Research & reports

Renan Borro Celestrino, Silvia Cristina Vieira · LA Referencia (Red Federada de Repositorios Institucionales de Publicaciones Científicas) · Global

A descriptive and experimental study (qualitative-quantitative approach triangulated with a literature review) surveyed the cost of small-scale aquaponics implementation for family and peri-urban agriculture and documented the setup steps. In the practical experiment, 27 kilograms of fish were fed at 2% of their live weight, and the resulting waste nourished 144 seedlings of Crespa lettuce. The system was found to have low implementation costs and practical management, with organic nutrition of plants and no chemical use offering a sustainable alternative for healthier production.

Roger Attwater, Chris Derry · Water · Australia

This paper presents a case study in Western Sydney, Australia, examining the role of water recycling for agricultural use within the peri-urban water cycle. It identifies and discusses aspects that enhance resilience, such as water resource security, avoidance of wastewater discharges, enhanced landscape ecology, and provision of ecosystem services. The study also considers environmental risk management, local agricultural products, social values, livelihood opportunities, and the industrial ecology of recycled organics.

Andrew Butt, Elizabeth Taylor · Geographical Research · Australia (Victoria)

This paper analyzes planning appeals and media from 2011–2016 in Victoria, Australia, regarding intensive poultry developments, revealing tensions between planning processes and local politics. Planning for intensive farming assumes stability and agricultural primacy, but concerns about agricultural industrialization are live local issues in dynamic peri-urban areas. Code-based planning's certainty does not negate the ongoing, inconvenient politics of intensive peri-urban agriculture.

Alhadj Markhous Nazal, Abdelsalam Tidjani, Yassine Doudoua, Abdourahamane Balla · · Chad (N'Djamena)

This study characterized urban and peri-urban market gardening in N'Djamena, Chad, through a focus group with 92 market gardeners on development constraints and individual surveys of 61 producers on techniques. Producers were mostly men (67.21%) with an average age of 35, operating on administrative reserves (34.43%) and private property (65.57%). While holdings were diversified, leafy greens dominated (47% of products), and many problems were identified as obstacles to the sector's development.

Muhammad Asif Khan Rai Muhammad Amir · International Journal of Biosciences (IJB) · Pakistan (Faisalabad)

To investigate heavy metal residue levels in cauliflower grown in the peri-urban area of Faisalabad district, Pakistan, 30 cauliflower samples were collected from 10 selected farmers. Analysis revealed variable heavy metal residue levels (nickel, lead, zinc, copper, arsenic, and mercury) in the samples, indicating that the cauliflower was contaminated with multiple heavy metals. This contamination is attributed to the use of untreated sewage water for cultivation, which is the single largest contributor to heavy metal accumulation in cauliflower.

Hosham S. Yousif, El-Syed I. Gaber, Goma A. Bakeer, Abbas E. Rahma, Fathi G. EL-Ebabi · مجلة الدراسات الأفريقية · Sudan (Khartoum)

Sprinkler irrigation has been gaining popularity in Sudan since the mid-1990s, primarily adopted in urban and peri-urban farming in Khartoum state for fodder and vegetable production. The method is mainly used due to its high efficiency and flexibility in applying small depths of water. Water conservation, particularly for farmers using groundwater for irrigation, is another motive for its spread.

P. V. ERMINI, M. R. DELPRINO, B. GIOBELLINA · DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals) · Argentina (Santa Rosa-Toay)

In the Santa Rosa-Toay metropolitan area of Argentina, urban and peri-urban agriculture is noted for its scarce recognition in urban development policies and food security policies. Despite the region's urbanization, the absence of political recognition as a metropolitan area has hindered planning and management of land use and occupation according to its potential and limitations. This study developed and applied a methodological proposal to generate information on urban and peri-urban agricultural activities, integrating a spatial perspective with participatory procedures.

Daniel Balcero Benitez · · Colombia (Bogotá)

This study proposes a rururban landscape (urban-agricultural) for the Usme district in southern Bogotá. It is based on a model for ordering rururban fringes and sustainable occupation typologies for these territories, responding to expansive pressures from high environmental impact uses (mining, landfill) and urban growth on peasant territories. The proposal starts from the preservation and strengthening of the environment and current peasant ways of life.

Nicolas Brulard, Van‐Dat Cung, Nicolas Catusse · IFAC-PapersOnLine · Global

This paper addresses the problem of selecting the most profitable client combination for a vegetable farm's perishable production. Farmers pre-qualify potential clients with varying product mixes, prices, contract durations, and labor requirements. A Mixed Integer Linear Programming model is presented to maximize farm sales profit, considering production and workforce capacities, and submodels describe demand characteristics for four client categories: farmers’ market, community supported agriculture, contract demand, and wholesalers.

