Research & reports

Edmond P. Freo · Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research) · Philippines (Quezon City)

This study in Batasan Hills, Quezon City, Philippines, assessed the feasibility of an integrated Food-to-Soil-to-Food innovation model using a quantitative approach with 85 household residents. Respondents showed very high awareness of food waste segregation, composting, and urban gardening, and a general willingness to participate, though with some hesitation regarding consistent daily segregation. While a significant positive relationship between awareness and innovation acceptability was found, critical structural barriers included lack of tools, limited community support, and urban space constraints. The study concludes that transforming urban food waste into a circular production system is highly feasible with institutional and logistical support.

Giovane Sampaio dos Santos, Yuri César Miranda Soares, Guilherme Alves Barroso Araújo, Lorena Oliveira Pereira, Daniel Viana Ferreira, Mariana Aragão Machado Santos Neves, Vanilson Furtado Pereira, Sandra Regina Cardoso Vitorino · Revista Tópicos. · Global

This integrative literature review analyzed recent scientific evidence on community gardens as a tool for promoting basic health, focusing on articles published in Portuguese over the last five years. The review found that community gardens offer benefits related to physical and mental health, food security, strengthened social relations, environmental preservation, income generation, and urban space revitalization.

Sunil Babu Shrestha · NCWA Annual Journal · Nepal

This article discusses critical urban issues in Nepal, including climate change impacts, informal settlements, and infrastructure deficiency, based on a review of secondary data. With over 66% of its population in urban municipalities, Nepal faces challenges in creating sustainable cities and requires integrated urban planning. The article suggests that Nepal can address these issues by learning from Japan's city policies and practices, such as comprehensive land-use planning, community participation, disaster resilience, and the promotion of green spaces and urban agriculture.

Theresia Alviani Sum · ThufuLA Jurnal Inovasi Pendidikan Guru Raudhatul Athfal · Global

This qualitative case study, gathering data from educators at ten institutions over three months (January–March 2024), examined the implementation of the scientific approach in early childhood education under resource constraints. Findings indicate that while teachers have a conceptual grasp of the scientific approach, enactment is inconsistent, and institutions lack dedicated laboratories, leveraging natural settings like school gardens instead. Curricular goals are not consistently realized in practice, and budget and time limitations restrict experimentation and professional development.

Ines Sebai, G. Berron Cadenas, C. Furgal, A. Argumedo, T. Delormier · Current Developments in Nutrition · Global

This scoping review explores Indigenous food sovereignty (IFS) as a decolonizing framework grounded in Indigenous cultural, spiritual, and ecological values. By synthesizing existing literature, the review identifies core IFS principles such as community governance, revitalization of traditional practices, and respectful environmental relationships. Examples like community gardens and traditional hunting illustrate how Indigenous communities adapt these principles to foster cultural renewal and sustainability. The findings emphasize the need for policy advocacy and support for Indigenous rights, including land restoration and protection of traditional knowledge.

Isabela Thomas Mkude · TANZANIA JOURNAL OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY · Tanzania (Dar es Salaam)

In Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, the utilization of faecal sludge derived compost (FSDC) by urban farmers remains limited due to farmers' prejudice and hesitance. This study investigated factors influencing FSDC acceptance through a cross-sectional survey of 76 urban farmers. Results indicated that garden location in communal areas, income generation as the primary farming purpose, and accessibility of soil inputs were significantly associated with FSDC acceptance. Farmers' awareness and experience also played important roles.

Manoel Hélio Sousa Santos, Bruno Matos de Farias · RCMOS - Revista Científica Multidisciplinar O Saber · Global

This systematic qualitative literature review, following the PRISMA 2020 protocol, analyzed 20 documents to understand how recent academic production articulates education, work, and sustainability within Youth and Adult Education (EJA), focusing on school gardens. The literature recognizes gardens as a social technology that integrates ecological knowledge, cooperative practices, autonomy-building, and income generation, especially in socioeconomically vulnerable contexts. Gardens are concluded to be a powerful pedagogical device for EJA, contributing to critical environmental education, popular economy, and emancipatory practices.

Hamed Faghiri, Zulkornain Yusop, Zainal Abidin Mohamed · IOP Conference Series Earth and Environmental Science · Malaysia

This systematic review analyzed 46 studies published between 2010 and 2025 to assess the role of urban farming in enhancing food security in Malaysia. Findings indicate that urban farming positively impacts food accessibility, availability, and affordability, while also promoting environmental sustainability and socio-economic inclusion. However, challenges such as limited space, regulatory hurdles, and public awareness gaps hinder its widespread adoption.

Juliana Ju Yun Hoo, Shumetha Kaur Sidhu, Tan Kok Wei · PLoS ONE · Malaysia

A study in Malaysia assessed the perceived restorativeness of tropical urban green spaces (UGSs) using 120 environmental stimuli and 87 participants. Nature and mixed urban-nature scenes were generally rated as more restorative than urban scenes. In the visual-only modality, mixed urban-nature scenes were perceived as more restorative than nature scenes, but no significant differences were found in audio-only and bimodal modalities.

