Research & reports

Virginia L. J. Bolshakova, John Gieng, C. Sheena Sidhu, Mary Vollinger, Lorena Gimeno, Jessica Guild · Journal of Youth Development · United States (California)

The "Healthy Living Ambassador" school garden program in low-income communities integrated resources from schools, community programs, and the University of California Cooperative Extension. This program utilized culturally competent teenagers as teachers to educate elementary school youth on healthy living. The successes and challenges of the program development were discussed, revealing that public schools often lack the resources and support to establish sustainable garden-based programming.

Lucas Chan, Lily Han, Lia Monteferrante, Ryah Rondolo · cIRcle (University of British Columbia) · Canada

The UBC Agronomy Garden was the subject of a research project exploring strategies to increase community engagement. The research team conducted a literature review, in-person interviews, and an online survey to investigate ways to make the garden more attractive. Findings indicated that installing multilingual, informative, and welcoming signage is key to increasing engagement, with 63% of students preferring handmade, creative, simple, and colorful welcoming signs.

R John Little · OpenSIUC (Southern Illinois University Carbondale) · United States

A research study evaluated fertility requirements for 'Sweet Hungarian' Peppers and 'Savor' Charentais Melons grown in a three-inch extensive green roof medium on the Southern Illinois University campus. Six treatments were applied to peppers and four treatments to melons, each replicated three times. This study contributes to optimizing appropriate fertility treatments for green roof agriculture.

Kelly Gordon, Adrianne Lickers Xavier, Hannah Tait Neufeld · Canadian Food Studies / La Revue canadienne des études sur l alimentation · Canada

The Healthy Roots initiative in the Six Nations community in southern Ontario, Canada, aimed to promote traditional food consumption among First Nation families facing food insecurity. A small number of participants who consumed only locally available foods reported improved blood glucose control, positive weight changes, and increased traditional food knowledge. The program also fostered new relationships and partnerships, including with the community organization Our Sustenance, to further community-based initiatives like developing a Haudenosaunee Food Guide.

Edward M. Orlowski, Julia Jovanovic · · Canada

Master of Architecture student Julia Jovanovic facilitated a participatory design process for the redesign of the Ten Friends Diner in Windsor, Ontario, which supports individuals recovering from mental illness. This process empowered the diner's staff to analyze needs and propose design solutions. The completed project supported the community partner's goal of staff empowerment and inspired additional initiatives, including a community garden.

Lauren Boone, Lizz Ultee, Ed Waisanen, Joshua Newell, Joshua A. Thorne, Rebecca Hardin · Case Studies in the Environment · United States

This article analyzes a Michigan Sustainability Case (MSC) on urban farming in Detroit, developed by the University of Michigan School for Environment and Sustainability (SEAS). This MSC embodies principles of cocreation, integration into multiple curricula, and digital innovation for enhanced experiential learning, having been collaboratively produced, deployed, and iteratively improved in successive SEAS classrooms. It incorporated field learning in Detroit, providing strong user experiences for students, faculty, and practitioners.

Irma Xánath Bautista-Villalobos, Eduardo Garcı́a-Frapolli, Alba Hernández · Cadernos de Agroecologia · Mexico

This technical experience presents the Participatory Action research process for the Enraizando Espacios urban community garden, established in 2016 in Mexico City's Guerrero neighborhood. The study aimed to recognize the project's impact after one year, resulting in a collective memory and establishing bases for useful sustainability indicators. Key lessons learned include the importance of solidarity and cooperation for the project's success and its transformative power.

Ashlee Cromer, Kelsey Hall, Tyson J. Sorensen, David Francis, Joshua Dallin · Digital Commons - USU (Utah State University) · United States (Utah)

This study aimed to describe agricultural education teachers' perceptions of urban and non-traditional agriculture curriculum and Supervised Agricultural Experiences (SAEs) in Utah. It addresses a gap in understanding teachers' preparedness to implement curriculum and career information related to emerging agricultural issues like urban agriculture. Previous research indicates a need for professional development in these areas for agricultural education teachers.

Sabine O’Hara, Dwane Jones, Harris B. Trobman · Advances in higher education and professional development book series · United States

The Landgrant College of the University of the District of Columbia operates urban food hubs as the only exclusively urban land-grant university in the United States. These hubs utilize bio-intensive hydroponic and aquaponic systems and green roofs to maximize productivity in small urban spaces, and kitchens serve as business incubators and training facilities. They also promote waste and water reuse through composting, rainwater capture, and green infrastructure, offering training, wellness, and leadership opportunities to UDC students and DC residents.

