Research & reports

Valerie Chiykowski, Guhan Chendurnathan, Jun S. Lee, Lius Daniel · cIRcle (University of British Columbia) · Canada

This project at the University of British Columbia's Student Union Building (SUB) aimed to reduce contamination in post-consumer organics bins using visual prompts. While the intervention successfully decreased both the percentage weight and level of contamination, the overall weight of compostable waste also decreased post-intervention. The study suggests considering confounding factors like a sustainability fair during baseline data collection and improved bins, and proposes an infrared sensor-based audio prompt system for future efforts.

Becky Lundberg Witt · FLASH - Fordham Law Archive of Scholarship & History (Fordham University) · United States (Baltimore City)

This article argues that property law in Baltimore City, Maryland, creates a significant barrier to urban growing by prioritizing the right to exclude others from vacant and abandoned land. Thousands of fallow lots remain inaccessible to neighbors for community benefit due to property ownership laws, which can neglect the human rights of the poorest citizens. The paper examines how the universal right to adequate food might legally support urban farming and gardening.

Colin Cox, Jessica A. Hoffman, Mariya Shiyko, Catherine Wirth · Journal of Hunger & Environmental Nutrition · United States

A study in the United States evaluated the effect of text message reminders on farm share pickup rates among Head Start parents participating in a subsidized community supported agriculture program. While pickup rates were high for both text messaging and no text messaging groups, with 96% vs 92% within two days and 69% vs 62% on the day of delivery, no statistically significant differences were found between the groups. The study's ability to isolate the effects of text messages was limited because program coordinators used multiple methods to promote parent participation.

Heather McMillen, Lindsay P. Campbell, Erika S. Svendsen, Renae Reynolds · Sustainability · United States (New York City)

This study analyzed qualitative data from community-managed open spaces in the New York City area, including living memorials and a community garden, that have responded to chronic pressures and acute disturbances such as a hurricane and a terrorist attack. Using a deductive coding approach drawing on existing resilience frameworks, it identified grounded stewardship practices demonstrating community-level indicators of social resilience: place attachment, social cohesion, social networks, and knowledge exchange and diversification.

Nala Walla · · United States

A 2016 essay on the urban agriculture movement and race in the United States. It argues that urban gardens give people of color a way to reestablish agrarian skills without moving to rural areas, and states that much of the US urban agriculture movement is led by people of color. It also notes that in the UK, Wilfred Emmanuel-Jones founded the Young City Farmers program on a similar premise.

Won Kim · Korean Journal of Sociology · United States

A 2016 study based on in-depth interviews with farmers participating in farmers' markets and community supported agriculture (CSA) in the United States analyzes their common features and differences. Contrary to Hinrichs' argument, it finds that both farmers' markets and CSA rely on strong marketability as their foundation for existence. Social embeddedness was more pronounced in CSA than in farmers' markets, with spatial embeddedness showing a similar partial trend, while natural embeddedness was equally pronounced in both with little difference. Building on this feature analysis, the study also explores ways to revitalize both forms.

Ina Opitz, Kathrin Specht, Regine Berges, Rosemarie Siebert, Annette Piorr · Sustainability · United States

An empirical study based on 17 qualitative interviews conducted in New York City, Philadelphia and Chicago identified the areas, drivers and obstacles of innovation in U.S. urban agriculture. Learning and innovation were found to occur predominantly in four areas — financing and funding; production, technology and infrastructure; markets and demands; and social acceptance and cultural learning — with some novelties showing potential to contribute to broader societal change.

Connor J. Fitzmaurice, Brian J. Gareau · Yale University Press eBooks · United States

This 2016 book chapter profiles Scenic View Farm in New England, United States, run by owners John and Katie, surveying the farm's history and characteristics relative to other New England farms and describing its landscape. Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) programs, which farms like Scenic View depend on for stable sales, require growing diverse crops to meet consumer demand; flowers enhanced the farm's appearance and yielded consistent profits in years when other crops merely broke even. Among the challenges organic farms face, the chapter describes a tomato blight outbreak that swept the region, which Scenic View's CSA helped the farm weather while maintaining its organic certification. Access to supplemental income is described as critical to the farm's continuation, and the chapter portrays farmers, including some who feel they cannot eschew pesticides entirely, trying to farm as responsibly as their circumstances allow.

