Research & reports

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.

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.

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.

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.

A-Young Lee, Seon-Ok Kim, Sin-Ae Park · HortTechnology · South Korea (Seoul)

A 21-item questionnaire was administered over three weeks in October 2017 to 1,268 students in grades 4-6 at four elementary schools in Seoul, South Korea. 73.7% reported awareness of and need for urban agriculture and 86.8% (n=1,048) expressed intent to participate, while only 35.4% (n=400) recommended it as a learning activity, 20.9% (n=236) cited stress reduction, and 16.2% (n=183) cited leisure/hobby purposes; preferred indoor activities were planting (21.8%) and preferred outdoor activities were harvesting (20.8%). Female students reported greater perception, experience, awareness of necessity, and willingness to participate than male students (P=0.01), and lower-grade students perceived urban agriculture as more necessary than higher-grade students (P<0.001).

Apri Kuntariningsih · Jurnal kesehatan komunitas (Journal of community health) · Indonesia

A qualitative study in schools in Blitar and Kediri, Indonesia, surveyed 30 participants — 10 students, 5 teachers, 5 food vendors at school, and 10 parents. Child malnutrition was linked to children's food consumption habits, and parents' nutrition knowledge was found lacking, particularly regarding what is consumed at school; school gardens were identified as a means of providing children with fundamental nutrition knowledge, and the study called for government policy to be strengthened to encourage sufficient fruit and vegetable consumption.

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.

Ansel Nastika, V Violita, Irma Laelani Eka Putri · BioScience · Indonesia

This experimental study in Indonesia tested hydroponic cultivation of water spinach (Ipomoea reptans), chosen for its ease of growth on the narrow plots typical of urban agriculture. Conducted from December 2017 to April 2018 in a biology laboratory and screen house at Universitas Negeri Padang, it used a completely randomized design with six treatments and four replications, analyzing plant height, leaf number, leaf area, and wet and dry weight by ANOVA and DNMRT at the 5% level. Liquid organic fertilizer made from Sargassum sp. seaweed had no significant effect on plant height, leaf area, number of leaves, or wet and dry weight of the water spinach.

문보희, 위사양, 오충현 · 한국환경생태학회 학술발표논문집 · South Korea

From June 1 to November 27, 2017, a field survey covered 697 middle and high schools in Seoul (382 middle schools, 315 high schools), examining buildings, rooftops and on-site land use. Urban agriculture was already under way at 473 schools (68%), covering 55,413 m² in total — ground-level plots (20,103 m², 36%), rooftop plots (16,783 m², 30%), box planters (14,954 m², 27%) and flower beds (2,573 m², 7%). An additional 544 sites totaling 711,636 m² were identified as usable for urban agriculture, present at 304 of 382 middle schools (383,199 m², 80%) and 240 of 315 high schools (328,437 m², 76%). By type, rooftop space accounted for the large majority of this usable area (685,026 m², 96%), with box planters (16,136 m², 2%) and ground plots (10,474 m², 2%) contributing little, and flower-bed introduction judged difficult. Of flat-roofed buildings, 67% remained unused for solar panels, green roofs, or rooftop gardens.

Nanna Jordt Jørgensen · DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals) · South Africa

Drawing on a case from the Amanzi for Food project in South Africa's Eastern Cape and earlier material on community gardens in Port Elizabeth, this think piece reflects on how people whose livelihoods depend on land and animals experience and cope with the uncertainty generated by climate change. It focuses on intergenerational interaction and learning in food gardening, arguing that these processes shape responses to uncertainty oriented toward creative solutions rather than debilitation.

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.

