What's new
All updates to the site so far, newest first.
Added 2 urban farming events (Philippines, Romania)
Added the Angeles City (Philippines) Gulayan sa Barangay urban agriculture training program 2026 and the Sibiu (Romania) ASTRA Museum tomato festival / Semințe cu Suflet heirloom seed exchange 2026.
Citizen gardens in Algeria and Sierra Leone, plus contamination-risk research
Three cases: Ezzouhour, Algeria's first shared garden (AADL estate, El-Harrach, Algiers, 2012); the shared gardens of the citizens' association Torba around peri-urban Algiers; and a two-hectare community garden in a Freetown mangrove swamp worked by 35 association members. Algeria and Sierra Leone both enter the database for the first time. Four research entries follow today's environmental-trade-off lens: heavy metals in Warsaw allotment produce (lead six to twelve times the permissible limit in leafy vegetables), residents' assessment of homegardens in Bandung, and contamination studies from Lae, Papua New Guinea and Kinshasa, DR Congo. Three policies: the 23 urban agriparcs of the Strategic Plan for Algiers, Funchal's municipal urban gardens on Madeira, and the Projeto Horta Urbana of Quatis, Brazil.
Add grassroots events in Czechia, Belgium, Slovenia and Australia
Added 4 local grassroots urban-farming events: a community garden open day in Prague, a shared-garden open day in Jemeppe-sur-Sambre (Belgium), a monthly crop swap in Singleton (Australia), and the Istrian herb-farm open days (Slovenia).
First entries for Kosovo, Samoa, Tonga and three more countries
Eight cases added, bringing Kosovo, Samoa, Tonga, Burkina Faso, Benin and Guyana into the database for the first time, alongside Reykjavik's ~600 municipal allotment plots and an intergenerational garden at Gozo General Hospital in Malta. Five policies cover Tartu's municipal garden land leases (Estonia), Dakar's micro-garden programme (Senegal), home-garden support schemes in the Dominican Republic and Barbados, and Qatar's National Food Security Strategy 2030. Five events span a municipal urban farming festival in Gyeryong (South Korea), organic gardening courses in Benitachell (Spain), Moscow's park garden festival, Poland's national allotment day, and an agroecology course at the port of San Nicolas (Argentina). Four research entries examine policy fragmentation across two sub-Saharan cities, informality in Dar es Salaam, arsenic contamination in southern Polish allotments, and seedling systems in four African and Asian cities.
Added 6 grassroots urban-farming events (local-scale focus)
Added local-scale events from Lithuania (a heritage orchard festival in Kaunas District), Argentina (an online garden course in Viedma, the first community garden at an elderly center in Córdoba Province, and INTA's weekly garden workshop in Buenos Aires), South Korea (Suncheon's family/children urban-garden program), and Spain (a neighborhood association's garden course in Sabadell), prioritizing small grassroots gatherings over national festivals.
19 new records across cases, research, events and policies — five countries added for the first time
Six new cases, including the first entries for Oman, Cote d'Ivoire, Solomon Islands, Vanuatu and the Bahamas, plus a church-led garden in Jones Town, Kingston. Five policies: two Tokyo farmland-conservation programmes, Missouri's urban farm investment tax credit, Baltimore's 90% urban agricultural property tax credit, and Ho Chi Minh City's interest subsidy (ended 2020). Four research papers on the economics of urban farming, with critical findings on hydroponics for low-income growers in Cape Town and the contraction of Oklahoma's specialty crop sector. Four events: an urban garden workshop in Obera (Argentina), the Saint-Laurent harvest festival in Montreal, a growing workshop in Batam (Indonesia), and a community garden party in Port Moody (Canada).
Added 5 urban farming events (Portugal, Ghana, Slovakia, Taiwan)
Added grassroots, small-scale events: a home composting & organic garden workshop by the town of Moita, Portugal; a newly-joining community garden at Lisbon's citywide 'Jardins Abertos' open-garden festival; a kids' urban gardening workshop within Accra's 'Ghana Ocean Festival'; a Košice, Slovakia community garden joining the national Weekend of Open Parks and Gardens; and a water-and-gardening workshop series by Taipei's Community Garden Promotion Center.
13 new entries: cases, research, events and policies
Three cases: a riverside plot farmed by a resident youth group in Nairobi's Viwandani settlement, the Jaden Tap Tap community garden built on a former rubbish dump in Cité Soleil, Port-au-Prince, and wick-bed gardens at three secondary schools in Barbados. Four policies: the Right to Grow adopted by Southwark and Hackney councils in London, the municipal urban agriculture programme ordinance of Coronel Suárez in Argentina, and Montgomery County's 80 percent urban agricultural property tax credit in Maryland. Two events: the 50th edition of Oota from your Thota in Bengaluru and the Seoul Urban Agriculture Expo. Four research entries, including a systematic review of why urban agriculture uptake stays low in African cities, community garden towers in Bogor, a critique of controlled environment agriculture and spatial equity, and a GIS suitability analysis for community gardens in Tampa Bay.