Eric Vukicevich · Urban Ecosystems · Global

This paper describes a class-based soil testing project where undergraduate students partner with local community gardeners to investigate urban soil health. The project involves students examining soil properties such as pH, organic matter, nutrients, and toxic elements, and ensuring crop safety. Students develop project plans, interpret data, and make recommendations for soil management.

ROAN BAGAOISAN · Divine Word International Journal of Management and Humanities (DWIJMH) (ISSN 2980-4817) · Global

A study investigated school garden programs in elementary schools, exploring the experiences of fifteen teachers, staff, and students using a descriptive phenomenological approach and open-ended questionnaires. It found benefits in academic learning, environmental awareness, health, and social development, but also identified challenges including resource constraints, time limitations, garden maintenance, and stakeholder engagement. These challenges require careful planning, collaboration, and creative solutions.

Deborah Dutta, Miwa Aoki Takeuchi · Journal of Intercultural Studies · Global

This paper explores immigrant growers' sense of belonging at a community urban farm, moving beyond human-centered integration models. Using ethnographic and participatory methods, it highlights how growers' relationships with crops demonstrate agency and socio-ecological adaptations, arguing that belonging emerges through placemaking relationships with the land and the multispecies community.

Supriya Dadaso Dighe · Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research) · New Zealand

This study provides an eco-critical analysis of Eleanor Catton’s novel "Birnam Wood," exploring the entanglement of environmental activism, capitalist expansion, and identity formation. While the novel depicts conflicts between activist collectivism and corporate techno-capitalism through guerrilla gardening and land commodification, the study argues that its allegorical structure and reliance on familiar ideological binaries may constrain its capacity to generate radically new ecological insight. The research ultimately raises questions about the limits of literary representation in envisioning transformative environmental futures.

Devotha B. Mosha · East African Journal of Agriculture and Biotechnology · Tanzania

A study of Tanzania combining a systematic literature review with a comparative analysis of rural and urban food-production systems, examining how patriarchal land tenure, unpaid care work, and insecure urban farming arrangements restrict women's participation in higher-value agricultural production. The findings show that technical support alone is insufficient unless paired with structural reforms strengthening women's land rights, labour-saving technologies, and changes to unequal gender norms. Based on this, the study proposes a Gender-Transformative Approach linking legal reform, institutional support, technological innovation, and community-level change.

Paul Shing-fong Chan, Joseph Kawuki, Mythily Subramaniam, Elizabeth Broadbent, Esther Yuet Ying Lau, Kelvin Fai Hong Lui · Education Sciences · Global

This systematic review, pre-registered with PROSPERO (CRD420251250712) and conducted following PRISMA guidelines, synthesized global evidence on the effects of horticulture-based interventions (HBIs) on student well-being. It searched PubMed, Web of Science, MEDLINE, EMBASE, and APA PsycInfo from inception to June 30, 2025, and included 15 studies (more than 2,000 students aged 5-18) from South Korea (8), Taiwan (3), Mainland China (1), Hong Kong (1), Italy (1), and the United States (1). Results showed HBIs have the potential to enhance emotional/psychological well-being (e.g., stress reduction, mood improvement), social well-being (e.g., peer relations, social skills), cognitive and educational benefits (e.g., attention, academic attitudes), and physical and overall health benefits (e.g., physical activity, quality of life). The review states that future randomized controlled trials with diverse populations are needed to address limitations such as small sample sizes and geographic bias.

Rana Sukarieh · · Global

This chapter examines two solidarity economy initiatives in Lebanon — Nohye El Ard, a community garden in Saida, South Lebanon, and Dekkan El Mazraa, an experimental solidarity grocery — as case studies of how communities responded to the country's overlapping political, economic and social crises, arguing that this polycrisis has generated new prefigurative initiatives that form communities of resistance.

Fernando Adrihel Sarubbi-Baltazar, Iván López-García, Guillermo López-López, Marbella Sánchez-Soriano · Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems · Global

A conceptual paper on territorial food governance argues that territorial food networks function as governance structures rather than mere exchange channels, sustained day to day by women's labor, knowledge transmission and coordination — work typically classified as informal or subsistence-based and denied political recognition. It contends these networks are structurally low-carbon because of their socio-productive organization rather than any explicit climate strategy, and frames women's role as collective, local governance leadership rather than individual participation.