Aloysius Clemence Mosha · Commonwealth Journal of Local Governance · Global

The book 'Cities and Agriculture' presents experience and evidence on key dimensions of urban food challenges and types of intra- and peri-urban agriculture across 15 chapters. This book illuminated the urban challenge of food provisioning, which has long been overlooked in urban studies, policies, and planning. Neglecting the dynamics and sustainability of food provisioning in scientific research on sustainable urban development is identified as a serious omission, given its significant social and physical impact.

Esther Sanz Sanz, Claude Napoléone, Bernard Hubert, Aruna Popuri · · Global

Existing urban planning documents inadequately consider the specificities of peri-urban agriculture as an economic activity requiring arrangements not always adapted to an urban vision of agricultural spaces. This paper proposes a systemic methodology to characterize peri-urban agricultural spatial units, aiming to provide an inventory of peri-urban agricultural areas tailored to urban planning practitioners' constraints. The approach seeks to focus public action on areas where it is most likely to be efficient within a territorial project.

Hayford Mensah Ayerakwa · Geographical Research · Ghana

This paper descriptively analyzed the contribution of household engagement in agriculture to urban food security in Techiman and Tamale, Ghana, using household data. The study found that nearly half (43%) of urban residents participate in food production, primarily for consumption and surplus sale. For households engaged in both urban and rural agriculture, agricultural income was the highest, contributing 43% of total cash income in Techiman and 33% in Tamale.

Giuseppe Cinà, Fahimeh Khatami · Agroecology and Sustainable Food Systems · Iran

A study addressing the role of urban and peri-urban agriculture (UPA) in Mashhad, Iran, from a sustainable development perspective, aimed at identifying conditions hindering and factors favoring its development. After framing the UPA phenomenon with reference to significant planning experiences in Western and Islamic countries, the study outlines Mashhad as a "city in transition," describes the institutional framework of its present urban planning, and shows the weak enforcement mechanisms of planning policy for UPA. It then presents a conceptual and material network of un-built areas potentially suitable for agriculture, organized into three classes from the compact city center to its periphery, summarizing physical characteristics, ownership, and resources for each, and concludes that policy, education, and social commitment are the three domains that can favor effective UPA policies and practices.

Jacques Godfroid · Archives of Public Health · Global

This opinion paper discusses a One Health approach to brucellosis at the wildlife-livestock-human interface in both industrialized and low- and middle-income countries. It points to pitfalls in serological studies and states that urban and peri-urban farming contributes to the re-emergence of brucellosis in the developing world, identifies wildlife as a potential reservoir, and discusses the ethics of culling wildlife to control disease spread.

M. Bare, Raymond M. Danner · Ecological Restoration · Global

A 2017 study surveyed bird communities in three forest sites with different restoration and natural revegetation histories, 20–40 years since clearing, within a tropical urban-agricultural landscape in the Ecuadorian Amazon, comparing manually restored and naturally revegetating forest. A diverse assemblage of birds was found visiting and occupying the forest fragments, including two IUCN-listed near-threatened species. Bird species richness was similar across sites with different management histories and species composition varied only slightly, but differences existed in the presence and occupancy of forest-dependent groups such as large frugivores and forest insectivores. In the manually restored site, bird diversity may have been limited by under-developed forest structure, though the effects of patch size and landscape matrix could not be isolated. The study suggests future restoration efforts consider forest structure alongside plant species diversity, and that future studies account for landscape and matrix parameters when evaluating restoration projects.

Silvia Rodríguez Navarro, Juan Esteban Barranco Florido, Victor Hugo Marín Cruz, Roberto Alejandro Terrón Sierra · Sociedades Rurales, Producción y Medio Ambiente · Global

To identify control alternatives for Macrodactylus pests in urban agriculture zones, this study evaluated the biopesticide action of enzymatic extracts from the entomopathogenic fungi Beauveria bassiana, Isaria fumosorosea, and Metarhizium anisopliae against Macrodactylus infuscatus, an insect of economic importance. The fermentative extracts showed chitinolytic and proteolytic activity that degraded the insect cuticle and caused mortality. After 12 days, survival was lowest with I. fumosorosea extract (20%), followed by B. bassiana (25%) and M. anisopliae (38%), versus 48% in the control. With transformed data, I. fumosorosea again showed the lowest survival (10%), followed by B. bassiana (18%) and M. anisopliae with the highest survival (31%) (p 0.0026). Mean time to death was shortest for I. fumosorosea (5 days), followed by B. bassiana (7 days) and M. anisopliae (9.5 days), all significantly different from the control (p 0.05). This is described as the first study applying these biological control agents to M. infuscatus; treated insects showed decreased food consumption and mobility, apparently due to fungal metabolite effects.

