Research & reports

Caitlin M. Port, Markus Moos · Planning Practice and Research · Canada

A study used Geographic Information System analysis to measure land potential for urban agriculture in four sub-urban neighborhoods in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada. Findings show that 49-58% of the land measured has potential to support urban agriculture; in older post-war sub-urban neighborhoods this potential lies primarily in private yards, while newer sub-urban neighborhoods incorporating new urbanist ideals have smaller yards but more public green space, meaning challenges and opportunities for urban agriculture differ between older and newer sub-urban areas due to differences in neighborhood design.

Travis P. Marcotte · Journal of Agricultural & Food Information · United States

An article based on a speech by Travis Marcotte, Executive Director of the Intervale Center in Vermont, USA, recounts the Center's innovation and leadership over more than 25 years, spanning agricultural land reclamation, Community Supported Agriculture, riparian restoration, and large-scale composting through to farm incubation, food hubs, and community celebrations of local food. It also describes the Center's response to climate change, environmental healing, and efforts to connect people with good food and the benefits of a healthier food system.

Michelle Anami, Doris Cheung, Lindsey Fox, Briony Martens, Delara Salehi, Natalie Van Veelen, Kelsey Wolfe · cIRcle (University of British Columbia) · Canada

A student project report produced under the UBC SEEDS program at the University of British Columbia, Canada, dated 2014. The abstract consists only of a disclaimer stating that it presents a student's findings, opinions, conclusions and recommendations, that it is not an official UBC document, and that it may not reflect current UBC activities. No specific study content, methods or findings are given in the abstract.

Nicole M Reese · USF Scholarship Repository (University of San Francisco) · United States (California)

This study assessed the feasibility of rooftop farming in the Small Business Mix Zone of West Oakland, California. The area has more than one million square feet of untapped rooftop space, and selling produce grown there at local farmers markets, produce stands, grocery stores, businesses, and restaurants could generate up to $4 million in revenue. Rooftop production would help the City of Oakland meet its goal of 30% locally sourced food and supply fresh fruits and vegetables to West Oakland, a food desert currently lacking access to them.

Joann Lo · Journal of Critical Thought and Praxis · United States

A first-hand essay by the executive director of the Food Chain Workers Alliance (FCWA) in the United States argues that despite growing interest in sustainable food production and systems — including community gardens, urban agriculture and "slow" food — the broader food movement has not fully integrated the voices and leadership of the workers who bring food from farm to table. It states that food workers, numbering almost 20 million in the U.S. alone, face multiple injustices including low wages, lack of benefits and dangerous working conditions that intersect with the sustainable-food movement's own concerns about food insecurity and access to healthy, affordable food, and recounts the FCWA's history and work from the author's own position.

Cláudia Souza, Paula Simas de Andrade · Sustainability in Debate · Brazil

This piece describes how, under the motto "community and government, a successful partnership," 34-year-old official Sheila Souza dos Santos turned a community garden program into a genuine space for citizenship in Itapoã, a satellite city of Brasília, Brazil. Reviving a community vegetable-production project brought access to healthier food for the community, the school, and the families working in it, and also generated a series of community initiatives involving children, youth, adults, and older people.

Lorelei L. Hanson, Deborah Schrader · · Canada

A participatory action case study examined the development of Edmonton, Canada's urban food policy from 2008 to 2013, using participant observation, semi-structured interviews and document analysis, coded and triangulated through a grounded-theory approach. Despite initial progressive changes in municipal policy and promising innovative food-system planning, the research found that Edmonton's city council was ultimately driven largely by a development agenda, following a pattern documented in other urban sustainability initiatives that foreclose political debate and reinforce the status quo.

Nikki Brown · The American Historical Review · United States

A book review discusses Jayne Morris-Crowther's The Political Activities of Detroit's Clubwomen in the 1920s: A Challenge and a Promise, which examines Detroit clubwomen's successes and failures in municipal politics. The book explores the impact of the woman suffrage amendment on key political issues including school reform, community gardens and playgrounds, women as political officeholders, penal reform, crime and public vice, and segregation in public accommodations. The review highlights the book's conclusion that despite redoubled activism, votes and organizing by middle-class clubwomen did not produce as much institutional change as they had envisioned after passage of the Nineteenth Amendment, as the prevalent belief that women were unfit for political office added to widespread sexism in the legislature and women's issues were not taken seriously.

Gabrielle Lhotka · cIRcle (University of British Columbia) · Canada

A study identifies and classifies localized urban agriculture trends taking place in Vancouver, Canada, by efficiency, viability and long-term potential over a 2040 time frame, based on literature reviews of theory, ideology, concepts and local trends. It finds that urban agriculture within the city of Vancouver is struggling to find a long-term foothold due to issues including overuse/misuse of technology, underfunding or poor budgeting, community attitudes, lack of knowledge about agriculture and food safety, lack of long-term sustained relevance, bureaucratic struggles, and lack of usable space in a growing city. It recommends focusing on strong community involvement through social media and programs, educational programs, movable or adaptable planting spaces, and alternative food assets such as farmers' markets.

