Research & reports

Fa-Tai Shieh · Gastronomica The Journal of Food and Culture · United States (New York City)

This article is by Fa-Tai Shieh, director of citywide food procurement for NYC and involved in urban farming projects in New York City. This content is only available via PDF.

Elizabete Cristina Ribeiro Silva, Alexandre Brasil Carvalho da Fonseca, Fernanda Pereira Dysarz, Ernani Jardim Reis · Alexandria Revista de Educação em Ciência e Tecnologia · Brazil

This research identifies parameters for school gardens in Brazil, analyzing various experiences and an urban public school case. The study correlates the health of students and farmers in agricultural activities, explicitly pointing out negligences in this regard. It argues that a healthy eating concept from school gardens requires an equally healthy production system, and attention to student safety can highlight farmers' working conditions, which is crucial for food and nutritional education.

Hannah Cobb, Madisen Hasenauer · Digital Commons - CSUMB (California State University, Monterey Bay) · United States (California)

This paper proposes that school gardens can be a powerful tool for teaching sustainability concepts to elementary school students. It suggests that teachers who receive school support, collaborate with committed volunteers, and have access to appropriate resources are prepared to confidently educate students on ecological conservation through school gardens.

Matthew Potteiger · · United States (New York City)

This paper explores a fundamental shift in urban agriculture based on productive urban ecologies and foraging practices. Part one identifies urban foraging as a significant cultural practice, summarizing ethnographic research in Syracuse and New York City, and a multi-city USDA Forest Service study. Part two focuses on design strategies for urban foraging and productive ecologies, presenting case studies and design proposals for Syracuse and New York City. The study outlines a paradigm shift in design and planning to integrate urban agriculture with critical landscape systems and re-localize urban metabolism.

P. Qasimah Boston, Ivette A López, Krista Harper · Practicing Anthropology · United States (Tallahassee)

This study used Photovoice to evaluate an urban agricultural food movement event in Tallahassee, Florida. Youth were trained to collect and interpret data, describing the event's value and highlighting cultural influences on the food environment, including diversity and inclusion. The evaluation method, termed Evaluation for Community Action (EFCA), linked improving the food environment with innovative assessment.

Silene Maciel dos Santos, Samuel Ferreira da Fonseca, Luiz Andrei Gonçalves Pereira · Dialnet (Universidad de la Rioja) · Brazil (Pirapora-MG)

This study analyzed the spatial distribution of urban agricultural activities in the Sagrada Família neighborhood, Pirapora-MG, Brazil, through a literature review. It examined urban agriculture practices, their socio-economic role, and the problems and challenges faced by urban agriculture actors in the neighborhood. The study concluded that the identified issues suggest urban agriculture as an emancipatory process.

Gabriel R. Valle · Aztlán A Journal of Chicano Studies · United States

This essay explores the self-valorization of work in community gardens to advance a grounded theory of time and value, which has been lacking in Chicana/o studies. Urban community gardens are pivotal to the environmental justice movement, with Chicana/os playing a central role. The essay proposes a revolutionary logic of labor through reframing time and value, aiming to reconnect community gardeners to the means of their own production and reproduction. By creating "gardens of sabotage," communities challenge capitalism by reclaiming the value of work and confronting orthodox notions of economy, work, citizenship, community, and time.

Fabio Fernando Kobs, Marcello Sgarbi, Eloy Fassi Casagrande, Maclóvia Corrêa da Silva, Dario Eduardo Amaral Dergint · Revista Meio Ambiente e Sustentabilidade · Brazil (Curitiba)

This paper aimed to identify mutual trust within an urban farming cooperation network, using a case study of a residence of about 350 square meters for urban farming in the urban area of Curitiba, Parana State, Brazil. Exploratory survey, case study, bibliographical research, and random observation methods were used. Data collection allowed for the construction of a cooperation network, establishing the trust relationship, and confirming the initial hypothesis that the type of trust is process-based.

V. Ernesto Mendez, Christopher M. Bacon, Roseann Cohen, Stephen R. Gliessman · Agroecology · United States

This chapter discusses the rise of movements for just and sustainable food systems in the United States over the last 15 years, encompassing areas like urban agriculture and food sovereignty. It notes that while most practitioners in US alternative agrifood movements do not use the term "agroecology," they share similar principles. The chapter also describes the evolution of agroecology from a farm-scale focus to a systems-based, transdisciplinary approach for sustainable food systems.

