Research & reports

Nizzatul Amaliyah · Studi Pustaka · Global

This study investigated the level of community participation and factors influencing the success of urban farming programs. Urban farming is presented as a community empowerment program to address urban food issues, stating that its success requires the community to be able to provide food independently and to be involved in the planning, implementation, supervision, and evaluation processes. Factors influencing success include community perception and socio-economic factors.

Les Levidow · AgEcon Search (University of Minnesota, USA) · United Kingdom (London)

This research examines the role of 'community' in London's food initiatives and how it stimulates congenial activities through social innovation. These initiatives involve forms of social innovation such as enhancing socio-political capabilities, fulfilling unsatisfied needs, and redefining societal problems. London's food initiatives face challenges in combining these diverse aims and activities.

Matthew Reed, Evy Mettepenningen, Paul Swagemakers, M.D. Domínguez García, Ingrid Jahrl, Marlinde Koopmans · Urban Agriculture & Regional Food Systems · Europe

This paper examined urban food governance in four European city-regions: Bristol (UK), Ghent (Belgium), Vigo (Spain), and Zurich (Switzerland). The case studies demonstrated the role of citizens in urban food and the challenges this presents to city-region governance. Urban food activists, through horizontal networking and clear communication of demands, have raised significant questions about how cities are governed.

Maclóvia Corrêa da Silva, Cristianne Teixeira Carneiro, Ana Lúcia Barbosa Monteiro, Natália Pereira Marinelli, Eloy Fassi Casagrande · Dialnet (Universidad de la Rioja) · Brazil (Teresina)

This study analyzed the characteristics of urban agricultural work in community gardens in the Dirceu and Renacimiento II neighborhoods of Teresina - PI, Brazil. A field survey of 32 farmers found that 71.88% worked 4-8 hours daily, 59.38% were retirees, and 50% worked with family collaboration. Income from vegetable sales showed 50% earned up to one minimum wage and 43% up to two minimum wages, but the activity depends on land owners, public policies, seed producers, and traders.

R John Little · OpenSIUC (Southern Illinois University Carbondale) · United States

A research study evaluated fertility requirements for 'Sweet Hungarian' Peppers and 'Savor' Charentais Melons grown in a three-inch extensive green roof medium on the Southern Illinois University campus. Six treatments were applied to peppers and four treatments to melons, each replicated three times. This study contributes to optimizing appropriate fertility treatments for green roof agriculture.

Kelly Gordon, Adrianne Lickers Xavier, Hannah Tait Neufeld · Canadian Food Studies / La Revue canadienne des études sur l alimentation · Canada

The Healthy Roots initiative in the Six Nations community in southern Ontario, Canada, aimed to promote traditional food consumption among First Nation families facing food insecurity. A small number of participants who consumed only locally available foods reported improved blood glucose control, positive weight changes, and increased traditional food knowledge. The program also fostered new relationships and partnerships, including with the community organization Our Sustenance, to further community-based initiatives like developing a Haudenosaunee Food Guide.

Toni Karge · Journal of Place Management and Development · Germany (Berlin)

This participatory action research examines the Himmelbeet urban community garden in Berlin from an urban planning perspective, using placemaking principles for ex-post analysis. The study found that the garden functions as a placemaking scheme, despite not being planned with placemaking instruments. Its process demonstrates strategies to address exclusion, disinvestment, and depoliticization of public spaces, showcasing the potential of citizen-controlled placemaking.

Chihambakwe, Michelle, Mafongoya, Paramu, L., Jiri, Obert · University of Zimbabwe Institutional Repository (University of Zimbabwe) · Africa

This review examines the application of food sovereignty principles in urban and peri-urban agriculture in Zimbabwe. It notes that despite urban households integrating these practices into their livelihoods, institutional arrangements governing them remain ambivalent. The review concludes that the failure to involve all stakeholders undermines urban and peri-urban agriculture, leading to increased food insecurity and unsustainable practices.

M.K. Saleh, Azher Mustafa · Journal of Agricultural Extension · Nigeria (Kaduna State)

This study investigated food security and productivity among 213 urban farmers in Kaduna State, Nigeria, using interviews and statistical analysis. Results showed that 54.5% of households were food insecure. A regression model predicted that the probability of urban farming households being food secure was 51%, indicating a limited effect on food security despite urban farming efforts.

Alec Thornton, Kristen Lyons, Scott Sharpe · · Australia

This chapter examines how urban spaces in Australia are being transformed for community gardens through social movements and community interventions for the expansion of urban agriculture. It focuses on community gardeners as part of active social movements, exploring the urban context driven by the challenges of urbanization. The study applies Lefebvre's framework on the social production of space and discusses findings from qualitative interview data collected from two city case studies.

Birgit Peuker · · Germany

This chapter discusses whether community supported agriculture (CSA) constitutes a real alternative to the conventional food system. From the perspective of social movement research, CSA is viewed not as a niche that will replace the agri-food system in the future, but rather as a space for learning and expressing sustainability. The analysis is based on experiences with CSA in Germany and includes comparisons with developments in other European countries.

Natália Peres Almeida · · Global

This research aimed to identify the contribution of community gardens to healthy food for farmers and their families, with objectives of Food and Nutrition Security, Human Right to Adequate Food, and Food Sovereignty. Interviews were conducted with the president and farmers in the community garden, randomly addressed during their activities. It was concluded that the community garden significantly contributed to the healthy eating of farmers and their families through the production of in natura food of vegetal origin, of sufficient quality and quantity.

David Hallberg · Journal of Sociology and Social Anthropology · Global

This paper introduces community gardens as multipurpose, technological systems with dynamic boundaries. It also aims to revise the notions of food security and health in relation to these systems.

