, noting that a lack of procedural transparency within university structures is one of the greatest barriers to community–university partnerships.

· PLOS ONE · Netherlands

An effect and process evaluation of a nine-week school garden program (culminating in a harvest-and-cooking event) on primary schoolchildren's vegetable consumption; well received by teachers and pupils.