Research & reports

Teddi Dineley Johnson · ˜The œNation's health · United States (Denver)

This abstract describes various projects aimed at creating healthier neighborhoods in the United States. Examples include liquor retailers in Louisville, Kentucky, removing alcohol ads, utility boxes in Chula Vista, California, being transformed into art, and youths at risk for gang violence in a Denver neighborhood participating in a community garden. These initiatives focus on violence prevention and health promotion.

Mirella Cultrera, Maria Christina de Mello Amorozo, Fábio Cop Ferreira · SITIENTIBUS série Ciências Biológicas · Brazil (Mato Grosso)

An ethnobotanical study in five peripheral neighborhoods of Santo Antônio do Leverger, Mato Grosso, Brazil, surveyed 135 households and detailed 30 to characterize food plant cultivation. Ninety-seven species from 38 families were identified across homegardens, fields, and empty lots. While some species were common, the similarity between species/varieties across households was generally below 50%, and many had low frequency, revealing a vulnerability to species loss despite social network circulation.

Monica J Kelly · Scholarship@Western (Western University) · Canada (Toronto)

An ethnographic study conducted in summer 2010 at HOPE community garden in Parkdale, Toronto, explored how collective belonging is built. The research found that differences and interpersonal conflicts within the garden were embraced as opportunities to strengthen community cohesion. Contrary to romanticized views of harmonious community gardens, the study revealed that conflicts, negotiation of differences, and institutional practices of inclusion and anti-discrimination significantly contribute to a successful and inclusive community project.

Mahbubur Meenar, Brandon Hoover · Journal of Agriculture Food Systems and Community Development · United States (Philadelphia)

This paper examines urban agriculture (UA) projects' role in addressing food insecurity in lower-income neighborhoods of post-industrial U.S. cities, using Philadelphia as a case study. While UA projects are vital, findings indicate concerns regarding their geographic, economic, and informational accessibility, social exclusion, and spatial mismatch between participants and neighborhood demographics. Challenges also exist in distributing fresh produce to impoverished populations and UA's economic contributions in underprivileged areas.

Nate Millington · International Journal of Urban and Regional Research · United States

This article analyzes representations of urban nature in Detroit, Michigan, focusing on journalistic and photographic work over the past 5 years. These representations, part of a discourse on Detroit's decline, ultimately reflect dominant conceptual divisions between the city and nature. Journalists and commentators perceive nature in the city as a reflection of the city's absence rather than its materiality, suggesting an ambivalence about emergent urban ecologies.

T.M. Anholts · Data Archiving and Networked Services (DANS) · United States (New York City)

This paper, written for the TIDO-course AR0532 Smart & Bioclimatic Design Theory, proposes utilizing the urban environment for agricultural activities in New York. It states the importance of offering a place to experiment and showcase opportunities for the design of a new environmental council to be added to the United Nations Headquarters in New York.

Zee Leung, Dean Middleton, Karen Morrison · BMC Public Health · Canada (Ontario)

This qualitative study, using semi-structured interviews with ten participants from the public health sphere in Ontario, explored how One Health and EcoHealth approaches are shaping public health practice. Four major themes emerged: the importance of connecting human health with the environment, the role of governance in promoting these ideas, the value of partnerships, and the challenge of operationalizing holistic approaches.

Shikha Srivastava, Scot Nelson · ScholarSpace (University of Hawaii at Manoa) · United States (Hawaii)

This article discusses Cercospora leaf spot, a common fungal disease affecting eggplant in home and community gardens in Hawaii. It describes the pathogen and disease symptoms, offering integrated practices to improve plant growth and yields for gardeners.

Barbara Strauss · EngagedScholarship @ Cleveland State University (Cleveland State University) · United States

A presentation was given at the Cleveland-Marshall College of Law symposium, "Urban Agriculture: It’s Not an Oxymoron. Policies for Cultivating City Land and Increasing Access to Local Food," which focused on policy, land-use, and other legal issues related to urban agriculture and the local food movement. The Sustainability Research Guide from the Michael Schwartz Library was also introduced during this presentation.

Kristen McIvor, Craig Cogger, Sally Brown · Compost Science & Utilization · United States (Tacoma)

A study in Tacoma, Washington, evaluated the effects of two biosolids-based soil products, Tagro and GroCo, on soil physical and chemical properties in three urban community gardens over two growing seasons. Amendments were applied at 200 Mg ha−1 dry weight in the first year, with half receiving an additional 200 Mg ha−1 in the second year. Biosolids did not significantly affect total soil metal concentrations, but increased water infiltration rates from 10.1 ± 0.95 ml min−1 to 51–212 ml min−1, decreased bulk density from 1.07 ± 0.01 g cm−3 to 0.51–0.77 g cm−3, and increased total carbon, nitrogen, and available phosphorus. Biosolids addition also decreased soil pH from 6.43 to 5.35–5.75.