Sheri Dorn, Lucy Bradley, Debbie Hamrick, Julie Weisenhorn, Pam Bennett, Jill Callabro, Bridget K. Behe, Ellen M. Bauske, Natalie R. Bumgarner · HortTechnology · United States

The National Initiative for Consumer Horticulture (NICH), a diverse consortium of leaders in the United States, aims to provide a unified voice promoting the benefits and value of consumer horticulture (CH) by uniting national research efforts with the goals of stakeholders across industry, the public sector and home gardeners. As of this 2018 report, NICH members had set three broad goals: recognizing CH as a driver of the agricultural economy; highlighting that CH restores, protects and conserves natural resources through research and education; and cultivating healthy, connected and engaged communities through CH. Three committees (Economic, Environmental, and Community and Health Benefits), representing about 30 members, had focused on these goals over the preceding 10 months; their chairs presented results and future directions. The Economic and Environmental committees pursued campaigns to better market CH benefits and to increase environmental benefits by changing consumer behavior. After reviewing current research, the Community and Health Benefits Committee identified a gap in research specifically on the benefits of CH and personal gardening, as distinct from benefits attributed to forests, horticultural therapy, indoor atriums, community gardens, parks and other public places, and concluded that closing this gap requires strategic collaboration among a more diverse group of industry representatives, specialists and scientists.

Susana Clasen Moritz, Micheli Mari da Costa · · Brazil

A report on the Horta Comunitária Semeando Saúde community garden established in 2012 at the Centro de Saúde Santo Antônio de Lisboa health center in Brazil, where residents and health professionals collaborated to grow and consume healthy food. The project describes increased intake of healthy foods and knowledge-sharing among participants, with no quantitative outcome data given.

Kate Cairns · Children & Society · United States

Drawing on ethnographic research with a youth urban agriculture program in Camden, New Jersey (USA), a paper explores the interdependency of food relations through young people's accounts of food insecurity. It shows how young people articulate food insecurity experiences through the lens of maternal foodwork, describing efforts to support mothers struggling to provide amid poverty. By depicting how these teens share foodwork with their mothers, the paper challenges common conceptions of generational feeding relations and reveals the inadequacy of individualizing approaches that assume an autonomous food consumer.

Patrick D. Murphy, Clemencia Rodríguez · · United States

In Philadelphia, a robust number of environmentally friendly initiatives — including collective gardens, urban agriculture, composting facilities, and pollution-cleansing strategies such as using plants to remove lead from soil — have engaged mostly older citizens, while local youth remain indifferent and rarely show interest in creating or maintaining green spaces in their neighborhoods. Drawing on participatory media models from Communication for Social Change and lessons from Environmental Communication, a chapter details the design and early stages of Urban Green Spaces and Digital Technologies, an initiative using media and digital platforms to encourage children and youth to engage with urban green spaces. Founded on the concept of "voice" — where storytelling, empowerment and political agency intersect — the initiative aims to connect urban youth in Philadelphia's low-income, primarily Black and Latino communities to local green spaces. Intended outcomes include increased youth engagement with urban green spaces and increased awareness of environmental justice issues such as sustainability, food security, climate change, and the significance of green spaces.

Sang Mi Lee, Yoonah Jang, Young Chae, Kyung Sook Han, Byoung Kwon Lee, Sun Jin Jeong, Gyung Mee Gim · Journal of people, plants, and environment · South Korea

A survey examined patterns in the farming materials required to create and operate elementary school vegetable gardens in the Jeonbuk region of South Korea, aiming to propose ways to vitalize urban agriculture-related business. The materials purchased most for school garden operation were seeds and seedling supplies, compost/fertilizer, and tools such as trowels, sprinklers and hoes; material purchases were made mostly online, while seedling purchases were made mostly at pesticide/seedling stores. The study recommends providing information and education on farming materials and establishing more accessible, reliable internet sources.

Pedro José Santos Carneiro Cruz, Renan Soares de Araújo · Interagir pensando a extensão · Brazil

A report on the "Integrated Health and Nutrition Promotion Practices in Primary Care" (PINAB) program, a university extension initiative guided by popular education principles, carried out in the Boa Esperança community in João Pessoa, Paraíba, Brazil. The program organized activities around two operative groups, "Horta" (garden) and "Health in the Community": the first prioritized building a community garden, and the second held meetings to discuss environmental and local health, quality-of-life and sustainability issues, integrated with cleaning, conservation and planting activities for vegetables and medicinal herbs. Participatory and dialogical methods — conversation circles, creative dynamics and posters expressing local popular culture — were used, positioning the garden as a space for learning through labor and for building solidarity, welcome, dialogue and shared knowledge.

