Research & reports

John Ikerd · Journal of Agriculture Food Systems and Community Development · Global

Cooperation is presented as a key concept in the sustainability movement, particularly in food systems, as a response to economic competition. Food-related cooperatives include various models like regional food hubs and CSAs. While cooperation is vital, the text also acknowledges the human tendency to compete, arguing that unrestrained competition is unsustainable.

Brian S. Butler, Diane M. Travis, Catherine M. Ridings, Zach G. Zacharia · Journal of the Association for Information Systems · Global

This study uses data from a national survey of local food producers to show how different institutional logics can result in varied IT use profiles and complex outcomes in Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) programs. It highlights challenges for IT in supporting local food systems where multiple logics coexist.

Nicole C. List · EchoGéo · Senegal (Pikine)

Based on fieldwork in Pikine, a rapidly urbanized city in Senegal's Dakar region, two interconnected conflict cases concerning the development of urban agricultural land for middle-class and elite housing were analyzed. The analysis indicates that public and private actors, including producers, traditional authorities, real estate developers, and local/central government officials, are abandoning old forms of governance in favor of "territorial alliances" to promote their own urban development projects. These alliances lead to new relationships between local/central government members and civil society, impacting urban Senegal's land registry, property rights, and public infrastructure.

Okşan Tandoğan · MEGARON / Yıldız Technical University Faculty of Architecture E-Journal · Global

This study compiles a literature review on global efforts to create more livable physical environments for children, focusing on urban open spaces like home surroundings, school gardens, and playgrounds. It emphasizes the importance of these spaces for child development, socialization, and behavior formation. The review includes Child Friendly City initiatives and other practices related to streets, school gardens, playgrounds, and children's transportation.

Lydia Zepeda, Anna Reznickova, Willow Saranna Russell, David Hettenbach, Zepeda, Lydia, Reznickova, Anna "Alice", Russell, Willow Saranna, Hettenbach, David · Journal of food distribution research · Global

This paper uses a focus group study to examine the symbolic value of Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) as a vegetable delivery system. It finds that for both current and former members, CSA confers symbolic and private meaning and status to vegetables, but has little influence on the perceived status of agriculture itself. Only continuing CSA members demonstrate learned cues, perceptions of appraisal, improved role performance, and confer status to the CSA farmer.

Mr Frank Lewis · Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research) · Uganda (Kampala)

This study investigated urban agriculture best practices in Kampala's suburbs, Uganda, employing semi-structured interviews and focus group discussions with local farmers, government officials, and community leaders. It found that urban agriculture is critical for food security and community cohesion, with women constituting over 70% of participants in surveyed households and making vital contributions.

Maeve Bassett · Fordham Research Commons (Fordham University) · Global

Urban gardens are advertised as a solution to limited food access in impoverished areas, but they are not productive enough to globally affect food production and the environment. However, for surrounding communities, urban gardens are cheap and effective solutions for many problems associated with poverty and food deserts, such as obesity, education, social interactions, income supplementation, health issues, dangerous neighborhoods, and refugee assimilation.

Neil Harris, Fiona Nicole Rowe Minniss, Shawn Somerset · International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health · Global

A cross-sectional study conducted semi-structured interviews with twelve African humanitarian migrants participating in a campus-based community food garden. The study explored how involvement in the garden supported their connectedness with their new country. Thematic analysis revealed three important benefits: land tenure, reconnecting with agriculture, and community belonging.

James Farmer, Charles Chancellor, Jennifer Meta Robinson, Stephanie T. West, Melissa S. Weddell · Journal of Leisure Research · Global

This study collected data from 712 individuals regarding participation in local food systems, including farmers' markets and CSA programs. Findings revealed a significant association between participants and privilege variables, suggesting that despite promotion, barriers exclude many from engaging in these agrileisure opportunities.