Mahbubur Meenar, Jeffrey P. Featherstone, Amy Laura, Julia McCabe · · United States

A paper examining urban agriculture in United States post-industrial cities, which since the mid-20th century have experienced dramatic loss of population, community resources, and economic growth even as their wider metropolitan areas continued to grow, and which are characterised by high levels of crime, substance abuse, unemployment, poverty, food insecurity, vacant land, and urban blight. Many such communities rely on urban agriculture as a means of food security and sustainability as well as community resilience, vacant-land remediation, and neighbourhood development, yet the paper argues that urban agriculture has been treated as a temporary, informal land use, with land tenure conflict causing the untimely demise of many projects. In terms of urban design, it further argues that urban agriculture projects in many cities have developed as a "patchwork," lacking physical connectivity to other gardens, open spaces, and community infrastructure.

Community Gardening Works! ACGA 2011 Conference, Mara Gittleman, Kelli Jordan, Eric Brelsford · Cities and the Environment · United States (New York City)

This paper is a case study of Farming Concrete, a community-based project in New York City, which has more than 500 community gardens, over 80% of which host food production according to a 2010 GrowNYC survey. Using citizen science methods in which gardeners and researchers jointly designed and conducted the research, the project measured how much food was grown in New York City community gardens in 2010 and 2011.

Sarah Schindler · Faculty publications · United States

This article addresses the conflict between local governments and "locavores" seeking to use private property to produce food — for personal use and for sale — and municipal zoning ordinances that separate agriculture from residential uses. It examines the police power rationales behind ordinances disallowing urban homesteading in urban and suburban communities, then argues that public health, civic virtue, and free market principles can justify ordinances expressly permitting these activities. It discusses problems associated with industrial agriculture — food insecurity, food deserts, obesity tied to processed foods, monoculture-induced environmental harm, harm to animals, and greenhouse gas emissions — that could be partly alleviated through urban agriculture, noting that some local governments have already begun passing ordinances expressly allowing gardens, chickens, and the sale of produce in residential areas.

Sima Patel, Rod MacRae · Journal of Agriculture Food Systems and Community Development · Canada

A land parcel analysis in Toronto, Canada identified 77 parcels totaling 1,270 acres (514 hectares) of potential land for community supported agriculture (CSA) farming — about 1 percent of the city's surface area — with much of it located in northeast Toronto. Five commercially viable scenario types were constructed with varying land use, zoning, institutional and residential characteristics, but considerable challenges remain for widespread implementation, leading to policy and program recommendations including pilot projects, institutional linkages, program supports, training and extension.

Dan Stafford · · United States

A library web page introducing the presenters for a school garden workshop at Kutztown University in the United States, describing it as a learning opportunity for educators and parents featuring speakers and demonstrations on building a sustainable community partnership.

Kristen B. Crossney, Emily Shellenberger · · United States

A study examining the relationship between neighborhood quality and the presence of community gardens in Philadelphia, United States. Neighborhoods were characterized by population and neighborhood factors including race, ethnicity, and income, and t-tests assessed the statistical significance of differences between areas with a community garden and other parts of the city. The statistical results showed that while areas with community gardens faced more socioeconomic challenges, they underwent more positive change and improvement between 2000 and 2010 than other parts of the city.

Gail Langellotto, Abha Gupta · HortTechnology · United States

Using peer-reviewed studies of garden-based nutrition education programs delivered to children in the United States, a study applied meta-analytical techniques to examine effects on children's nutrition knowledge, preference for fruit and vegetables, and consumption. Compared with experimental controls (no nutrition education) and nutrition education programs without a gardening component, a vote-counting analysis found most outcomes nonsignificant in the control and nutrition-education-only groups, but positive and significant in the gardening group. The quantitative meta-analysis was limited by the small number of studies reporting full descriptive statistics, but one robust result stood out: gardening increased vegetable consumption in children, while the impact of nutrition education programs alone was marginal or nonsignificant.

Thomas D. Eatmon, Zachary Piso, Elyse Schmitt · IGI Global eBooks · United States

Against a backdrop of a growing number of organizations in the US Great Lakes region growing local food year-round despite cold-climate conditions, this chapter uses diffusion of innovation theory to explain the adoption of commercial aquaponics (combined indoor fish and produce production). It notes that research has shown significant challenges to maintaining profitable commercial aquaponics ventures in temperate climates, even as the technology's popularity in urban agriculture appears to be increasing, and argues that perceptions of relative advantage, compatibility, complexity, trialability, and observability may explain its adoption despite these financial challenges.

