Research & reports

Elizabeth Berg · Scholars' Bank (University of Oregon) · United States

State and local policies promoting urban agriculture contribute to revitalizing postindustrial American cities. Urban food systems encompass aspects of producing, processing, marketing, distributing, and consuming food, providing a multiplicity of benefits and services for local residents. These benefits include improved access to outdoor recreation, economic vitality, health and wellbeing, landscape beautification, and environmental restoration.

Pierrette Hondagneu‐Sotelo · · United States (Los Angeles)

This chapter focuses on life in urban community gardens in Los Angeles, United States. Here, the poorest and most marginalized newcomer immigrants, including undocumented immigrants, gather to grow homeland vegetables, share community ties, and build new places of belonging. They transform discarded urban patches into oases of freedom, belonging, and homeland connection, producing bountiful vegetables and vibrant community connections.

Melissa N. Poulsen, Kristyna R. S. Hulland, Carolyn A. Gulas, Hieu M. Pham, Sarah L Dalglish, Rebecca K. Wilkinson, Peter J. Winch · Culture Agriculture Food and Environment · United States (Baltimore)

This qualitative study explored the perceived benefits of community gardening in Baltimore, Maryland, through in-depth and focus group interviews with community gardeners. Gardeners reported benefits at multiple levels, including psychological benefits and a connection with nature individually, trusting relationships and shared learning at the neighborhood level, and reclaiming city space and improving the food environment at the community level.

Melissa Johnston, Andre Knight-Lira, Zoë Mager, Nadine Mulrooney, Matthew Poppleton, Samantha Shaw, Matthew Wilkinson · · Canada (Peterborough)

This document compiles research reports written by students in the Environmental Resource Studies/Science (ERTS) 3160H class at Trent University in the winter of 2014. The students critically examined urban food forests around the world and made suggestions for designing a food forest in Peterborough. Urban food forests have the potential to provide the same services as current urban forests, but also produce food and perhaps increase biodiversity in the process.

Sarah Legg · Figshare · United States (Wyoming)

ACRES Student Farm, a University of Wyoming organization, has grown significantly over six years, providing local produce, CSA shares, composting, and educational opportunities. However, the farm suffers from continuous losses in efficiency and acquired knowledge due to the transient nature of its student management and workforce, leading to unsustainable internal functioning. This project aims to develop a management plan and handbook to address these issues and improve the farm's operational efficiency.

Manuel Pastor, Rachel Morello‐Frosch · Health Affairs · United States (California)

This article reviews shifts in community development, highlighting programs that integrate community development, public health, and civic engagement to address neighborhood distress and promote well-being. Examples include Sacramento, California's Building Healthy Communities program, which promoted community gardens and bike paths, and San Francisco, California's Sunnydale-Velasco housing revitalization initiative, which is transforming a public housing site into a mixed-income community. These cases illustrate the importance of interdisciplinary approaches for economic mobility, democratic participation, and community health.

Sarah Himmelheber · Journal of Progressive Human Services · United States

This study discusses incongruities between social work's professional values and dominant public and private responses to food insecurity. Empowerment theory is positioned as an evaluative lens to examine food assistance, and dominant forms of food assistance are scrutinized using its basic tenets. Innovative programs, including community gardens, community kitchens, and D.C. Central Kitchen, are highlighted for their potential to yield empowering outcomes.

Pierrette Hondagneu‐Sotelo · · United States (California)

This chapter discusses possibilities for rethinking and reinventing new models of garden making in Southern California and metropolitan regions more generally. In Southern California, diverse gardens promoting environmental and cultural sustainability, shared backyard gardening, organic vegetable gardening, wall gardens, and lawn removal efforts are observed. The chapter reviews these projects, looking at new efforts in private residential gardens, urban community gardens, and public spaces, with a focus on immigration and the Southern California region.

Nevin Cohen, Kristin Reynolds · Journal of Planning Education and Research · United States (New York City)

This article examines urban agriculture (UA) policy-making processes in New York City, focusing on aspects of UA not fully addressed by existing policies, plans, and research strategies. Interviews with UA stakeholders and an analysis of the city’s UA policy-making processes show that resource needs and race- and class-based disparities within the UA system persist.