Carl McBeath, Jill McDowell, Graham McLeod, Christine M. McMahon, Marnie Melsted, Carrine Thunggawan · cIRcle (University of British Columbia) · Canada

As part of the UBC Food System Project, this student report examines challenges facing the Land and Food Systems Orchard Garden (LFSOG) at the University of British Columbia, reviewing the faculty's vision statements to develop recommendations on garden management, budgeting, funding and resources; it concludes an organized management plan is needed for the garden to successfully expand. The report is a student project under the UBC SEEDS program and is explicitly noted as not an official UBC document, possibly not reflecting the current status of activities.

Maria Lúcia da Silva Sodré, Aucéia Matos Dourado, Daiane Santos Oliveira, Vanessa Januário Graça · · Brazil

A report on a rural extension project developed around a community garden run by a women's association in Brazil, based on agroecological principles that center on exchanging traditional, technical and scientific knowledge as a means of interaction between the university, advisors and family farmers. The aim was to strengthen social organization and production processes by combining composting and vermiculture practices with technologies such as irrigation systems and cisterns, using theoretical and practical workshops. Results showed that these activities enabled families to increase production and gain access to healthier food; the resulting availability of produce for sale brought increased income and improved living conditions, along with improved soil quality, outcomes the report attributes in part to the organizational capacity of the women involved in the association.

Roberta Fontanive Miyahira, Lilia Zagoa, Marta Citelli dos Reisa, Josely Correa Kourya · Vigilância Sanitária em Debate · Brazil

A practice report on nutrition education at a municipal school in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, delivered through establishing a school garden and running workshops to train food handlers among students and staff. The method spread technical and scientific knowledge while also prompting reflection on food's nutritional, sensory, functional and sanitary dimensions. Based on participant reports and the researchers' empirical analysis, the workshops were judged a creative and efficient approach with low cost and low implementation complexity.

Lucy Bradley, Joanna Lelekacs, Caroline Asher, Julieta Sherk · Journal of Extension · United States

An analysis of the landscape elements of 10 professionally designed community gardens in the United States, developed to guide Extension professionals working with garden designers and volunteers. With growing focus on local food, food safety, nutrition and physical health, a range of organizations are establishing community gardens and seeking help from Extension agents and specialists in horticulture, family consumer science and 4-H; the paper notes that while these professionals have expertise in nutrition, health, food safety and food production, they have little training in community garden design, which provides the framework for successful gardens.

Leandro Pessoa Lucena, Francisco José Kliemann Neto, Fernanda Mariano Massuia, Leonardo Donizete Fanti · RAI revista de administração e inovação · Canada

Against the backdrop of demographic projections that global population will reach 9.4 billion within the next 50 years, requiring an additional area of fertile land roughly the size of Brazil that does not exist on the planet, this study evaluated the economic viability of a Canadian vertical farm model as a sustainable urban-rural food production alternative. Using the NCIC method via a participant-observer approach, the study reported the model as economically viable and sustainable, as well as innovative in flattening production chains.

Ian Schneier, R. C. Payne, Duong Nguyen, Liam Goodale · Digital WPI · United States

At Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) in the United States, the Floragenesis project proposed a campus community garden using food waste otherwise neglected from the dining halls to address concerns about freshness and localness. Over time, the composting component was intended to phase out the practice of exporting food waste from the main dining halls. The project focused on construction, productivity, and community garden management, drawing on prior WPI-specific composting feasibility studies. It won Judge's Winner at a 2014 poster presentation.

Misha Leong, Claire Kremen, George Roderick · PLoS ONE · United States (California)

This study investigated pollinator-plant interactions in a periurban landscape on the outskirts of the San Francisco Bay Area, California, where urban, agricultural, and natural land uses interface. Using standardized observations of floral visitation and measurement of seed set in yellow starthistle (Centaurea solstitialis), a common grassland invasive, it tested the hypothesis that increasing urbanization would decrease bee visitation rates, viable seed set, and pollination efficiency (the relationship between bee visitation and seed set). Contrary to expectation, bee visitation was found to be highest in urban and agricultural land use contexts. However, seed set rates in these human-altered landscapes were lower than in natural sites. The study attributes this mismatch between visitation and seed set to higher plant diversity in urban and agricultural areas — driven by more introduced species — which reduces pollinator efficiency. If consistent across other plant species, the novel plant communities and generalist bee species favored by human-altered landscapes would reduce pollination services.

Amanda Brown, Antonin van der Lely, Camilo Cortes, Eileen Leung, F. Lam, Liz Overton, Muneera Hussain · cIRcle (University of British Columbia) · Canada

As part of the UBC Food Systems Project, this student report evaluates the effects of campus development at the University of British Columbia (UBC), Canada, on the ability to create and maintain a sustainable food system. The goal was not to promote food self-sufficiency at UBC but to build campus-community awareness and education around food security issues. Through evaluation of the plans guiding UBC's development — the Official Community Plan (OCP) and the Comprehensive Community Plan (CCP) — the report identifies major barriers and opportunities affecting campus food sustainability and proposes amendments to both plans. It resulted in a proposed urban agriculture strategy, "The Edible Campus," comprising six strategic actions: a demonstration garden, designated garden areas, green space and open areas, food production on buildings, waste management systems, and management considerations. The report is explicitly disclaimed as a student project under UBC's SEEDS program, not an official UBC document.