Marie Gisclard, Richard Raymond · Institut français d’études anatoliennes eBooks · Turkey (Diyarbakır)

This article examines the Hevsel Gardens in Diyarbakır, Turkey, which face sustainability challenges due to the city's growth and an asymmetric relationship where the city dominates the gardens. It highlights the unbalanced relationships between the gardens and the city, stemming from a lack of quality and quantity in water resources. The coexistence and competition of three socio-political projects, including centralized political networks and farmer-specific adaptations, call for a re-examination of this relationship and an alternative to the concentration of powers in the metropolis.

Kathryn Engle · UKnowledge (University of Kentucky) · United States (Kentucky)

This project explores the agricultural heritage and social landscape of the Stinking Creek community in Knox County, Kentucky, focusing on the Lend-A-Hand Center Grow Appalachia Gardening Program. Through participatory research, it examines the diverse economy and potential for post-coal futures in central Appalachia. The program developed agricultural initiatives, re-localized food systems via home and community gardens, and established a farmers' market over three years.

P Cacciari · DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals) · Italy

This article argues that diverse economic forms exist beyond the market economy, including natural, gift, domestic, informal, and solidarity economies. Solidarity economy, based on ethical principles like sustainability, mutuality, cooperation, and democracy, is presented as a transformative, post-capitalist alternative applicable to all sectors of production, distribution, and exchange. Case studies include buildings as common goods in Naples and Arvaia, a community-supported agriculture initiative in Bologna.

Shiuhhuah Serena Chou · ISLE Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment · United States

Urban foraging reemerged at the turn of the twenty-first century as a mode of urban food production, leading to a diverse body of literature including field guides and personal accounts. This literature suggests that the resurgence of urban foraging, as seen in works like Michael Pollan's The Omnivore's Dilemma (2006) and Tama Matsuoka Wong's Foraged Flavor (2012), may be more than a fad. The practice of finding, harvesting, and consuming edible wild plants challenges the idea of American cities as food deserts, presenting urban spaces as sites of cultural and environmental sustainability.

Erin Whittingham, Nhu Tuyên Lê, Claudio Vitari, Roxana Bobulescu · International Journal of Agricultural Resources Governance and Ecology · Global

This paper focuses on the transitional features of community supported agriculture (CSA) and its transformational potential for agricultural system change. The research developed a framework that highlights the 'transitional' CSA model and compares it with conventional and 'ideal' CSA models. This framework helps understand how CSAs adapt to their context and demonstrates their transformational potential for agricultural system change, drawing on numerous narratives from the broad literature on CSAs.

Céline Henne · European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy · Europe

A review of French philosopher Joëlle Zask's book "La Démocratie aux Champs," which argues against the prejudice that democratic ideals essentially grow out of and thrive in big cities and are antithetical to agricultural life. It notes that both in nineteenth-century Europe and in the contemporary United States, peasants have widely been seen as conservative, bigoted and apolitical, while urban residents are typically seen as more progressive and politically minded. Against this view, and against an alternative romanticized picture of an idyllic rural world, Zask argues that the values and practices associated with democratic freedom "primarily come... from the farm" (p. 7), with "farm" understood broadly to encompass different kinds of agriculture, including urban community gardens, rather than being restricted to the peasant lifeworld.

Patrick Oehler, Nicola Thomas, Timo Huber · Universitäts- und Landesbibliothek Münster · Europe

This German-language sociological article uses the example of allotment garden communities (Familiengartengemeinschaften) to argue that sustainability research and local policy should attend not only to self-identified pioneer groups such as new community gardens, but also to traditional allotment garden groups that are less familiar with sustainability discourse yet still act as practitioners of sustainable resource use; the article argues that sustainable development requires a democratic dialogue between such different actors.

Céline Veríssimo, Leo Name · · Africa

This essay by Veríssimo and Name examines community practices of edible landscaping in outdoor domestic spaces in the city of Dondo, Mozambique, framing them as a form of quiet resistance to marginalization and as a means of household-community empowerment; the authors argue these diversified spaces support food sovereignty and call on landscape architects to draw on this knowledge, which they say is typically disregarded by professional practice.

Zhenzhong Si, Theresa Schumilas, Steffanie Scott · · China

This chapter proposes a typology of alternative food networks (AFNs) in China, including community-supported agriculture farms, ecological farmers' markets, buying clubs, and garden plot rentals, illustrating each with specific cases. It then examines the socio-economic and political conditions shaping China's AFNs, arguing that Chinese AFNs are consumer-driven and that there is a potential inconsistency in values between AFN organizers and their customers. This consumer-driven feature is argued to shape the AFNs' alternativeness by foregrounding food safety requirements as a core attribute while giving less prominence to ecological and social values.

K. Michelle Glowa, Monika Egerer, Vicki Jones · Agroecology and Sustainable Food Systems · United States

This case study of the Beach Flats Community Garden in the United States theorizes an "agroecologies of displacement," arguing that farmers are increasingly uprooted through involuntary displacement and that this displacement and dispossession actively reshape agricultural practices in farming communities. The authors argue that food movements, and transformative agroecology in particular, cannot be understood without a historical analysis of displacement and dispossession under capitalist land systems — framing land loss and forced relocation, not secure access, as a structuring condition of the garden's agroecology.

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.

Ciska Ulug, Lummina Horlings · Local Environment · Europe (Netherlands)

Using in-depth interviews and participant observation in rural, peri-urban, and urban community gardens in the North of the Netherlands, this research examined the conditions and processes through which resourcefulness—a community's capacity to engage with its local resource base—facilitates social innovation. Comparing differing contexts, it identified five enablers for altering social relations and community empowerment: clear goals and motivations, diversity in garden resources, experimental knowledge processes, strong internal support and recognition, and place-based practices.