M. Beth Schlemper, Brinda Athreya, Kevin Czajkowski, Victoria C. Stewart, Sujata Shetty · Journal of Geography · United States

A project introduced students in grades 7 through 12 to spatial thinking and geospatial technologies within the context of community challenges. A mix of inquiry levels, from teacher- to student-guided, was used through a citizen mapping group activity. Qualitative methods evaluated students' knowledge, showing that their awareness of their community, spatial thinking, and geospatial technologies increased as a result of participation.

Kathryn Engle · UKnowledge (University of Kentucky) · United States (Kentucky)

This project explores the agricultural heritage and social landscape of the Stinking Creek community in Knox County, Kentucky, focusing on the Lend-A-Hand Center Grow Appalachia Gardening Program. Through participatory research, it examines the diverse economy and potential for post-coal futures in central Appalachia. The program developed agricultural initiatives, re-localized food systems via home and community gardens, and established a farmers' market over three years.

Ednaldo Michellon, Jaqueline da Silva Rosa, André Coelho Braga, Victor de Canini Cezar, Tiago Ribeiro da Costa, Wellington Fernandes Pereira · Cadernos de Agroecologia · Brazil (Maringá)

The REDIfeira project, part of the University Extension Program in Parana, Brazil, aims to boost the production and commercialization of family agriculture products through monitoring and technical assistance. This work presents the case of the FEPORg – Maringa Organic Products Fair and Region, which was established through community initiative with support from Maringa City Hall, the REDIfeira project, CerAUP, and PPCPO.

Natalia Caroline de Souza Aguiar, Marcelo Alves Ramos, Múcio Luiz Banja Fernandes · Asian Journal of Applied Sciences · Brazil

This study analyzed the views of thirteen teachers in a public school in northeastern Brazil regarding the importance and use of a medicinal garden planted in 2014. Interviews revealed a lack of interest among teachers in using the school garden, despite most recognizing its importance as a didactic resource. The findings suggest that intervention projects in schools require teachers to be prepared for their use, highlighting the need for a teacher training plan.

Shiuhhuah Serena Chou · ISLE Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment · United States

Urban foraging reemerged at the turn of the twenty-first century as a mode of urban food production, leading to a diverse body of literature including field guides and personal accounts. This literature suggests that the resurgence of urban foraging, as seen in works like Michael Pollan's The Omnivore's Dilemma (2006) and Tama Matsuoka Wong's Foraged Flavor (2012), may be more than a fad. The practice of finding, harvesting, and consuming edible wild plants challenges the idea of American cities as food deserts, presenting urban spaces as sites of cultural and environmental sustainability.

Cirlene Jeane Santos e Santos · · Brazil (Maceió)

This article describes didactic foundations and field activities in the Agrarian Geography discipline at the Federal University of Alagoas, Brazil, aimed at enhancing student learning. Students engaged with urban agriculture and animal husbandry in Maceió/AL, finding that direct interaction with reality facilitated meaningful learning beyond classroom content. The results indicated that students integrated various course contents to understand the relationships in these spaces.

Matthew T. Moore, Brent Clothier, Alexandra Toland · · United States

A dialogue chapter built from an October 2013 interview with Matthew Moore conducted by Alexandra R. Toland, with additional reflections from soil scientist Brent Clothier. Since the interview, the digital farm collective Moore describes has evolved into a farm-to-table hospitality business partnering with city parks, creating one- to two-acre urban farming education centers in and around Phoenix, Arizona, funded by restaurants that also deliver affordably priced meals to local communities. Across both Moore's and Clothier's contributions, the central question is one of scale: how to "scale up" food production under the pressures of climate change and urbanization while building systems of value that honor the soil's services rather than its speculative yield.

Haley Stanko, Lindsay Naylor · Local Environment · United States

A paper examining Philadelphia's 2008 prioritisation of healthy food access as part of sustainable development, in a city where almost 25% of the population is considered food insecure, prompting government agencies, NGOs, and community leaders to try to increase food access through expanded food production and land access. The paper argues that urban agriculture, gradually incorporated into sustainability narratives over the preceding decade, both provides advocates a platform to inform policymaking and risks stripping away the political and activist origins of the struggle for access to food, land, and green space, contending that this depoliticisation through incorporation into sustainability planning may serve to increase existing inequities in the city. Examining measures enacted under the Philadelphia Greenworks Sustainability Plan at the policymaking level, the paper's preliminary findings suggest a disconnect between urban agriculture advocacy and policymaking, and it states that further work is needed to understand the impacts of formalising urban agriculture in Philadelphia.

