Research & reports

Bruce G. Ferguson, Helda Morales, Kimberly Chung, Ronald Nigh · Agroecology and Sustainable Food Systems · Mexico

A case study of the LabVida school gardens program in Chiapas, Mexico, explored the potential and limitations of scaling agroecology through formal education. Educators gained an appreciation for agroecology and learned practices, though their understanding of agroecological principles and scientific processes remained limited. The program's greatest impact was on educators' eating habits and their perception of the value of local knowledge. The study demonstrates that garden and food-system work can leverage institutional resources to improve educational outcomes, including agroecological literacy.

Matheus Martins Mendes, André Victor Sales Passos, Carol Rebouças da Silva · · Brazil

This internship experience, guided by popular extension university principles, focused on knowledge exchange between scientific and popular communities in the San Francisco settlement, Jose de Freitas, Piaui, Brazil. A partnership between the Federal Rural University of the Semiarid Region, REAPI, and local farmers led to the implementation of a women-maintained community garden and the recovery of four springs. Agroecological activities also highlighted the role of women farmers in agroecological transition.

Jess Halliday, D.M.R. van Veenhuizen · CGSPace A Repository of Agricultural Research Outputs (Consultative Group for International Agricultural Research) · Global

UA Magazine 36 focuses on Food Policy Councils. Urban Agriculture Magazine (UA Magazine) is produced by the RUAF Global Partnership on Sustainable Urban Agriculture and Food Systems. It facilitates information sharing, promotes analysis and debate on critical issues, and publishes good practices and impact stories related to urban agriculture and urban food systems.

André Ruoppolo Biazoti, André Ruoppolo Biazoti · LA Referencia (Red Federada de Repositorios Institucionales de Publicaciones Científicas) · Brazil (São Paulo)

This paper analyzes the mutirão (collective work) practices established in some community gardens in São Paulo city. Mutirão is observed as a practice with an inherent political and insurgent character that promotes not only food production but also shared management of public spaces, community building, and the production of the common as a political principle of self-governance.

Jasmine Lorenzini · Politics and Governance · Global

This article analyzes the action repertoire of food democracy to assess the influence of market-based logics on various forms of food activism. It addresses which forms of political participation citizens use to democratize the food regime, which conceptions of democracy relate to these forms, and which critiques of market-based politics apply. The article highlights the widespread risk of unequal participation, crowding out, commodification, and state retreat across forms of participation used to democratize food regimes.

Nicolas Bricas, Damien Conaré · DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals) · Global

The 20th century marked a significant shift in how cities approach their food supply. While the revival of urban food policies extends beyond urban agriculture and food production, urban agriculture can play a role in reintroducing nature and agriculture into the heart of the city while rebuilding social ties. The challenge is less about feeding cities, given its limited production potential, and more about its symbolic dimension.

Julian Cribb · Cambridge University Press eBooks · Global

This paper points out that none of the world's megacities can feed themselves, and food chain risks pose an imminent threat of starvation. It presents concepts such as climate-proof food supplies, novel urban food production systems, the importance of urban permaculture, rewilding, and developing wise consumers as solutions to urban food risk. However, it does not explicitly state that these solutions fully resolve the issue of urban food self-sufficiency.

Franklin Wagner, Lindsey Payne · Purdue Journal of Service-Learning and International Engagement · United States (Lafayette)

In summer 2016, Purdue University researchers collaborated with Lafayette's GrowLocal Urban Gardens Network in Lafayette, Indiana, to conduct a baseline analysis of current community gardening initiatives. Using qualitative and quantitative data collection methods, they identified motivations and barriers to participation through stakeholder interviews and focus groups. The study indicated that urban gardens as community spaces may serve a greater purpose than providing fresh food, and its results informed a planning document for GrowLocal with strategic recommendations for governance, communication, event integration, and collaborative grants.

Rosangela Medeiros Hespanhol · Confins · Portugal

This field research in Portugal analyzed urban gardens, identifying both spontaneously emerging gardens with no public oversight and those organized by public authorities. Interviews revealed that urban agriculture facilitates subsistence food production without pesticides, creates intergenerational and intercultural coexistence spaces, fosters social cohesion through experience exchange, and promotes environmental education. These findings emphasize the social and cultural importance of urban cultivation practices.

Iwona Bisaga, Priti Parikh, Claudia Loggia · Sustainability · South Africa (Durban)

This study explores challenges and opportunities for sustainable urban farming as an integrated environmental management strategy for upgrading informal settlements in three case studies in Durban, South Africa. It demonstrates the need for municipalities to support community-driven processes for urban agriculture initiatives and sustained investment for maintenance. Policymakers are urged to create an enabling environment for academics, NGOs, and the private sector to co-develop water-efficient solutions and leverage local community structures.

