Research & reports

Poppy Nicol, Alice Taherzadeh · Sustainability · United Kingdom (Wales)

This article explores the potential of cooperative working methods to scale out sustainable and just food systems in Wales. Based on interviews with stakeholders in Wales and international case studies, it identifies opportunities and challenges. Findings suggest that cooperative and community-based approaches, including CSA and food hubs, have the potential for sustainable food production and distribution, emphasizing the importance of capacity building and community participation.

Justyna Mokras-Grabowska · Miscellanea Geographica · Poland

Allotment gardening (AGs) in Europe, including Poland, is a tradition stemming from rapid urban industrialization, now emphasizing community, social, ecological, creative, and entertainment functions beyond economic and recreational roles. The Polish Allotment Association undertakes numerous initiatives, such as the "Open Social Programme of Allotment Gardens Development," to protect AGs from liquidation and promote their use for public and non-public purposes. This program redefines the perception of AGs in Poland and contributes to their infrastructural development.

Mirosław Struś, Magdalena Kalisiak-Mędelska, Michał Nadolny, Marian Kachniarz, Magdalena Raftowicz-Filipkiewicz · Sustainability · Poland

A survey of 400 agricultural holdings across nine municipalities of the Wrocław district in Poland examined the potential for Community-Supported Agriculture (CSA) to develop in the district, given its proximity to the Wrocław market in Lower Silesia. The research found that the CSA model opens opportunities for long-lasting cooperation between farmers and consumers, but that implementing it requires raising the prices farmers charge for their produce by about 50%, along with solutions to problems related to the cost of transporting agricultural products.

Kévin Bernard, Aurélie Bonein, Douadia Bougherara · RePEc: Research Papers in Economics · France

A study eliciting inequality aversion and risk preferences among 162 French community-supported agriculture (CSA) consumers through incentivized field experiments. Consumers were found to be concerned about payoff inequalities, showing advantageous inequality aversion toward CSA farmers but also disadvantageous inequality seeking. Consumers were risk averse and loss averse and distorted probabilities. The study observes that inequality aversion and risk preferences in the loss domain may complement each other in ways that strengthen consumer support for CSA farmers.

Giampiero Mazzocchi, Davide Marino · International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health · Italy (Rome)

A 2020 study of the process by which a local group of stakeholders drew up a proposal for a metropolitan-scale food policy for Rome, Italy, combining a network analysis of the bottom-up process — who took part, what was negotiated — with an analysis of the Roman food system and an overview of urban food policies in Italy. The authors' starting point is that although numerous food-related initiatives have appeared in Rome in recent years, they are unrelated to one another and lack coordination and political coherence. The analysis maps the actors and topics involved and identifies what a more comprehensive participatory process for a systemic metropolitan food strategy would require. As the title 'a policy without politics' indicates, the paper records a situation where participatory policy drafting advanced without the political backing needed to institutionalise it — evidence that a participatory process does not by itself deliver a policy.

· NJAS: Wageningen Journal of Life Sciences · Germany (Ruhr)

Empirical study of urban and peri-urban farms in Germany's Ruhr metropolis, finding that farms' adjustments to urban conditions—diversification and multifunctional business models—are the main factor in their economic success.

Doernberg A., Horn P., Zasada I., Piorr A. · Food Policy · Germany

Analyzes key actors and policy instruments in urban food policy across German city regions, finding integrated food strategies still rare and informational/procurement instruments most common.

Barbara Maćkiewicz, Raúl Puente Asuero, Antonio Garrido Almonacid · Quaestiones Geographicae · Spain

This study investigated how urban allotment gardens in Baeza, Andalusia, Spain, affect the city’s sustainable development. The research showed that allotment gardens in Baeza endorsed all three pillars of sustainable city development: ecological, economic, and social. However, it was found that developing broader community relations on the city scale, reviving the declining local grocery market, and disseminating environmental initiatives that allotment gardens could promote and facilitate were missing.

Roberto Henke, Francesco Vanni · · Italy

This paper examines the multifunctional role of peri-urban agriculture in Italy through a comparative analysis of farms located within the main Italian urban poles. The analysis identifies both internal and external drivers influencing farmers' decisions to diversify income towards multifunctional activities. It shows that, within the post-productivist paradigm, peri-urban farms can play a pivotal role in sustainable land use and in enhancing entrepreneurs' provision of diverse social and economic services to the urban population.