Nobuhle Sebata, Clifford Mabhena, Mkhokheli Sithole · IOSR Journal of Humanities and Social Science · Zimbabwe

A qualitative study in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe, using data from 30 women, 5 key informant interviews, and 2 focus groups, examined urban agriculture's role in women's poverty resilience. While urban agriculture significantly improved food availability and access, its nutritional contribution was low due to a focus on maize, and income generation remained very low due to subsistence production.

Isabel Martinho da Silva · Journal of Landscape Architecture · Portugal (Vila Nova de Gaia)

In Vila Nova de Gaia, Portugal, an urban agriculture policy was introduced in 2012 with the launch of the Municipal Network of Urban Allotment Gardens. This program views urban agriculture as an opportunity to meet the demand for such spaces within the urban area, solve maintenance problems for municipal lands, and improve the environmental, aesthetic, and social quality of the landscape. This paper presents and discusses the network's capacity to promote urban agriculture despite the economic crisis and to change landscape 'ownership'.

Tad Hirsch · The MIT Press eBooks · Global

This chapter explores a new approach to Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) and urban agriculture. It includes sections on understanding urban agriculture, moving from urban form to urban experience, from cultivation to food provisioning, an expanded definition, a framework, and a case study of Sunroot Gardens.

Ben Stringer · WestminsterResearch (University of Westminster) · Global

This essay explains the design development for a city farm within the context of the history of representations of rurality in arts and architecture.

Marco Picone · Nova Science Publishers (Nova Science Publishers, Inc.) · Global

This article considers the role of agriculture in contemporary societies, specifically the renaissance of urban gardening and innovative forms of agriculture. It studies the spread and impact of urban gardening and other innovative agriculture and horticulture in hyper-technological postmetropolises. These forms of crop tending are stimulating new forms of relationships, encouraging people to regain control over their lives and spend time closer to nature, and are argued to be becoming a form of "society tending" or socioculture, aligning with growing environmental awareness.

Norul Hafizah Yusoff, Nurfaezah Ghani, Putri Haryati Ibrahim · The International Islamic University Malaysia Repository (The International Islamic University Malaysia) · Malaysia

This study analyzed the practicality of campus farming at the International Islamic University Malaysia (IIUM), Gombak campus, from the perspective of its community. Questionnaire surveys, interviews, and observations were conducted among 15 workers and 50 students. Findings indicated that the majority of respondents agreed campus farming is suitable and beneficial for the environment, economy, and social aspects within the campus.

Gregory Mintz, Phil McManus · Australian Geographer · Australia (Sydney)

This research in Sydney, Australia, evaluates and compares the quality of community garden policies with the distribution of community gardens across local councils and broader geographic regions. It identifies areas that could benefit from increased access to community gardens and discusses ways for councils and the Sydney Region to improve their policies. The study aims to determine what elements community garden policies should contain to best promote these gardens and their benefits.

Christina Jochum · · Argentina (Buenos Aires)

This study examined the social inclusion potential of urban agriculture, focusing on six community gardens in Buenos Aires, Argentina. It analyzed how urban community gardens can promote social inclusion and identified limiting factors. The research found that urban community gardens in Buenos Aires remain an informal strategy, unrecognized by political authorities. The positive impacts of communal gardening on participants and the community are limited by this lack of recognition and often by associated lack of land use rights.

Brînduşa Bîrhală, Judith Möllers, Bîrhală, Brînduşa, Möllers, Judith · AgEcon Search (University of Minnesota, USA) · Romania

This study investigated Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) in Romania, focusing on costs and benefits for both farmers and consumers in three pioneering CSA groups offering organic vegetables to contracted consumers in the western part of the country. It found that consumers are typically urban dwellers with higher education and income, prioritizing organic-quality fresh products over solidarity, which is a value aspired by the initiating NGO. Farmers' main motivation for CSA involvement is the need for a stable market with fair prices, indicating that both parties use CSA to compensate for market failures.