Mariah E Reitz · Digital Commons - Otterbein (Otterbein University) · United States

This research aimed to determine if a community garden would benefit a suburban township, Blendon Township, in addressing food insecurity and food deserts. A survey evaluated fruit and vegetable consumption, healthy food affordability, and education, as well as the garden's effect on participants' families. Through a literature review and survey assessment, the results indicated that Blendon Township needed a community garden due to its proximity to Columbus and suburban setting.

Sabine Lefkowitz · · United States (Portland)

This thesis examined the relationship between socioeconomic status (SES) and outdoor time in Portland, Oregon public elementary schools. The study found that higher SES elementary schools spend more time outdoors than low SES schools. This disparity amplifies existing disadvantages for children in high-poverty schools, suggesting an inequity in outdoor time provision.

Patricia Keane, Alejandro Ortega Hortelano, Jeanette Linville · Journal of Public Health Management and Practice · United States

As an evaluation of the "Healthy Kids, Healthy Cuba (HKHCuba)" program in a triethnic rural community in New Mexico, 12 partners participated in a group model building (GMB) session to introduce systems thinking. The session identified 27 influences as feedback loops from behavior over time graphs and 5 subsystems from a causal loop diagram. Results showed that in addition to strategy-related influences like access to healthy food and community garden participation, a sense of cultural pride, community, and social engagement, especially among youth, were highly salient.

Geneviève S. Metson, Elena M. Bennett · PLoS ONE · Canada (Montreal)

This study quantified the role of urban agriculture (UA) in phosphorus (P) cycling in Montreal, Canada, using existing data and surveys of local UA practitioners. In 2012, Montreal imported 3.5 Gg of P in food, with 2.63 Gg accumulating in landfills, 0.36 Gg discharged to local waters, and only 0.09 Gg recycled through composting. UA was found to be only a small sub-system in the city's overall P cycle, contributing just 0.44% of the P consumed as food. Although recycling rates within the UA system are high, the land area dedicated to UA is too small to accommodate all P waste produced on the island.

Selina Dorking, Paige Eisen, Joseph J. Godfrey, Regina López, Steven A. Smith · ScholarWorks - GVSU (Grand Valley State University) · United States

In the Heartside neighborhood of Grand Rapids, Michigan, United States, the non-profit Heartside Gleaning Initiative (HGI) has been addressing food insecurity since 2014. During the winter semester of 2015, the "Food Fighters," a team of Grand Valley State University students, collaborated with HGI to tackle the challenges of food waste, food insecurity, and community sustainability. Their efforts resulted in the Heartside Glean Ride mobile food cart plan and a brochure for Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) boxes, designed to increase food distribution.

Rachel Grewell · · United States

The Urban Farm and Garden Alliance (UFGA) conducted a measurement project from summer to fall 2015, involving UFGA gardens and backyard gardeners weighing and measuring produce. The project also included a community survey on the social impacts of gardening. Based on these results, community-friendly guides were designed to help collect and disseminate data on both social and vegetative yields in urban gardens.

Connie Everson · Studies in the Education of Adults · United States

This study examined informal learning among members and farmers in community-supported agriculture (CSA) in the United States. CSA began as a loosely formalized, vaguely socialistic agreement between consumers and farmers, but as it became more institutionalized, education came to hold a near-equal footing alongside the nutritional offerings. The author's research found that goodwill generated by the farmers translated into a shared sense of community, in which information and knowledge were freely shared between CSA members and their farmer. Informal learning was found to be an intricate part of participation in the CSA experience: while individuals joining a CSA did not anticipate or expect a learning experience, the season-long process was strongly conducive to many forms of informal learning.

Christopher Wharton, Renée Shaw Hughner, Lexi MacMillan, Claudia Dumitrescu · Ecology of Food and Nutrition · United States

A US study conducted a series of focus groups to identify the motives for joining community supported agriculture (CSA) programs, the experiences of CSA membership, and diet-related outcomes. Using the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) as a framework to categorize findings, the data suggested that CSA membership could serve as a strategy for promoting healthful diets and behaviors. Participant numbers and the specific location are not stated in the abstract.