Marion Tharrey, Marlène Pérignon, Pascale Scheromm, Caroline Méjean, Nicole Darmon · BMC Public Health · France

The JArDinS study is a quasi-experimental protocol designed to assess the impact of community garden participation on the adoption of more sustainable lifestyles in Montpellier, France. It will recruit 80 new gardeners and 80 matched control volunteers, measuring lifestyle sustainability across social/health, environmental, and economic dimensions over one year using food supply diaries, accelerometers, and questionnaires. The study aims to compare outcome changes between the groups to evaluate causality.

N. R. Baker, Simon Popay, James Bennett, Moya Kneafsey · Journal of Agriculture Food Systems and Community Development · United Kingdom

This paper introduced "net yield efficiency" (NYE) to compare food system performance by accounting for yields, loss, and waste. A UK case study compared fresh vegetable and salad waste between a community supported agriculture (CSA) scheme and the supermarket system. The study found that the CSA system wasted only 6.71% by weight across all stages, dramatically outperforming the supermarket system which wasted 40.7–47.7%. These findings highlight significant differences between the systems and suggest NYE offers a more accurate measure of food system performance.

Aila‐Leena Matthies, Ingo Stamm, Tuuli Hirvilammi, Kati Närhi · Sustainability · Europe

This article analyzed 50 examples of ecosocial innovations in Finland, Italy, Germany, Belgium, and the UK to investigate how they integrate ecological, economic, and social sustainability goals. Ecosocial innovations were shown to combine these goals through five integrative practices: diversity of activities, successful networking, addressing new livelihood, focus on food, and explicit conceptual work on sustainability. These practices often emerge as pragmatic solutions to local needs and are valuable as forerunners for sustainability transition.

Rebecca St. Clair, Michael Hardman, Richard Armitage, Graeme Sherriff · Urban Studies · United Kingdom (Manchester)

This study, conducted in Wythenshawe, Manchester, UK, highlights the difficulties of collaboration among organizations in a lottery-funded urban agriculture project. Due to local authority cutbacks and a lack of funding, community groups and charitable organizations compete for space and resources, leading to a "siege mentality" where organizational self-preservation takes precedence over cooperation. This paradoxically results in groups with similar goals working against each other instead of collaborating.

Sabrina Giuca, Simonetta De Leo · ECONOMIA AGRO-ALIMENTARE · Italy (Rome)

This study investigated the role of Alternative Food Networks (AFNs) using the "Kalulu" network, a web platform operating in the rural and peri-urban territory of the Metropolitan City of Rome, as a case study. Analysis revealed that this platform creates a local market recognizing fair and sustainable exchange value between producers and consumers. This commercialization model increases consumer awareness and responsibility regarding consumption choices while also ensuring the economic needs of small farmers.

Giuseppe Pulighe, Flavio Lupia · Sustainability · Italy (Milan)

A spatiotemporal quantification of urban agriculture in Milan, Italy, assessed its food self-provisioning potential using Google Earth images from 2007 and 2014. The study found that even in the best-case scenario, the current urban agriculture production (98 ha of vegetable gardens, 2539 ha of arable land) is insufficient to meet the vegetable and cereal consumption needs of over 1.3 million city residents. It could only satisfy approximately 63,700 vegetable consumers and 321,000 cereal consumers.

Esther Sanyé‐Mengual, Kathrin Specht, Erofili Grapsa, Francesco Orsini, Giorgio Gianquinto · Sustainability · Europe

This study evaluated 11 urban agriculture case studies across Italy, Germany, France, and Spain to identify innovation triggers, characterize novelties, assess their innovativeness, and link them to sustainability. Researchers found 147 novelties, with more in environmental and social dimensions than economic, often originating from specific problems. The analysis suggests that innovativeness enhances overall sustainability in urban agriculture projects.

Anna Boneta, Martí Rufí-Salís, Mireia Ercilla‐Montserrat, Xavier Gabarrell, Joan Rieradevall · Frontiers in Plant Science · Spain (Barcelona)

This study analyzed an 18 m2 polyculture rooftop soilless urban home garden in Barcelona city center from 2015 to 2017 to estimate its degree of self-sufficiency and sustainability. A total productivity of 10.6 kg/m2/year was achieved, estimating that 5.3 m2 would be needed to fulfill the yearly vegetable requirements of an average citizen. While a high degree of self-sufficiency was achieved, fertilizers and their associated leachates accounted for the highest environmental impacts in all studied categories.