Heidi Thomas · Maryland Shared Open Access Repository (USMAI Consortium) · Global

This paper discusses how urban agriculture can repair environmental and sociocultural divisions within urban communities, which often manifest as racial and class barriers. It posits that the convergence of environment and foodways through urban agriculture fosters a culturally democratic co-development process. This process, involving the growing and sharing of food, can sustain existing cultural communities and inspire new forms of community aligned with sustainability.

Lana Slavuj Borčić, Cvitanović Marin, Aleksandar Lukić · · Croatia (Zagreb)

Community gardens have long existed in Zagreb, Croatia, where residents have transformed underused public urban areas into gardens. While these activities largely occurred outside formal government frameworks, the "City Gardens" policy was adopted in 2012 to allocate urban public parcels to interested citizens. This policy increased participation in community gardening, and previous research indicates that community gardens offer multiple benefits and positive impacts on individuals, local communities, and urban spaces.

Dominique Hes, Chrisna du Plessis · · Global

A discussion piece on regenerative sustainability organized around the concepts of biomimicry and permaculture. It presents Janine Benyus's definition of biomimicry as "the conscious emulation of life's genius" and describes permaculture, jointly developed in the 1970s by Bill Mollison and David Holmgren as a practical and ethical response to declining energy and resource availability. It links permaculture to what Philip Ackerman-Leist calls "rebuilding the food shed" — building multi-scale, resilient food systems — and to cross-scale relationships from soil-organism communities up to larger communities of fauna and flora, from kitchen gardens to urban food forests. It also describes Singapore's ABC Waters Programme as encouraging green roofs, vertical gardens and rain gardens to improve water filtration and harvesting.

Jonathan Crush · · Global

This article argues that cities of the Global South are experiencing a deepening crisis of food inaccessibility, marked by growing food poverty, hunger and malnutrition, lack of dietary diversity, child wasting and stunting, increased vulnerability to infectious and chronic disease, and a growing obesity epidemic. It states that this urban crisis remains largely invisible to the policy and research communities concerned with global food security, noting that there was more research and policy debate on urban food insecurity in the 1990s, when the Global South was less urbanized than today, and that concern with urban food security has since been displaced by the new international food security agenda and its pervasive anti-urban bias. It observes that the only aspect of urban food security currently commanding significant attention is urban agriculture, which it describes as widely, but improbably, seen as the key to achieving food security in cities of the Global South.

Lauren Bosc · Jeunesse Young People Texts Cultures · Global

This essay discusses the growing focus on children's bodies within discourses of obesity and examines several recently published Canadian children's picture books on healthy food choices, including "Up We Grow!," "Watch Me Grow! A Down-to-Earth Look at Growing Food in the City," "The Good Garden," "Potatoes on Rooftops: Farming in the City," "Down to Earth," and "Why Are You Doing That?" Drawing on Deborah Lupton's argument that increased focus on children's body size functions to regulate and manage children generally, the essay reads these picture books within the context of public anxiety surrounding childhood obesity.

Christoph D. D. Rupprecht, Jason A. Byrne · PLoS ONE · オーストラリア・ブリスベン／日本・札幌

Defines and surveys informal urban green space (vacant lots, brownfields, verges) across 121 sites in Brisbane and Sapporo. IGS covered ~6.3% (Brisbane) and ~4.8% (Sapporo); Brisbane was verge-dominated (~80%), Sapporo lot- (42%) and gap-rich (19%). Quantifies lot-type IGS that projects like Sakanoen mobilise in Japanese hillside neighbourhoods.

Jamal Mohammadi, Soleimani Shiri Mortez · International Journal of Agriculture and Forestry · Iran

A study addressing how urbanization and rising living standards bring both destructive environmental impacts and pressure on resources needed for urban life—food, energy, materials—and examines global experiences with urban agriculture to propose strategies for developing urban agriculture in Iran that would address the growing urban population and its resulting problems while achieving sustainable development.