Sarah James, Philip O’Neill · Australian Geographer · Australia (Sydney)

This study collated and analyzed existing Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) and non-ABS data on Sydney agriculture between 1992 and 2011. It found that accounting for the Sydney Basin's farmlands remains opaque due to difficulties in acquiring reliable data, and existing data are often contested. The findings reveal trends in Sydney Basin agriculture that invite debate on assumptions about peri-urban agriculture, emphasizing the need for more reliable and consistent longitudinal data for future planning.

Yolanda Gil, David Kirkland, Rocco Sergi · Water science and technology library · Australia (Sydney)

This chapter outlines the process of developing and implementing a master plan for urban farming in Horsley Park, Western Sydney. The case study highlighted that the implementation of the master plan has a number of challenges, including legislative and regulatory processes, and environmental and social matters. This suggests difficulties in transitioning from planning to the reality of farming in the Sydney region.

NUR HUZEIMA MOHD HUSSAIN, HUGH BYRD · Jurnal Antarabangsa Alam dan Tamadun Melayu · Malaysia

This paper questions whether Malaysia is experiencing de-urbanization, or a return to a new form of rural life, following rapid urbanization and a shift from an agricultural to a manufacturing-dependent society. It notes that urban growth has increased demand for resources, while recent debates on oil depletion and economic decline have prompted discussions about urban and peri-urban food production. The study explores the emerging decentralization of cities and population in Malaysia.

Godswill Azinwie Asongwe, Bernard Palmer Kfuban Yerima · Greener Journal of Soil Science and Plant Nutrition · Cameroon (Bamenda)

This study analyzed heavy metal levels (chromium, manganese, lead, cadmium) in 21 urban and peri-urban agricultural wetland soil samples in Bamenda municipality, Cameroon. Average concentrations were 35.73 mg/kg for chromium, 0.08 mg/kg for manganese, 30.64 mg/kg for lead, and 0.45 mg/kg for cadmium. These concentrations were generally lower than the maximum WHO permissible levels.

Cécile Faliès · Problèmes d Amérique latine · Chile (Santiago)

This article provides an overview of agriculture around Santiago, Chile, based on fieldwork conducted since 2005. Despite the presence of agriculture linked to Santiago and Valparaiso, and the emergence of some forms like organic farming, it is difficult to classify this as urban agriculture due to the peripheral location and limited number of plots. The study indicates that urban agriculture, as commonly defined, has a limited presence in the Santiago metropolitan area.

Hana Cadzow, Tony Binns · Development in Practice · Sierra Leone

In Freetown, Sierra Leone, government and NGOs have encouraged urban farmers to form farming associations to receive advice and inputs. This study is based on field research that investigated the experiences of members in six different farming associations. It suggests that little information currently exists regarding the functioning of these associations or how their effectiveness might be improved.

Katherine Alexandra Herrera Hernández, Yohanna Marcela Pinzón, Ruth Zamira Herrera Rincón · · Colombia (Bogotá)

This project aimed to contribute to the study of Urban Peri-urban Agriculture (UPA) in Bogotá by describing projects led by the José Celestino Mutis Botanical Garden from 2004 to 2016, analyzed from an environmental education perspective. Using a qualitative methodology, the study investigated fundamental elements in education-management development, such as participation, the construction of the concept of environment, and the strengths and weaknesses in achieving these projects within the framework of successive city governments during that period.

LE Wynne, Dana Cordell, Joanne Chong, Becky L. Jacobs · UTS ePRESS (University of Technology Sydney) · Australia (Sydney)

This report, using Sydney as a case study, examines land-use planning on the urban fringe for peri-urban food production. It finds that for many cities, including Sydney, a large proportion of peri-urban food production has already been lost due to conversion to residential and infrastructure uses. The report reviews various planning responses to address threats to peri-urban agriculture.

Mujtaba Baqar, Nadia Jamil, Naveed Ahsan, Kiran Khanum, Abdul Qadir, Mariyam Zameer, Anam Khalid · Transylvanian Review · Pakistan (Lahore)

This case study investigated the impacts of heavy metals from wastewater irrigation on soil, groundwater, and leafy vegetables (Indian mustard, spinach, fodder) in the Charrar Drain catchment, Lahore, Pakistan. Samples were collected from seven sites. Drain water showed Cd, Cr, and Pb concentrations exceeding limits at most sites, and groundwater Cd concentrations also exceeded limits, though Cr and Pb were within permissible ranges. Soil samples contained Cd, Cr, and Pb, and leafy vegetables irrigated with wastewater showed varying heavy metal concentrations, indicating a heavy metal bioaccumulation issue that may exceed threshold limits.