Lucy Rose Wright, Ross Fraser Young · Manchester University Press eBooks · Global

This chapter introduces the concept of political gardening, contextualizing its rise within neoliberal processes and academic interest in urban gardening. It conflates political gardening with injustice, drawing on Rawls' theory of social justice. The chapter uses case study examples to define political gardening as a six-stage iterative process that participants undergo to address injustices and become engaged, democratized citizens.

Carl Zulauf · EСONOMY FINANСES MANAGEMENT Topical issues of science and practical activity · United States

The Agriculture Improvement Act of 2018, the latest US farm bill, authorized programmatic changes without major spending realignment across its 12 titles. Commodity assistance payments are now more closely tied to market conditions, and commitment to private-public partnerships for environmental issues increased. US land conservation programs are evolving into a pyramid policy approach, and mandatory funding for research, extension, and agricultural export programs saw significant increases. Issues addressed across multiple titles include urban agriculture, organic production, and assistance for various farmer groups.

Pierluigi Nicolin · IGI Global eBooks · Global

This article describes the urban farming movement as a global phenomenon, emerging in cities worldwide from Mumbai to Tokyo, where cultivated areas produce food distributed locally. Driven largely by the poor and women on small farms, this politico-cultural movement integrates with urban ecosystems through food production, educational aims, and sustainability. It creates new landscapes that warrant aesthetic analysis and could influence urban visual conventions and lifestyles if scaled up.

Joeli Silva de Souza, Ryzia de Cássia Vieira Cardoso, Lídice Almeida Arlego PARAGUASSÚ, Sidione Ferreira dos Santos · Revista de Nutrição · Brazil (Salvador-Bahia)

A cross-sectional exploratory study in Salvador-Bahia characterized community gardens, with five out of seven gardens participating and data collected from 13 horticulturists. 80.0% of gardens lacked land legalization, 100.0% operated without technical support, and 60.0% had no social organization. Major difficulties included lack of funding, volunteers, and water use restrictions, indicating insufficient policies limited technical support and financing.

Antoine Perrin · Working paper/Working paper CIRIEC ... · Global

A study examining that, alongside calls from international institutions and states for food security through large-scale subsidies and improved market access, small initiatives addressing access to healthy, sustainable food are emerging everywhere - farmers' self-help groups, shared gardens, community-supported agriculture, cooperative supermarkets, and similar organisations - and analysing the discourse and practices of 20 such initiatives dealing with agriculture and food. The study drew on roughly 500 hours of fieldwork within the initiatives and 50 interviews with project planners, coordinators, and monitors, chosen from two contrasting social and economic contexts: Nancy, a medium-sized French town, and Ahmedabad, a large Indian city. The results identify two major trends common between France and India and across small farmers, shared gardens, cooperatives, and other social and solidarity initiatives: first, a general call for localised, short food circuits, with producers and consumers seeking a direct connection to each other or growing their own food; and second, participants not claiming to be part of a recent innovative wave but instead falling back on traditional ways to grow, sell, and cook food. The initiatives studied were themselves small in scale, with around 200 participants each.

Jessica Ann Diehl, Kate Oviatt, Amanda Jennifer Chandra, Harpreet Kaur · Sustainability · Global

This study examined household food security among migrant urban farmers by surveying and conducting semi-structured interviews with market-oriented small-to-medium scale farmers in three rapidly urbanizing cities: Delhi, India; Jakarta, Indonesia; and Quito, Ecuador. Participation in urban agriculture was found to have a positive impact on household food security through direct means (self-consumption) and indirect means (improved income and access), though the form of low-income migrant urban agriculture differed across the three cities.

Daniel Imhoff, Christina Badaracoo · Island Press/Center for Resource Economics eBooks · United States

This piece discusses the growth of the local food movement in the United States, describing consumers increasingly seeking organically grown fruits and vegetables and pasture-raised meat, eggs, and dairy, and using their food spending to support local economies, family farmers, and animal-welfare standards. It states that farmers markets and community gardens are becoming dynamic social hubs in urban areas and are pushing municipalities to change laws to allow more urban farming.

Maurice Mitchell, Amara Roca Iglesias · Frontiers of Architectural Research · Global

This research explores opportunities for creating a green city on the recently secured Bagmati riverbanks in Kathmandu, Nepal, an area subject to rapid inward migration by landless rural farmers. It asks what architectural theory and practice can contribute to supporting the fit between emergent bottom-up initiatives and top-down city investments, developing loose fit theory, research methods, and reflective practice to investigate latent possibilities, assemble a narrative of embedded change, and create spatial imaginaries of topographical change on the riverbanks. It argues that architectural theory and practice can play a role in integrating migrants into civic institutions and helping generate a greener city by making explicit the relationship between setting and occupant, stimulating and representing alternative imaginaries, and framing civic discourse.

