Research & reports

Kristen McIvor, Craig Cogger, Sally Brown · Compost Science & Utilization · United States (Tacoma)

A study in Tacoma, Washington, evaluated the effects of two biosolids-based soil products, Tagro and GroCo, on soil physical and chemical properties in three urban community gardens over two growing seasons. Amendments were applied at 200 Mg ha−1 dry weight in the first year, with half receiving an additional 200 Mg ha−1 in the second year. Biosolids did not significantly affect total soil metal concentrations, but increased water infiltration rates from 10.1 ± 0.95 ml min−1 to 51–212 ml min−1, decreased bulk density from 1.07 ± 0.01 g cm−3 to 0.51–0.77 g cm−3, and increased total carbon, nitrogen, and available phosphorus. Biosolids addition also decreased soil pH from 6.43 to 5.35–5.75.

Mulala Danny Simatele, Tony Binns, Munacinga Simatele · Journal of Environmental Planning and Management · Zambia (Lusaka)

This paper, based on recent field-based research in Lusaka, Zambia, examines the relationships between urban agriculture (UA) and extreme weather conditions, and their impact on the livelihood options of the urban poor. Despite its significance as a source of food and income in many sub-Saharan African cities, UA has not been integrated into urban development and planning policy and has come under increasing pressure from extreme weather events like droughts and flooding over the last two decades.

Mahbubur Meenar, Jeffrey P. Featherstone, Amy Laura, Julia McCabe · · United States

A paper examining urban agriculture in United States post-industrial cities, which since the mid-20th century have experienced dramatic loss of population, community resources, and economic growth even as their wider metropolitan areas continued to grow, and which are characterised by high levels of crime, substance abuse, unemployment, poverty, food insecurity, vacant land, and urban blight. Many such communities rely on urban agriculture as a means of food security and sustainability as well as community resilience, vacant-land remediation, and neighbourhood development, yet the paper argues that urban agriculture has been treated as a temporary, informal land use, with land tenure conflict causing the untimely demise of many projects. In terms of urban design, it further argues that urban agriculture projects in many cities have developed as a "patchwork," lacking physical connectivity to other gardens, open spaces, and community infrastructure.

Community Gardening Works! ACGA 2011 Conference, Mara Gittleman, Kelli Jordan, Eric Brelsford · Cities and the Environment · United States (New York City)

This paper is a case study of Farming Concrete, a community-based project in New York City, which has more than 500 community gardens, over 80% of which host food production according to a 2010 GrowNYC survey. Using citizen science methods in which gardeners and researchers jointly designed and conducted the research, the project measured how much food was grown in New York City community gardens in 2010 and 2011.

Sarah Schindler · Faculty publications · United States

This article addresses the conflict between local governments and "locavores" seeking to use private property to produce food — for personal use and for sale — and municipal zoning ordinances that separate agriculture from residential uses. It examines the police power rationales behind ordinances disallowing urban homesteading in urban and suburban communities, then argues that public health, civic virtue, and free market principles can justify ordinances expressly permitting these activities. It discusses problems associated with industrial agriculture — food insecurity, food deserts, obesity tied to processed foods, monoculture-induced environmental harm, harm to animals, and greenhouse gas emissions — that could be partly alleviated through urban agriculture, noting that some local governments have already begun passing ordinances expressly allowing gardens, chickens, and the sale of produce in residential areas.

Sima Patel, Rod MacRae · Journal of Agriculture Food Systems and Community Development · Canada

A land parcel analysis in Toronto, Canada identified 77 parcels totaling 1,270 acres (514 hectares) of potential land for community supported agriculture (CSA) farming — about 1 percent of the city's surface area — with much of it located in northeast Toronto. Five commercially viable scenario types were constructed with varying land use, zoning, institutional and residential characteristics, but considerable challenges remain for widespread implementation, leading to policy and program recommendations including pilot projects, institutional linkages, program supports, training and extension.

Dan Stafford · · United States

A library web page introducing the presenters for a school garden workshop at Kutztown University in the United States, describing it as a learning opportunity for educators and parents featuring speakers and demonstrations on building a sustainable community partnership.

Kristen B. Crossney, Emily Shellenberger · · United States

A study examining the relationship between neighborhood quality and the presence of community gardens in Philadelphia, United States. Neighborhoods were characterized by population and neighborhood factors including race, ethnicity, and income, and t-tests assessed the statistical significance of differences between areas with a community garden and other parts of the city. The statistical results showed that while areas with community gardens faced more socioeconomic challenges, they underwent more positive change and improvement between 2000 and 2010 than other parts of the city.