Michael Hardman, Mags Adams, Melissa Barker, Luke Beesley · Manchester University Press eBooks · United Kingdom (Todmorden)

The Incredible Edible Todmorden (IET) movement in Todmorden, UK, was investigated using a qualitative approach. The scheme was found to have an overwhelmingly positive impact on the town, providing social, environmental, and economic benefits and contributing to a more just food movement through its "free for all" philosophy. However, negative aspects were also highlighted, including maintenance issues and a lack of perceived inclusivity in some parts.

Lucia Škamlová, Agnieszka Wilkaniec, Magdalena Szczepańska, Vladimír Bačík, Petra Hencelová · Urban forestry & urban greening · Europe

This research conducted a comparative analysis of community gardens in Bratislava, Slovakia, and Poznań, Poland, to understand their development and management in post-socialist urban environments. Extensive field research, including exploratory walks, participatory observation, and semi-structured interviews with community garden representatives, was used. The analysis revealed both similarities and differences in city-specific approaches to establishing, managing, and developing community gardens, concluding that a "copy-paste" management approach does not exist and practices vary by local context.

Guido Sali, Federica Monaco, Stefano Corsi, Chiara Mazzocchi · Archivio Istituzionale della Ricerca (Universita Degli Studi Di Milano) · Europe

This paper adopts a territorial approach to analyze agro-food systems in five European metropolitan regions. The methodology aims to assess the capacities of urban and peri-urban agriculture to meet urban food demand and its economic role. Preliminary results are provided to inform regulations in the agro-food sector.

David Watson · Organization · United Kingdom

This article explores the experience and organization of labor within a Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) scheme in the United Kingdom, drawing on Marx’s concept of alienation. It presents a case study of how labor in a CSA scheme counteracts experiences of alienation created by capitalism and considers how this might inform the reorganization of labor in the food system more generally.

Sofia Nikolaidou · Manchester University Press eBooks · Europe

This chapter examines new forms of urban gardening, often involving informal and temporary reuse of vacant land, and their impact on urban green space governance and planning practices. Using examples from Greece and Switzerland, it highlights differences and similarities in practices, social and institutional contexts, and collaborative governance patterns. The study calls attention to the critical role of the temporary nature of these initiatives, which affects new configurations of urban green areas and public space, and related planning practices.

Monika Szopińska-Mularz, Steffen Lehmann · Future Cities and Environment · United Kingdom

This paper explores the adaptive reuse potential of obsolete inner-city multi-storey car parks for urban farming, specifically hydroponics, in three UK cities (Portsmouth, Bristol, Brighton). The first stage of a multiple-site case study identified planning and technical limitations and opportunities through policy analysis, layout exploration, and field observation. The analysis showed that while these structures present similar adaptive reuse challenges, they could be converted for farming to address social, environmental, and economic issues, though this requires planning document innovations and further efficiency assessment.

Thomas Krikser, Ingo Zasada, Annette Piorr · Sustainability · Germany

An empirical study in Germany combined qualitative and quantitative survey data with multi-value qualitative comparative analysis across three urban agriculture models — self-harvesting gardens, intercultural gardens, and community gardens — to identify necessary and sufficient conditions for socio-economic success. It found that different value systems and cost-benefit considerations applied across models: a service-focused farmer-consumer relationship ensuring self-reliance mattered most for self-harvesting gardens, self-reliance combined with sharing mattered for intercultural gardens, and community gardening success depended on self-governance and individually determined factors beyond production output, with participants across models showing a post-productive orientation that goes beyond conventional trade-off thinking.

Gerlinde Behrendt, Sarah Peter, Simone Sterly, Anna Maria Häring · Working paper/Working paper CIRIEC ... · Germany

Empirical evidence on community financing in the German organic food sector shows that a still-niche but growing number of firms use citizen-sourced funding to substitute or complement bank credit. The models are classified into four types — pure financing instruments (crowdfunding, profit participation rights, direct loans), legal-form-based models (cooperatives, corporations), intermediary-pooled financing (citizen shareholder corporations, land purchase cooperatives), and others such as community supported agriculture, leasing and sponsorship — and their role is discussed in easing access to capital for farms facing rising land prices and limited access to traditional bank credit.