Yasinta Ratna Esti Wulandari, Anastasia Tatik Hartanti, Bernard Atviano · Jurnal Perkotaan · Indonesia

A hydroponic experiment in Indonesia tested the effect of plant growth regulators on water spinach (kangkung, Ipomoea aquatica) yield. Treatments included a control (AB-Mix), IAA (indole acetic acid) at 0.5 ppm, BAP (benzyl adenine purine) at 0.5 and 1.0 ppm, and combined IAA/BAP at 0.5/1.0 ppm, measuring leaf number, plant height, antioxidant content and water content. Morphological growth was most optimal under 0.5 ppm IAA, while 1.0 ppm BAP produced the shortest average plant height, fewest leaves and shortest root length. Chlorophyll testing showed 0.5 ppm IAA had the highest total chlorophyll content, averaging 9.55 μg/ml, and the authors conclude 0.5 ppm IAA had the most positive effect among the treatments tested.

Rudy Dunlap, Justin Harmon, Bradley H. Camp · Annals of Leisure Research · United States

An ethnographic study of volunteer participation in an urban farm in Austin, Texas, United States, in which researchers spent three years documenting participants' activities through participant observation and interviewing. Guided by the concept of "civil leisure," the study analyzed voluntary participation as a leisure practice oriented toward civic issues, finding that participation functioned as a means of (1) fostering self-reliance through peer education, (2) establishing and strengthening place-based social networks, and (3) addressing civic concerns related to infrastructure and food security. These findings are interpreted through Zygmunt Bauman's concepts of liquid modernity and liquid fear, and the study offers recommendations for how municipalities might cultivate residents' civic impulses through urban agriculture.

Julian Cribb · Cambridge University Press eBooks · Global

This concluding chapter lists the book's policy recommendations without presenting new data: build a global food system based on regenerative farming, aquaculture and urban food production; redesign cities to recycle nutrients and water into local, climate-proof food production under permaculture principles; reallocate 20% of world military spending to food-based conflict prevention; rewild half the planet under leadership of small farmers and indigenous peoples; introduce a "Year of Food" in every primary school; and put women in leadership across business, politics, government, religion and society.

Sejabaledi Agnes Rankoana · Journal of Water and Climate Change · South Africa

A study in the Sagole community of Limpopo Province, South Africa, assessed the use of geothermal hot spring water as an adaptation practice to improve subsistence crop production. Focus group discussions with 45 subsistence farmers who grow and maintain crops in a community garden irrigated by the hot spring found that farmers were aware rainfall in the Sagole community is becoming scarce, and that this rainfall scarcity is negatively impacting subsistence crop production, characterized by poor productivity. In response, farmers had developed their own irrigation system downstream of the geothermal hot spring, furrowing the water to the garden to irrigate vegetables and fruits year-round.

Richard B. Ford · · Africa

Field research in three rural Kenyan communities—Katheka, Mbusyani and Gilgil, each within a 90-minute drive of Nairobi—revisited earlier analyses and action plans meant to strengthen community institutions' capacity for natural resource management and production. The methodology combined questionnaires with group discussions and interactive data analysis drawing on Participatory Rural Appraisal techniques. The findings suggest that explicit attention to commercial crops suited to rainfed, dryland conditions would be more appropriate than Katheka's existing agricultural practices. The chapter concludes that a major new effort working with small, commercial, income-generating farmers in the drylands is needed to assist poor, small farmers such as those in Katheka, who are quickly running out of options.

Teresa Marat-Mendes, João Cunha Borges · Repositório do ISCTE-IUL · Europe

This 2019 presentation introduces the ongoing SPLACH (Spatial Planning for Change) research project focused on the Lisbon Metropolitan Area (LMA), Portugal, home to about 3 million people, most of whom live in peripheral residential areas developed over the 20th century. These areas face problems including social isolation and car dependency, while municipal and private initiatives, including the promotion of urban agriculture, have sought to counteract such issues. SPLACH has surveyed a number of case studies to theorize the planning and housing dynamics in the LMA and their impact on territorializing ethical principles grounded in urban agriculture initiatives. The presentation raises the question of what specific issues identified in the SPLACH case studies offer opportunities to rethink urban planning and urban form toward a more sustainable environment and to promote the social role of urban planning.

Devin C O'Mara · Fordham Research Commons (Fordham University) · United States (New York City)

This 2019 paper examines the potential of urban agriculture to increase food security and education for underprivileged children in New York City, United States. Chapter 1 addresses the issue of food insecurity among children, considering information on the number of children lacking access to healthy, fresh food. Chapter 2 traces the history of urban agriculture in New York City, from one person's rooftop to a broader sustainability movement. Chapter 3 examines the potential outcomes of integrating urban agriculture into social justice efforts for underprivileged children, covering food security, education, and physical and mental health. Chapter 4 analyzes how incorporating urban agriculture into future sustainable infrastructure could benefit everyone, not only children. Drawing on the preceding chapters, Chapter 5 offers recommendations for creating greater access to urban agriculture for children.