Thenral Mangadu, Michael P. Kelly, Max C. E. Orezzoli, Rebecca Gallegos, Pracheta Matharasi · Health Promotion International · United States

In the US–Mexico border region — El Paso, Texas, and Las Cruces and Anthony, New Mexico, areas with high obesity rates — three pilot community gardens funded through the local Healthy Eating Active Living (HEAL) initiative were implemented by two local governmental organizations and one community-based organization (2016). A built environment marked by an arid desert climate, lack of access to healthy foods, barriers to physical activity, and cultural and community norms that deter healthy eating and sustainable food production contributes to obesity-related health disparities in these minority communities. A mixed-methods evaluation (n=223) examined the implementation process, immediate outcomes and best practices of implementing and sustaining the gardens. Beyond nutrition-related outcomes, potential psychosocial outcomes from participating in the community and school garden projects were observed. Best practices identified concerned (i) assessing community norms related to growing food, (ii) increasing access to land and water for community and school gardening, and (iii) enhancing social support for gardening.

Linda Naeve, Catherine Strohbehn · Iowa State University Digital Repository (Iowa State University) · United States

As more consumers use Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) farms for their fresh produce, this publication discusses how to keep food safe before, during, and after delivery, from harvest through storage.

Kimberly Bracken Long · Liturgy · United States

A reflection beginning on a fall morning when people from Columbia Theological Seminary gathered on a blanket in the grass at the edge of the community garden for a communion service.

Cristian Suzin Magrin, Angélica Ferari Rodrigues · Mostra IFTec em Resumos · Brazil

This report from Brazil describes aquaponics — a system combining fish farming and soil-free hydroponic plant cultivation, in which fish waste nourishes plants that in turn filter the water for the fish — through a literature review and an experimental simulation of an aquaponic setup with a physically separate fish tank and hydroponic unit connected by pumping. It states the system requires no removal of final filtration waste and less complex filtration than aquaculture, has lower pest losses and earlier harvests than soil-based gardens, and operates at low cost, and concludes it is a sustainable, economical food-production approach suited to both household and industrial scale.

Leila de Castro Louback Ferraz, E. R. de O. Carvalho, Mayara Márcia Sarsur Viana, Nathália Rabelo Pereira Oliveira · Cadernos de Agroecologia · Brazil

A study of community gardens run by the municipal government of Sete Lagoas, Minas Gerais, Brazil for nearly 33 years — cited as a reference example of urban agriculture in Brazil — found that more than 95 plant species are cultivated there, spanning food, condiment, ornamental and medicinal uses. This is described as contributing to improved quality of life for the population by securing food security with variety and quality, as well as playing a role in guaranteeing income in the urban setting.

Tylar Setser · Journal of Small Business Strategy · United States

A report by a FoodCorps Member in Mississippi, USA, describes responsibilities including grant writing, school garden development, and educational outreach, coordinating with local farmers and local District Nutrition Directors to source local produce into school cafeterias. It describes benefits for children including learning to describe healthy choices, identifying new fruits and vegetables, and being introduced to different nutritious recipes and food preparations. Building on the author's experience and that of colleagues, it provides teachers with information for securing fresh, local produce on behalf of children's health and guidelines for creating a "culture of food appreciation."

Wende Marshall · Journal of Agriculture Food Systems and Community Development · United States (New York City)

A book review of Kristin Reynolds and Nevin Cohen's Beyond the Kale, which analyzes the grassroots urban farming and gardening movement in New York City. The review frames the book's account, likening it to Antonio Gramsci's "war of position", as depicting urban gardening not merely as food growing but as a challenge to race- and class-based structures of oppression, oriented toward environmental justice and liberation.

Ryan McWilliams · ScholarWorks-UA (University of Alaska Fairbanks) · United States

A thesis presented to the faculty of the University of Alaska Anchorage in partial fulfillment of the Master of Public Health degree, concerning the development of a Community Garden Practice Guide to support community gardening in Alaska. This abstract consists only of title-page information and provides no further content detail.

Kris Scheerlinck, Yves Schoonjans · DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals) · United States

This paper presents a theoretical framework treating gardens (flower or vegetable gardens, front and back yards, allotment gardens, community playing fields) as structural elements of streetscapes, and discusses a case study in Williamsburg, New York. The case is part of the international Streetscape Territories Research Project run by the Department of Architecture at KU Leuven, which compares streetscapes across cities including New York, Barcelona, Ghent, Brussels, Havana, and Addis Ababa. It argues that streetscapes are delimited not only by building facades but also by garden walls, fences, strips of grass, tree lines, muddy roads, and parking slabs as territorial borders, and poses the research question of whether the structural role of gardens in the making and use of contemporary streetscapes can be described. No specific empirical findings are reported in the abstract.

Laura Genello, Jillian P. Fry, J. Adam Frederick, Ximin Li, David C. Love · European Journal of Health and Biology Education · United States

An online survey of 100 respondents in the United States characterized the use of aquaponics (combined aquaculture and hydroponics) in education. Thirty-six percent worked at primary or secondary schools, 53% at colleges or universities, and 11% at vocational or trade schools. Respondents and their institutions engaged an estimated 12,320 to 50,250 participants per year, with a typical school investing $1,000-$4,999 in its aquaponics facility in the prior year and a combined total of $1.4 to $6.6 million invested across all academic institutions. Continued collaboration, technical support and training from universities and aquaculture education and research centers were identified as needed.