Martín Leonardo Battaglia · CSA News · United States

An article describing the Graduate Extension Scholars (GES) program at the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences (CALS), Virginia Tech, United States. Citing the National Academy of Sciences (2009), it notes that future agronomists will increasingly come from cities and suburbs rather than rural areas, making youth outreach to build interest in agriculture a recruitment concern. The GES program has graduate students develop educational modules for youth based on their own research, working with 4-H youth development agents; lesson plans are posted online, and networking through professional conferences of the Department of Agricultural, Leadership, and Community Education extends impact beyond individual classrooms or clubs. Per the National Academy of Sciences (2009), several urban agricultural education programs are already established, but higher education institutions are not well represented in most K-12 curricular programs. The article also references the 2013 Next Generation Science Standards.

Dorceta E. Taylor, Kerry Ard · Environmental Practice · United States

A study of Detroit, Michigan, United States, combining environmental justice analysis with systems thinking to examine the city's food environment. Data were collected from ReferenceUSA, Orbis and the Michigan Department of Agriculture between 2011 and 2013 to build a database of food outlets, analyzed and mapped using SPSS 22 and ArcGIS 10.1. The study examined the locations of 3,499 food outlets across 34 categories, including 96 supermarkets or full-line grocery stores, 1,110 small groceries/convenience stores/mini marts/liquor stores, 279 specialty food stores, 306 pharmacies/dollar/variety stores, 1,245 full-service and fast-food restaurants and other food service outlets, 157 supply chain operations, 206 farms/community and school gardens/farmers markets/produce markets, and 100 food assistance programs. It found that although Detroit has areas lacking food outlets, characterizing the entire city as a "food desert" is misleading, and that the traditional food desert research approach — relying only or primarily on the presence or absence of supermarkets and full-line grocery stores — ignores many important venues people use to obtain food and the coping strategies people employ in response to limited food access.

Natoshia M. Askelson, Disa Lubker Cornish, Elizabeth H. Golembiewski · Journal of Agriculture Food Systems and Community Development · United States

A mixed-methods study of rural U.S. school food service directors in a midsized Midwestern state examined perceptions of voluntary school meal programs such as farm-to-school and school garden programs, using semi-structured telephone interviews (n=67) and an online survey (n=57). Directors reported little experience with these programs and perceived them as very challenging to implement, citing very small staff, lack of concrete knowledge about how the programs work, and lack of access to local producers and chefs as the main barriers.

Tainã Coelho Quevedo, Anilton Squena de Oliveira, Lauren Machado Gayeski, Marcelo Pereira de Barros · DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals) · Brazil

Through Universidade Feevale's participation in Brazil's Projeto Rondon, workshops presented concepts and methodologies for developing community gardens and reusing organic waste and rainwater in two locations in Maranhao state. Three lectures were given and four community gardens, four composters, and two cisterns were built across four municipal schools, training 97 people. Environmental multipliers were trained through active community participation, and alternative cost-reduction techniques were made available for economically disadvantaged regions.

James Tolleson · Southern Anthropological Society Proceedings · United States

This essay considers what may become of a manufacturing city like Detroit, once called the "arsenal of democracy," after being abandoned by industry, asking whether such cities can be rebuilt and redefined as models of self-reliant, sustainable, multicultural twenty-first-century communities, and situates Detroit's urban agriculture movement within that food-justice framing.

Joana Chan, Bryce DuBois, Keith G. Tidball · · United States (New York City)

This study conducted ethnographic research -- including participant observation, exploratory and in-depth interviews, and archival research -- at five community gardens in New York City's coastal "red zones" affected by Hurricane Sandy in 2012, from April 2013 to February 2014. It found that community gardens functioned as multi-purpose community refuges that hosted meaningful, restorative greening practices and developed supportive communities for residents and garden members in the aftermath of the disaster.

Bill Musser · · United States (Iowa)

This is an announcement for the CBHL 2015 Annual Meeting, hosted by Seed Savers Exchange (SSE) in Decorah, Iowa, United States, on June 16–20, 2015, during SSE's 40th anniversary year. The conference theme reflected growing public interest in creating edible landscapes.

Saul Hernandez, Anthony Boynton, Interns · Community Literacy Journal · United States

An editor's note for the book review section of Community Literacy Journal. It recounts an ecological metaphor shared by a community garden leader at a Georgia community center, mentions raised beds built with a Knight Foundation grant and a seedling-distribution outreach effort, and surveys several book reviews in the same issue covering literacy and community-building, DIY culture, and race and education.