Nathan McClintock, Simpson, Mike, Dillon Mahmoudi, Jacinto Pereira Santos · PDXScholar (Portland State University) · United States

This mixed-method study of residential urban agriculture in metropolitan Portland, Oregon, poses research questions on the scale and scope of the practice, how it varies spatially, and how gardeners' motivations and practices differ along socioeconomic lines. The available abstract states only these research questions; no findings are reported.

Amandine Gatien-Tournat · DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals) · Canada

An announcement/review of a book on urban agriculture edited by Eric Duchemin, an associate professor at the Institut des sciences de l'environnement at the Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM), bringing together a multidisciplinary group of 31 contributors — geographers, urban planners, landscape architects, planners, an agronomist, nutritionists, an anthropologist, and a historian. The book is presented as offering a new panorama of urban agriculture, three years after an earlier special issue on the same subject by Duchemin and colleagues (2010). The abstract text is cut off mid-sentence while describing the book's aim, and no further content is given.

Andrew Hanks, Brian Wansink, David R. Just · The FASEB Journal · United States (New York City)

In a small northwestern New York community, a pilot study tested whether adding leafy greens harvested from a student-maintained school garden to the lunch salad bar affected salad selection among 370 high school students. On days when pasta was served as the main dish, the percentage of students taking salad rose from 2% to 10% (p<0.001), a 400% increase, when the salad contained garden-grown leafy greens compared with standard salad days.

Wei He-y · Chinese Landscape Architecture · United States

Motivated by the need for developing Chinese landscape architecture to draw on foreign experience, this paper analyzed the number, content, and trends of topics at the American Society of Landscape Architects (ASLA) annual meetings from 2009 to 2012, with an in-depth discussion of the hotspots. The results show that the planning and design category had the highest proportion of topics, and that American landscape architecture focused on sustainable development, parks and gardening, rainwater harvesting, ecological theory, digital technology, urban plants, public open space, and urban agriculture. The pursuit of sustainable development and multidisciplinary integration emerged as a distinctive feature of American landscape architecture, and the paper uses these results to outline prospects for Chinese landscape architecture.

Melissa Iverson, Maja Kržić, A. A. Bomke · Journal of Agriculture Food Systems and Community Development · Canada

This study develops a framework for a locally adapted site assessment guide (SAG) for urban agricultural sites in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, where demand for urban agricultural land is largely met by reclaiming brownfields and land owned by schools, religious institutions, hospitals, and private residents, but where — as in many cities — no locally adapted SAG previously existed. The framework has five phases: (1) initial selection of properties and assessment approaches, (2) stakeholder feedback and revision, (3) further feedback and finalization, (4) guide distribution, and (5) ongoing updates and support. Development identified relevant site characteristics for Vancouver (soil properties, aspect, slope, sunshine) and produced a Vancouver soil map; distribution and promotion of the guide through local organizations began in 2010, with the effort ongoing at the time of writing.

Vilmar Malacarne, Kely Cristina Enisweler · Educere et Educare · Brazil

A theoretical study (Educere et Educare, 2014), drawing on Delizoicov and Angotti (2000), Bizzo (2002), Ducatti-Silva (2005), and Ovigli and Bertucci (2009), examined how school gardens can support science teaching within early-elementary teacher education in Brazil. The paper argues gardens let teachers address topics such as pesticide contamination, growth cycles, soil characteristics, irrigation, and healthy eating. It concludes that school gardens are a useful tool for teachers, enabling science teaching and learning and deepening environmental education content, though the analysis is presented as a literature-based reflection rather than an empirical outcome measurement.

Rachel Brann, Keith Byron, Claire Sorvari Graupmann, Jay Kovach, Maria Val Martin, Emily Tucker · University of Minnesota Digital Conservancy (University of Minnesota) · United States

A report and presentation on Rosemount urban agriculture's food producers and food production was completed by students enrolled in SUST 4004: Sustainable Communities, taught by Samantha Grover and Amir Nadav at the University of Minnesota in fall 2014; no further details of content or findings are given.

Po Anita Puckett, Nancy Lopez-Romero · Practicing Anthropology · United States

The opening section of this issue of Practicing Anthropology introduces new perspectives in community-based research. One contribution, Eisenberg's article "Social Science, Public Policy, and Amnesty for Chickens," discusses the leading role Pima County, Arizona played in developing urban agriculture in Tucson. Eisenberg led a Policy Team that provided other teams with policy information, educated them on processes, and helped negotiate environmental policy. Through initiatives including fact sheets, policy-information trainings, and workshops, the Policy Team helped develop a tentative plan for the Tucson zoning committee that included a distinct urban agriculture element, with the main focus on proper animal husbandry in urban settings. A Facebook page called "Tucson CLUCKS" was successfully created to keep residents informed and engaged in zoning policy discussions. Eisenberg concludes that a consistent, historically grounded understanding of local issues is an important requirement for effective action.