Gail Langellotto, Abha Gupta · HortTechnology · United States

Using peer-reviewed studies of garden-based nutrition education programs delivered to children in the United States, a study applied meta-analytical techniques to examine effects on children's nutrition knowledge, preference for fruit and vegetables, and consumption. Compared with experimental controls (no nutrition education) and nutrition education programs without a gardening component, a vote-counting analysis found most outcomes nonsignificant in the control and nutrition-education-only groups, but positive and significant in the gardening group. The quantitative meta-analysis was limited by the small number of studies reporting full descriptive statistics, but one robust result stood out: gardening increased vegetable consumption in children, while the impact of nutrition education programs alone was marginal or nonsignificant.

Thomas D. Eatmon, Zachary Piso, Elyse Schmitt · IGI Global eBooks · United States

Against a backdrop of a growing number of organizations in the US Great Lakes region growing local food year-round despite cold-climate conditions, this chapter uses diffusion of innovation theory to explain the adoption of commercial aquaponics (combined indoor fish and produce production). It notes that research has shown significant challenges to maintaining profitable commercial aquaponics ventures in temperate climates, even as the technology's popularity in urban agriculture appears to be increasing, and argues that perceptions of relative advantage, compatibility, complexity, trialability, and observability may explain its adoption despite these financial challenges.

Donovon Ceaser · The Journal of Environmental Education · United States (New York City)

Noting broad agreement on the goals of environmental education (EE) but continued debate over promoting student action, this case study examines how a critical urban farming school — Our School at Blair Grocery in New Orleans' Lower Ninth Ward — addresses student action through critical environmental education (critical EE), which combines critical reflection with local action on social and environmental problems. The results found that critical learning within an egalitarian, youth-centered community in a disadvantaged area produces students who are more enlightened and empowered to create change. However, concerns about funding and safety led staff to depart from maintaining an egalitarian ethic, undermining the individualism and unpredictability that critical EE depends on and producing "disconnects" in students' education.

Marco Antonio Toral Juárez, A. Montes Pérez, Catalino Jorge Lopez Collado, Felipe Gallardo-López · Tropical and Subtropical Agroecosystems · Mexico

A study of peri-urban families in Ciudad Cardel, Veracruz, Mexico, measured dietary diversity using a staple-foods scoring method and assessed eating habits and willingness to practice home horticulture using a Likert-scale survey. Thirty-five percent of households showed good eating habits, 19% regular, and 46% poor eating habits. Dietary diversity scored 29.4 ± 8.7 for staple foods. The general Likert index for willingness to practice horticulture was 2.9, indicating average availability. Dietary diversity varied with household economic capacity, while eating habits and socioeconomic status showed no association, and multiple factors were found to positively influence mothers' willingness to practice peri-urban horticulture.

Robert Connolly, Samantha E. J. Gibbs, Mallory L. Bader · Museums & Social Issues · United States

This paper examines the outreach program that the C.H. Nash Museum at Chucalissa, located on the grounds of a prehistoric earthwork complex in Memphis, Tennessee, has run toward the surrounding African-American community over the past decade. The archaeological site was first investigated, and the museum was founded, as a byproduct of 1930s Jim Crow-era segregation policies; since its founding, the site and museum have functioned as a place of academic privilege that ignored the surrounding community. Transparency and a commitment to community engagement are described as central to the outreach program, whose highlights include installing an African-American Cultural Heritage exhibit, hosting community events, establishing a community garden, and collaborating with community partners on service projects. Based on a participatory model, the museum has moved to position itself as a social asset and stakeholder in the Southwest Memphis community.

Margaret C. Kirnbauer · Journal of Environmental Informatics · United States

Amid growing interest among community groups in using vacant and underutilized land for urban food production, but with few community-based tools available to assess site suitability or location-allocation decisions, this U.S. study describes a scientific software tool, built in Microsoft Excel, to help community groups identify and inventory the location and condition of vacant and underutilized land, determine relative site suitability, and allocate urban agricultural reuse strategies across the urban landscape. The tool augments the prototype community-based decision support tool (C-SAP) developed by Kirnbauer and Baetz (2011), which already includes a binary scoring methodology for the vacant and underutilized land inventory (VULI) process and an analytic hierarchy process for calculating site suitability indices (SSI). The added capacity, called LOCAL, formulates a multi-objective binary integer program for location-allocation of reuse strategies at the neighborhood, community, or city-wide planning level. The paper summarizes and discusses applying the prototype tool to 21 sites identified as potential future urban agriculture sites.

Brittany Minnick Hanson · Journal of International Crisis and Risk Communication Research · United States

This study of several community gardens in Orange County, Central Florida, conducted structured interviews with gardeners and semi-structured interviews with garden leaders to examine effects on food insecurity, health, and community cohesion, as well as the challenges gardens face. Results showed benefits including increased fresh produce consumption, improved physical activity, better mental health, and stronger community cohesion, but about a third of the gardeners and a majority of the leaders identified lack of participation as a challenge.