Benjamin Drury, Renee Laliberte, Jared Watson, Connor Wilgress · Digital WPI · United States (Worcester)

The city of Worcester, MA, faces health issues due to economic instability and low access to affordable healthy food. While urban farming has the potential to address these problems, the city lacks an effective policy.

Katherine Luke · D-Scholarship@Pitt (University of Pittsburgh) · United States (Pittsburgh)

This study used a door-to-door survey in six Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania neighborhoods to measure the impact of community gardens on residents' perceptions of food access. It found that many gardeners do not consider gardening to improve their personal food security, and despite geographic proximity and expressed interest, community garden participation rates were low. Social and emotional barriers, including lack of gardening knowledge and racial prejudice, appeared to prevent residents from becoming active participants.

Cristina Connolly, H. Allen Klaiber · American Journal of Agricultural Economics · United States

This study used a hedonic model with firm-level prices and CSA characteristics from 453 CSA farms in Michigan, New York, Ohio, and Pennsylvania during the summer 2012 growing season to value CSA attributes. Results showed a price premium of approximately 7% for USDA organic certification, though this varied by state, but no premium for competing certified naturally grown programs. CSA farms exhibited little market power and appeared to act competitively.

Matt Murray · Journal of Political Ecology · United States (New York City)

Efrat Eizenberg's book "From the Ground Up" explores New York City's community gardens as spaces that resist the commodification of land. The book details the history of these gardens, including their emergence during the 1970s economic crisis when primarily Black and Hispanic residents transformed vacant land into communal green spaces. As the real estate market recovered in the 1980s, land values increased, and many gardens were threatened by gentrification pressures. Eizenberg analyzes these transformations at individual, collective, and institutional levels, highlighting how gardeners create common spaces, solidify interpersonal ties, and organize to defend their gardens.

Alexandra Jeanne Hiniker · Digital Commons - Hamline (Hamline University) · United States

This study surveyed Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) farms in Minnesota, asking farm owners and operators about demographics, farm specifics, and marketing practices. Results indicate that Minnesota's CSA community is robust and diverse in its offerings. It was found that face-to-face communication is preferred above all else to support farm activities.

Rafael Ângelo Fortunato, Elza Neffa · Revista Turismo em Análise · Brazil

This article reflects on the potential of solidarity tourism for local development, analyzing the "Horta Comunitária do Morro da Coroa" community garden in Brazil. Based on a literature review, phenomenology, and one year of participant observation, the study identified the potential of the "6Vs" of solidarity tourism as pillars for a new concept. It also found that network formation, as proposed, is an important instrument for political action aimed at strengthening local development initiatives.

Andrew Salman · TopSCHOLAR (Western Kentucky University) · United States (Bowling Green)

This research documented the transformation of a house in Bowling Green, KY, into a model sustainability home by the WKU Office of Sustainability as a case study. Using LEED Core Concepts, the study assessed the benefits of weatherization, solar energy array installation, and the conversion of the backyard into an edible landscape and community garden to mitigate stormwater flooding. Procedural and institutional barriers to sustainability initiatives were analyzed, and exceptional results, such as the collaborative community gardening organization Project Grow, were described as a model for other institutions.

David R. Koenig · BIOS · United States (Sacramento)

This research project, conducted at the University of California, Davis, aims to understand how elevated soil lead levels may affect urban gardening activities in Sacramento, CA. The study investigates the distribution of soil lead levels in the city and how knowledge of this information impacts the local community. Elevated soil lead levels are identified as a potential barrier to urban gardening.

Monique Centrone Stefani, Debbie Humphries, Rebecca Kline · The FASEB Journal · United States

This study implemented and evaluated a pilot intervention addressing chronic disease risk factors in a low-income Hispanic population in the United States. The New Haven Farms Fresh Produce Prescription program provided fresh produce, nutrition education, gardening education, and cooking demonstrations weekly over sixteen weeks of the agriculture season. Participants, recruited through a community health center, came weekly to a central urban agriculture site and completed baseline and follow-up assessments of dietary diversity, chronic disease risk, food security, and physical activity. Fifty-one people completed the baseline survey and 40 completed the follow-up survey; preliminary analysis showed approximately 30% had some food insecurity at baseline. The study reports on the development of this complex agriculture-based intervention as a pilot.