Megan M. Gregory, Scott Peters · Journal of Agriculture Food Systems and Community Development · United States

A case study within the Food Dignity community-university research partnership examined a participatory action research (PAR) project on cover crops with community gardeners in Brooklyn, New York. Engaging gardeners in cover crop monitoring strengthened their knowledge of ecological processes such as nitrogen fixation, field days supported leadership development, and sustained in-person support enabled implementation of cover cropping practices; challenges included reconciling community-defined priorities with the constraints of a dissertation project and providing sufficient one-on-one support given limited funding for community-based partners.

K. Michelle Glowa, Monika Egerer, Vicki Jones · Agroecology and Sustainable Food Systems · United States

This case study of the Beach Flats Community Garden in the United States theorizes an "agroecologies of displacement," arguing that farmers are increasingly uprooted through involuntary displacement and that this displacement and dispossession actively reshape agricultural practices in farming communities. The authors argue that food movements, and transformative agroecology in particular, cannot be understood without a historical analysis of displacement and dispossession under capitalist land systems — framing land loss and forced relocation, not secure access, as a structuring condition of the garden's agroecology.

Duncan Hilchey · Journal of Agriculture Food Systems and Community Development · United States

This reflective essay recounts the U.S. farm-to-school movement's evolution from a mid-1990s workshop grappling with National School Lunch and Fresh Fruit and Vegetable Program protocols to the present, noting that the National Farm to School Network is now well established with federal and foundation support and that nearly half of U.S. schools purchase at least some local farm products. It traces this as a 20-year progression from the 1970s resurgence of farmers markets and 1980s community supported agriculture, extending now into farm-to-college, farm-to-prison, farm-to-hospital and farm-to-childcare programs.

Emilly Macedo Prado · · Brazil

A quantitative, cross-sectional, descriptive and observational study in a neighborhood of the municipality of Palhoça, Santa Catarina, Brazil, examined how a community garden affected participants' food choices and culinary traditions. Data came from interviews with 37 participating families and the garden association's president, analyzed with descriptive statistics (absolute and relative frequencies) at a 95% confidence interval. The community garden was found to contribute to participants' food choices and the maintenance of their culinary traditions, and this was linked to improved quality of life.

Eduardo Vergara Pérez, Alfredo Viuda López, Israel Acuña Galván · Boletín Científico INVESTIGIUM de la Escuela Superior de Tizayuca · Mexico

This study developed a semi-automatic monitoring and control system for a 4.5 m² community garden in an urban area of Mexico, using a mid-range embedded system to control physical growing variables and communicating wirelessly with a server for highly portable data storage, querying and control via a web page, applied to the organopónico (organic-substrate intensive) cultivation technique. The system proved functional for legume and solanaceous crop species, yielding produce within a time frame comparable to commercial growing methods.

Michelle Rekowski · Digital Commons at Illinois Wesleyan University (Illinois Wesleyan University) · United States

This is a profile of Colleen Connelly, a nineteen-year-old in her third year running the Sunnyside Community Garden in West Bloomington, Illinois. She co-founded the nonprofit as part of an entrepreneurship program at Normal Community High School to provide fresh produce to the community, aims to give residents a space to learn actively about the food they grow toward economic and environmental sustainability, and frames the garden as a food forest that works with the existing landscape rather than against it.

John Diaz, Laura A. Warner, Susan T. Webb · Journal of Agricultural Education · United States

This study used a Delphi approach with a panel of 74 experts to build consensus on outcomes for developing and evaluating school garden programs. Noting that prior evidence on school garden program effects has relied on individual case studies or intervention trials, leaving considerable room for error, it identifies 38 consensus outcomes that agricultural education professionals and other stakeholders can use as a foundation for program development and evaluation.

Takefumi Kurose, Kenichi Yabuki · Toshi keikaku hokokushu/Toshi keikaku houkokushuu · United States (New York)

This study focuses on zoning code revisions in declining post-industrial U.S. cities burdened with vacant houses and lots, analysing the treatment of residential areas with many vacant lots through a case study of the comprehensive zoning revision undertaken by the City of Buffalo, New York, whose population has sharply declined. The city initially proposed a new "urban interim use" designation for residential areas with many vacant lots to promote temporary uses such as urban agriculture and curb disorderly new development, but this designation was dropped from the final plan due to opposition from residents in the affected districts; instead, some vacant-lot-heavy residential areas were rezoned from multi-family-permitting general residential use to single-family use, restricting density and the direction of new development to gently guide land use in areas left surplus by population decline.