Shruti Desai, Harriet Smith · Feminist Review · United Kingdom

This essay responds to Donna Haraway's call to "stay with the trouble" of learning to live well with nonhumans as kin, using practice-based approaches to caring for nonhuman others. It analyzes two cases — care for trees promoted through mobile game apps for forest conservation, and kinship relations with city farm animals in Kentish Town, London — and proposes two concepts, "learning from" and "facing" the Other, to broaden discussion of interspecies dynamics involving animated trees and urban farm animals as distinct nonhuman subjects.

Jefferson Pietroski Mota, Tamyres Ferri, Souza Manoella Cristina · · Brazil

A narrative account of the Horta Orgânica do CCA (HOCCA) project at the Federal University of Santa Catarina (UFSC), Brazil, from its founding to its consolidation. It describes converting neglected shared campus spaces into food-growing areas and spreading ecological-farming knowledge to the university and community through technical and thematic workshops. No quantitative outcome measures are reported.

Alexander Wezel, Julia Goette, Elisabeth Lagneaux, Gloria Passuello, Erica Reisman, Christophe Rodier, Grégoire Turpin · Sustainability · Europe

A study mapping the development of agroecology in Europe through a literature review, interviews, conference participation and internet search. It finds that agroecological research and higher education are concentrated more in western and northern Europe, though farm schools and farmer-to-farmer training exist in other regions too. Bottom-up initiatives and national or continental networks and movements are increasing, with food sovereignty and access to land and seeds as major themes. Except for France, the study states there are very few concrete agroecology policies in Europe.

Pjilmah Waken Waken, Tania Paul, Waken, Pjilmah Waken, Paul, Tania · AgEcon Search (University of Minnesota, USA) · Global

A study and intervention report addressing the decline in consumption of traditional vegetables in Papua New Guinea (PNG), which is adversely affecting family nutrition and increasing rates of malnutrition and obesity. Traditional vegetables are climatically adapted to PNG, require lower inputs, and are described as superior in food value to globally popular vegetables, historically providing a large share of daily protein, vitamin, and mineral intake in the village diet. The research found that people lacked awareness of the nutritional value of traditional vegetables, considering them "backward" and "poverty" food, even though the vegetables remain strongly connected to culture and "home." The project trained smallholder farmers in pest and disease management and seed saving to reduce input costs, worked with families and communities to raise awareness of traditional vegetables' nutritional value, trained families in gardening and cooking, and created new recipes using local vegetables. Planned next steps include work with maternal-child clinics linked to hospitals and school-based programs combining teacher education, school gardens, and incentive-based lunchboxes. Some growers have applied their seed-saving skills to set up small-scale seed businesses.

Maria Júlia Ferreira, Hugo Baesso, José Luis González Geraldo · Cadernos de Agroecologia · Brazil

A report on the teaching and learning process during Vegetable Crop Science and Medicinal Plants classes at the Southeast IF MG (Instituto Federal), Campus Muriaé, Brazil, in which second-year students of the Integrated Technological Course in Agroecology implemented an organic, sustainable school garden in the first semester of 2016. Students applied classroom knowledge practically to the fully organic cultivation of vegetables, focusing on lettuce (Lactuca sativa) and chives (Allium schoenoprasum). An area of 1,000 m² was subdivided into twelve usable plots of 45 m² each. The techniques and procedures used are described as applicable to any garden pursuing an entirely sustainable way of life without chemical inputs, providing benefits for both the environment and human health.

Kate Gardner Burt, Hersh B. Luesse, Jennifer Rakoff, Andréa Cardoso Ventura, Marissa Burgermaster · American Journal of Public Health · United States

An online survey of 99 school gardeners from 15 U.S. states, conducted in June 2017, examined barriers of time, funding, staffing, and space to integrating and sustaining school gardens, using a 29-item survey analyzed with descriptive statistics and inductive content analysis. Barriers were ranked from greatest to least as time, staff, funding, curriculum, and space; the most frequently cited time-related challenges were insufficient time for classes to use the garden (66% of respondents) and insufficient time for staff training (62%). Respondents also reported low engagement within the school community, and while an overall lack of funding was the most common funding-related barrier, gardeners were largely unaware of how to obtain additional funding.