Carrie M. Macfarlane · Educational Media Reviews Online · Canada

A 2014 review of the documentary "The Suzuki Diaries: Future City" (2012/2013, 45 min), an episode of the CBC television series "The Nature of Things." The father-daughter hosts David Suzuki and Sarika Cullis-Suzuki travel in a compact Airstream trailer to four cities across southern Canada, covering urban agriculture in Montreal, urban revitalization in Toronto, a shift from a waste crisis to recycling success in Edmonton, and sustainable design and smart city building in Vancouver. The review notes that within the 45-minute runtime, conversations with engineers, designers, agriculturalists, and homeowners may feel too brief for some viewers, but recommends the film for classroom use on urban recycling, agriculture, public transit, green design, and revitalization programs.

Terence O'Connell · Community Development Journal · United States

An interview with Julie Ristau, Co-director, and Alexa Bradley, Program Director, of On the Commons (OTC) — a commons movement strategy center founded in 2001 — was conducted by Tom O'Connell in Minneapolis, Minnesota, on June 28, 2013. OTC uses workshops, presentations, and direct consultation to bring visibility to the commons movement and support the development of commons-based solutions and leadership, and in the interview both women describe how they came to the idea of the commons through prior community organizing experience.

Emily Corrigan-Kavanagh · · Canada

A pilot study is planned at St. Francis School in Harbour Grace, Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada — one of the few school gardens in the province and a greenhouse program described as a unique example of innovation in health, environment, agriculture, and education. Key informant interviews with parents, teachers, and community leaders involved in or interested in the project are planned, aiming to investigate the program's start and evolution, analyze facilitators and deterrents to keeping it running, identify its benefits, and identify key aspects for maintaining sustainability.

Nadia E. Navarrete-Tindall, Mara S. Aruguete, Yvonne Matthews, Margaret G. Hopper, Veronica Taylor, Jeff Hargrove, Robert Channer · MOspace Institutional Repository (University of Missouri) · United States

A presentation on Lincoln University's Sprouts and Roots Program, combining a farmers market, commercial kitchen, and community garden, was made at the 12th Latinos in the Heartland conference in St. Louis, Missouri, in 2014, and published in the conference's annual proceedings.

Kelsey Knoll, Kerry Mussel, Michelle Radley, Megan Severide, Kalyn Van Horne · cIRcle (University of British Columbia) · Canada

This report from the UBC Food System Project describes a management plan for a rooftop garden — allocating 166 m² to food crop production — planned for the new Student Union Building at the University of British Columbia's Vancouver campus, due for completion in 2014. Methods included assessing demand for garden space on campus, setting goals through meetings with stakeholders, reviewing past UBC Food System Project reports, researching the management structures of other community gardens, and developing the plan via cost-benefit analysis. The project found adequate interest in the rooftop garden and set goals including a student focus, peer-to-peer learning, community-building opportunities, promotion of food-system and sustainability issues, enhanced sustainability of the UBC food system, and cost neutrality, and determined that operation would require a coordinator — either a work-study student, a directed-studies student, or a paid position.

L. Fernández, Walter Alejandro Muiño, Pablo Valentín Ermini · Americanae (AECID Library) · Latin America

This ethnobotanical study examines the knowledge, uses and meanings that gardeners in the Zona Norte and Villa Germinal neighborhoods of Santa Rosa, La Pampa, Argentina, attach to weeds -- spontaneous plant species growing alongside cultivated crops. It collected and identified 57 weed species, found that roughly half of informants remove weeds without using them while the rest use them mainly as fertiliser and animal feed, that the most frequently cited use in the literature is medicinal, and that Cynodon dactylon ("gramilla") was the species appearing most often in the gardens while also being regarded as a "pest."

Benjamin Shepard · Theory in Action · United States (New York City)

A case study of Time's Up!, a New York City environmental group examined over its 25-year history from 1987 to 2012. Rooted in New York's squatter movement, the group built a DIY approach to environmental activism advocating nonpolluting transportation and sustainable urban living, supporting community gardens and group bike rides, and reclaiming public space through direct action as its guiding principle, linking social networks to community-building outside institutional channels.