Ann Weltin, Roberta Proffitt Lavin · Journal of Community Health Nursing · United States

A mixed-convergent parallel design intervention study tested whether participation in a community garden could improve diabetes control among members of a Midwest United States community of Marshallese immigrants. Marshallese clients recruited from a local community health center took part in a community garden, and qualitative data from field observations on cultural norms and beliefs, food perceptions and barriers to health care corroborated data gathered at diabetes follow-up medical appointments. Persons who actively participated in the community garden showed a significant reduction in HgA1c after the intervention compared with those who did not participate, though the abstract does not report the number of participants or the size of the reduction.

Kynda R. Curtis, Voravee Chakreeyarat, J. Dominique Gumirakiza · Digital Commons - USU (Utah State University) · United States

A brief discussion piece frames growing interest in local food systems as a potential response to challenges in the globalized food system and as an avenue for promoting agricultural and rural sustainability. It does not present a specific research method or findings.

Kevin Camm · VTechWorks (Virginia Tech) · United States

This report examines the Urban Agriculture Day (UAD) program, run by Virginia Cooperative Extension for fifth-grade students in Lynchburg City Schools, Virginia, which provided hands-on agricultural education meeting several requirements of the Virginia Standards of Learning (SOL). Using Rogers's (2003) diffusion of innovation theory as a framework, the report examines how teachers perceived the relative advantage, compatibility, complexity, trialability, and observability of UAD for teaching SOL content.

Kynda R. Curtis, Voravee Chakreeyarat, J. Dominique Gumirakiza · Digital Commons - USU (Utah State University) · United States

Describes the origin of Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) programs in the United States in the 1980s, in which consumers pay farmers in advance for a season's share of farm products and farmers commit to supplying a sufficient quantity, quality and variety of produce. The abstract provided contains only this background description of the CSA concept, with no reported survey data, sample or findings on consumer preferences.

Loran Mary Luehr, Sylvia B. Smith · Journal of Student Research · United States

A study examined the effectiveness of a four-week interactive food sustainability education program covering local foods, gardening, recycling, and world hunger, delivered to 85 elementary-age students at two schools in southern Illinois. Using a within-subjects repeated-measures design with pre- and post-program surveys analyzed in PASW (Version 18.0) and a significance level of p<0.10 given the exploratory design, the program was found most effective with fourth graders, who showed significant change across all four measured areas: understanding world hunger, effects on their surroundings, understanding of community supported agriculture (CSA), and awareness of stores carrying more local foods. Eighth graders showed significant change in two areas (effects on their surroundings and CSA understanding), and sixth graders showed significantly higher scores only in CSA understanding. The paper reports positive results for the youngest age group while flagging the more limited results among sixth and eighth graders as warranting further research.

Euclides Reuter de Oliveira, Luiz Menini Neto · Revista Brasileira de Plantas Medicinais · Brazil

An ethnobotanical survey in the Manejo settlement of Lima Duarte, Minas Gerais, Brazil, interviewed residents about medicinal plants they cultivate or use. Across 41 household visits, residents cited 100 different medicinal plant species, mostly grown in home yards along with some native to the region; specimens were deposited in the CESJ herbarium at the Federal University of Juiz de Fora. The most frequently cited species included Mentha sp., Lippia alba, and Foeniculum vulgare, used mainly for colds, stomach ailments, menstrual cramps, uterine infections, intestinal worms, kidney problems, and anxiety/stress, with leaves the most-used plant part and infusion teas the most common preparation. The study suggests that establishing a community garden in the settlement could help valorize medicinal plant knowledge, particularly its transmission to younger generations.

Melissa Cater, Janet Fox, Bobby Fletcher · Journal of Extension · United States

A process evaluation of Louisiana's 4-H Seeds of Service School Gardens program, a K-12 Learn and Serve grant initiative, described curriculum implementation fidelity, program reach, use of garden produce and materials, and teacher characteristics. Eighty-seven percent of participating classrooms planted vegetable gardens using the Junior Master Gardener curriculum, and the evaluation found that school gardens can be effective in supporting classroom curriculum.

Bellon M. R., Hodson D., Hellin J. · PNAS 108(33):13432-13437 · Mexico

Assesses farmer-based traditional maize seed systems in Mexico and their vulnerability to climate change, with implications for maintaining and adapting landrace diversity in situ.

Largo-Wight E., Chen W. W., Dodd V., Weiler R. · Public Health Reports · United States

Survey of 503 university office staff finding that as workday nature contact (gardens, plants, greenery) increases, perceived stress and general health complaints decrease, providing evidence for workplace greening and garden programs.

Corrigan M. P. · Applied Geography 31(4):1232-1241 · United States

Qualitative study of Baltimore community gardens via interviews and observation. Gardens contributed to individual, household and community food security but needed added support through education, policy and funding.