Donovon Ceaser · The Journal of Environmental Education · United States (New York City)

Noting broad agreement on the goals of environmental education (EE) but continued debate over promoting student action, this case study examines how a critical urban farming school — Our School at Blair Grocery in New Orleans' Lower Ninth Ward — addresses student action through critical environmental education (critical EE), which combines critical reflection with local action on social and environmental problems. The results found that critical learning within an egalitarian, youth-centered community in a disadvantaged area produces students who are more enlightened and empowered to create change. However, concerns about funding and safety led staff to depart from maintaining an egalitarian ethic, undermining the individualism and unpredictability that critical EE depends on and producing "disconnects" in students' education.

Marco Antonio Toral Juárez, A. Montes Pérez, Catalino Jorge Lopez Collado, Felipe Gallardo-López · Tropical and Subtropical Agroecosystems · Mexico

A study of peri-urban families in Ciudad Cardel, Veracruz, Mexico, measured dietary diversity using a staple-foods scoring method and assessed eating habits and willingness to practice home horticulture using a Likert-scale survey. Thirty-five percent of households showed good eating habits, 19% regular, and 46% poor eating habits. Dietary diversity scored 29.4 ± 8.7 for staple foods. The general Likert index for willingness to practice horticulture was 2.9, indicating average availability. Dietary diversity varied with household economic capacity, while eating habits and socioeconomic status showed no association, and multiple factors were found to positively influence mothers' willingness to practice peri-urban horticulture.

Robert Connolly, Samantha E. J. Gibbs, Mallory L. Bader · Museums & Social Issues · United States

This paper examines the outreach program that the C.H. Nash Museum at Chucalissa, located on the grounds of a prehistoric earthwork complex in Memphis, Tennessee, has run toward the surrounding African-American community over the past decade. The archaeological site was first investigated, and the museum was founded, as a byproduct of 1930s Jim Crow-era segregation policies; since its founding, the site and museum have functioned as a place of academic privilege that ignored the surrounding community. Transparency and a commitment to community engagement are described as central to the outreach program, whose highlights include installing an African-American Cultural Heritage exhibit, hosting community events, establishing a community garden, and collaborating with community partners on service projects. Based on a participatory model, the museum has moved to position itself as a social asset and stakeholder in the Southwest Memphis community.

Margaret C. Kirnbauer · Journal of Environmental Informatics · United States

Amid growing interest among community groups in using vacant and underutilized land for urban food production, but with few community-based tools available to assess site suitability or location-allocation decisions, this U.S. study describes a scientific software tool, built in Microsoft Excel, to help community groups identify and inventory the location and condition of vacant and underutilized land, determine relative site suitability, and allocate urban agricultural reuse strategies across the urban landscape. The tool augments the prototype community-based decision support tool (C-SAP) developed by Kirnbauer and Baetz (2011), which already includes a binary scoring methodology for the vacant and underutilized land inventory (VULI) process and an analytic hierarchy process for calculating site suitability indices (SSI). The added capacity, called LOCAL, formulates a multi-objective binary integer program for location-allocation of reuse strategies at the neighborhood, community, or city-wide planning level. The paper summarizes and discusses applying the prototype tool to 21 sites identified as potential future urban agriculture sites.

Brittany Minnick Hanson · Journal of International Crisis and Risk Communication Research · United States

This study of several community gardens in Orange County, Central Florida, conducted structured interviews with gardeners and semi-structured interviews with garden leaders to examine effects on food insecurity, health, and community cohesion, as well as the challenges gardens face. Results showed benefits including increased fresh produce consumption, improved physical activity, better mental health, and stronger community cohesion, but about a third of the gardeners and a majority of the leaders identified lack of participation as a challenge.

Ann Weltin, Roberta Proffitt Lavin · Journal of Community Health Nursing · United States

A mixed-convergent parallel design intervention study tested whether participation in a community garden could improve diabetes control among members of a Midwest United States community of Marshallese immigrants. Marshallese clients recruited from a local community health center took part in a community garden, and qualitative data from field observations on cultural norms and beliefs, food perceptions and barriers to health care corroborated data gathered at diabetes follow-up medical appointments. Persons who actively participated in the community garden showed a significant reduction in HgA1c after the intervention compared with those who did not participate, though the abstract does not report the number of participants or the size of the reduction.

Kynda R. Curtis, Voravee Chakreeyarat, J. Dominique Gumirakiza · Digital Commons - USU (Utah State University) · United States

A brief discussion piece frames growing interest in local food systems as a potential response to challenges in the globalized food system and as an avenue for promoting agricultural and rural sustainability. It does not present a specific research method or findings.