María José Mayorga Ases, Iveth Carolina Abril Ruiz, Byron Stalin Zamora Flores, Evelyn Gissela Bedón Durán · Dialnet (Universidad de la Rioja) · Global

A mixed-methods study of Ecuadorian secondary education students found moderate entrepreneurial competencies overall, with strengths in collaborative work and responsibility but limitations in initiative and autonomy, and identified regional variation: Quito concentrates 25% of ventures in technology and social enterprise, Guayaquil 22% in commerce and logistics, and Ambato 18% in family and artisanal business. It identified five effective educational innovations — community projects, school gardens, innovation fairs, educational technologies and interdisciplinary projects — while noting a persistent gap between idea generation and execution, and 8% of rural localities developing enterprises with less infrastructure.

Mohammed El-Hajj · Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems · Global

This conceptual paper proposes the Urban Agriculture Digital Twin (UA-DT), a four-layer cyber-physical framework combining IoT sensing, cloud infrastructure and hybrid mechanistic/AI models for real-time monitoring and city-scale food-system simulation, with logical feasibility demonstrated through an illustrative software simulation (Eclipse Ditto, Azure IoT, Python) for a community rooftop garden. The paper cites benchmark ranges — 20–40% water savings, 15–25% fertilizer reduction, up to 30% post-harvest loss reduction, and 3–7 day early-warning lead time — as literature-derived projections that a fully validated UA-DT deployment would be expected to approach, explicitly noting these are not empirical findings of this study.

Tomoki Fujii, Christoph Waibel, Xinyi Du, Zhongming Shi · CABI climate change series. · Global

A book chapter reviewing Singapore's changing urban agriculture landscape and recent progress toward its "30-by-30" goal of 30% food self-sufficiency by 2030, discussing land constraints, high production costs, and resource limitations. It examines building-integrated agriculture (BIA)—using rooftops, façades and balconies for food production—as a potential way to raise self-sufficiency through simulation, but concludes that practical issues including regulatory concerns and infrastructure limitations must be addressed before BIA can be implemented at scale.

Yuvaraja Boovanahalli Kariyappagowda, Khateeja Ambareen, S P Vijaya Vardan Reddy, Chethan Bommalingaiahanapalya Krishnamurthy, Madhu Puttegowda · Journal of Asian Scientific Research · Global

This study developed a machine learning-based leaf-disease detection system to help rooftop gardeners and small-scale growers, aiming to address plant-disease spread and delayed diagnosis that leads many gardeners to abandon increasingly popular rooftop gardening in space-limited urban areas. Using image segmentation as a preprocessing step followed by a classification model, and trained and tested on leaf images from five commonly cultivated species -- guava, jamun, lemon, mango and pomegranate -- the system achieved an overall accuracy of 1.00, with lemon and mango disease classification reaching accuracies of 0.995 and 0.991 respectively and F1-scores exceeding 0.88.

Javier Cañarejo-Antamba, Mónica Delgado Yánez, Nieves Anderson, Pamela Quinatoa León, Tatiana Elizabeth Freire Rosero · Eídos · Colombia

A comparative hydrological study, based on extreme-value statistics, of the Caupicho ravine south of Quito, an urban-agricultural transition zone. The most significant flood events correspond to 50-100 year return periods, but historical records show that the Lucha de los Pobres Baja neighborhood experiences flooding roughly every five years, causing economic losses and undermining social resilience. Based on vulnerability mapping and scenario modeling, the study identifies earthen ponds reinforced with totora (Schoenoplectus californicus) as biomaterial as a key input for flood-risk management and territorial planning, proposing the delimitation of evacuation and rescue areas.

Santanu Maiti, 2S. Aanand, 3Rajalakshmi Kalaivanan, 4V. Mahendra Varman, · Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research) · Global

A technical guide describing wicking bed aquaponics, a resource-efficient, home-scale food production system that combines aquaculture with soilless plant cultivation. Fish waste is biologically converted into nutrients for plants, while the wicking bed functions as a sub-irrigation unit that uses capillary action to move water from a reservoir to the plant root zone, providing consistent moisture while minimizing evaporation loss.

Brenda B. Lin, Shalene Jha, Heidi Liere, Stacy M. Philpott · Frontiers in Sustainable Cities · Global

Drawing on a long-term, multidisciplinary research program conducted since 2013 on urban community gardens in the California Central Coast, this paper uses that program as a lens to explore how community gardens may function as a form of green infrastructure within increasingly compact urban development, while grounded in a specific regional context.

Phạm Trung Kiên, Liliane Jean-Soro, Huong Le Thi Thu, Bernard De-Gouvello, Béatrice Bechet · Earth Environmental Sustainability · Global

Arguing that existing "Water-Energy-Food" nexus thinking fails to capture the complexity of urban nature-based solutions such as urban gardens, this perspective paper proposes a "Food-Water-Soil (FWS) nexus" framework analyzed through the dual lens of ecosystem services (ES) and ecosystem disservices (EDS), which arise together with ES rather than as mere byproducts. It positions ES and EDS as the core mediating functions that define a system's potential and limits, and conceptualizes soil as a "living infrastructure" whose management-driven dynamic properties govern the trade-offs and synergies between food production and water dynamics.