Gabriela Ivonne Pérez Rodríguez, Rafael Delgado Morales, Lydia Guadalupe Bernal Negrete · · Mexico

This is a progress report on research into urban agriculture (UA) in the Guadalajara Metropolitan Zone (ZMG), Mexico, aimed at understanding the actions being taken to promote and develop UA there and identifying cases of success or failure. The paper presents only the first phase of a research project intended to reproduce the ZMG's UA model in the Laja-Bajío zone of Guanajuato state, consisting of a study and analysis of the current state of UA and urban gardens in the ZMG. It is organized into three sections: the first covers the current state of urban agriculture worldwide, in Mexico, and in the ZMG, including its relevance to regional development, how it develops in different countries, and public policies and their shortcomings; the second describes the desk and field research conducted in the ZMG and its results; and the third addresses the prospects for UA in Mexico and areas of opportunity.

Rosalie M. Sharp · Wellesley College Digital RepositoryWellesley (Wellesley College) · United States

Through an interdisciplinary literature review and interviews with stakeholders in the Boston, Massachusetts urban agriculture network — including The Food Project — this study examines the social and historical context of lead exposure in urban gardens in the Dudley neighborhood. It shows that products of structural racism, particularly redlining and disinvestment, created the social and physical environments that allow lead contamination to persist in low-income communities of color like Dudley. An alternate growing material or soil amendment was found to dilute lead concentrations, reduce lead bioaccessibility, and limit fine particle resuspension, and working with The Food Project, these findings shaped gardeners' behavior to reduce lead exposure. The findings on urban soil lead bioaccessibility are presented as contributing to a broader body of research that informs policy decisions such as benchmarks for safe soil or compost lead levels.

Tiffany B. Hunter · CORE Scholar (Wright State University) · United States

A pilot study (Wright State University, CORE Scholar, 2016) adapted a community garden and environmental education model, first observed during an internship with Israel's Ministry of Health in an Arab village, to an urban, minority-concentrated school population in Dayton, Ohio. Administered in July 2016 at a local foodbank with a pre-existing urban garden, using an eight-week curriculum, the pilot found that participants—who lived in urban, low-income areas—had poor eating habits and low literacy scores at baseline, though the program was reported to enhance participants' learning and understanding of the world around them.

James E. Allen, Jairus Rossi, Timothy A. Woods, Alison F. Davis · International Journal of Agricultural Sustainability · United States

A survey of 151 shareholders across three midsized Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) operations near Lexington, Kentucky (International Journal of Agricultural Sustainability, 2016), addressed a gap in prior research that had relied mostly on small samples (n < 25). Using 20 paired before/after questions, paired two-sided t-tests, and regression of paired differences on socioeconomic factors, self-reported health, and years of CSA enrollment, the study found that food lifestyle behaviors and health outcomes changed after CSA participation, with respondents who reported "poor health" before enrollment showing the most change overall. The authors describe these results as an initial analysis of CSA's impact on shareholder food lifestyle behaviors and health outcomes.

CHELSEY CLAMMER · Tikkun · United States

This is a first-person memoir essay set in a Chicago neighborhood, describing safe, well-lit sidewalks, flourishing community gardens, and apartment courtyards flying rainbow flags as the backdrop to the author's account of surviving a sexual assault, subsequent self-harm, and support from her community. It is not a research study of urban agriculture itself; the community gardens appear only as part of the neighborhood setting.

Vikram Bhatt, Leila Marie Farah · Urban Agriculture & Regional Food Systems · Canada

This paper examines the development of urban agriculture in Montreal, Canada, through the lens of citizen action, community group involvement, and formal institutions. Urban agriculture activity in Montreal began in the early 1970s and gained momentum after the 1973 oil crisis. The paper is organized in three parts: the first traces the history of community gardens; the second presents Montreal-based pilot projects that the authors developed and implemented; the third discusses a 2012 citizens' action that used a municipal bylaw to hold a public consultation, leading to the formation of the city's Permanent Committee on Urban Agriculture (Comité de travail de la collectivité montréalaise en agriculture urbaine).

Jennifer E Gutierrez · USF Scholarship Repository (University of San Francisco) · United States

A planning proposal examines how agriculture could be integrated into Chula Vista, California, a city with both distinctly urban and suburban character. The project reviews the city's history, demographics, and existing urban agriculture policies compared with other California cities, then develops evaluation criteria applied to two contrasting sites at opposite ends of the city. Its stated purpose is to demonstrate how agriculture could be integrated into both urban and suburban settings and to serve as a policy guide, rather than to report implementation outcomes or measured effects.