Added 6 grassroots urban-farming events in Scotland (UK), China, Vietnam and Nigeria
Added community-garden open days in Dundee, Rousay (Orkney) and Stranraer (Scotland), Shanghai's Community Garden Week, the Green Hero Garden launch in Ho Chi Minh City, and Lagos's Open Day for Gardeners — prioritizing small, local grassroots gardens over large national festivals.
Events: added 8 grassroots urban-farming events across Latin America, Africa, and the Middle East
Added small-scale local events from under-covered countries and regions (Honduras, Senegal, Burkina Faso x2, Tanzania, Cyprus, Iraqi Kurdistan, Luxembourg), including school composting workshops, a traditional collective farm work day, a permaculture course, and a refugee-camp garden competition.
New cases from Nice, Prague, Calgary and Amman, plus policies from Costa Rica and the UK
Four cases: the Les Oliviers shared garden in Nice's L'Ariane district; Velký háj in Krč, Prague 4, the largest community garden in Czechia; Land of Dreams, a 30-acre Calgary farm where newcomers and Indigenous Elders work the same ground; and Anera's rooftop greenhouses in Amman's Marka and Wehdat districts. Two policies: Curridabat's draft urban-garden regulation (Costa Rica) and Salisbury's Allotment Strategy 2026–2031 (UK). Three events: Apple Day in Bristol, the autumn garden tours at Suwon's Tapdong Citizens' Farm, and Pasadena's community compost hub launch.
Added 5 urban farming events (Poland, Turkey, Ghana, Italy, Netherlands)
Added a Warsaw flower/greenery festival (Poland), the Şile seed-exchange festival (Turkey), the Ghana Garden and Flower Show (Accra), a disability-inclusion farming programme's closing event in Monte Compatri (Italy), and the Moestuin Leyduin harvest festival (Netherlands), prioritizing small grassroots local events.
Cases from Myanmar, Bhutan and Guatemala, plus Quezon City's idle-land tax exemption
Four cases added: UNDP's Urban Resilience Project farms in Yangon, where 27 women's groups turned former dumpsites into growing ground; the Samdrup Jongkhar Initiative urban farming group in Dewathang, Bhutan; Sky Farm LIC, a one-acre rooftop farm run by a youth club in Queens, New York; and 26 community gardens in Villa Canales, Guatemala. Myanmar, Bhutan and Guatemala all enter the case database for the first time. Two policies: Quezon City's idle-land tax exemption for land devoted to urban agriculture for three years or more (Ordinance SP-2972 S-2020), and the Wales Community Food Strategy (2025). Three events: Apple Day at St Laurence Orchard, Rochford (3 October); the Bogotá Botanical Garden's De Huerta en Huerta festival; and the XI Latin American Congress of Agroecology in Santiago (25–27 November).
5 new local urban-farming events (Hong Kong, 3 Brazilian cities, Colombia)
Added a Kowloon Bay (Hong Kong) roselle co-farming project, a Rio de Janeiro (Complexo do Alemão) community-garden mutirão, a Magé/Suruí fishing-association mutirão, a São Paulo (Mooca) monthly garden mutirão, and Bogotá (Tunjuelito) community-garden care days.
Added cases from Laos and Namibia, autumn events in Germany and the UK, and policies from Chile, France, Austria and Uzbekistan
Two cases: Living Land, a villager-run community enterprise growing organic rice and vegetables in Luang Prabang and training agriculture students; and the backyard food gardens spreading across Windhoek's Katutura settlements. Two events: the seed swap at Museumsdorf Cloppenburg (4 Oct) and Apple Day at Bowling Community Orchard, Bradford (11 Oct). Four policies: the Santiago Metropolitan Region's community composting programme, Lyon's shared-gardens charter and grant call, Vienna's community garden set-up subsidy, and Tashkent and Samarkand joining the FAO Green Cities Network. One study: a semiotic analysis of politicisation in Italian community agriculture.
Added 4 grassroots urban-farming events (US, UK)
Added a bicycle tour of community gardens in Kingston NY (USA), a plant and seed swap in Beverley (UK), a harvest festival at a small community garden in London, and regular garden sessions run by Incredible Edible Barnet in London — all small, single-organisation local events.
New entries from Qatar, Zimbabwe and Bhutan
Three cases, six events and two policies added. Qatar enters the database with Hadiqaa's Education City Micro-Farm and its community garden in the former Qatar Preparatory School courtyard in Doha, alongside Simunye Garden in Entumbane, Bulawayo, Zimbabwe. Events cover five Hadiqaa workshops in Doha (microgreens, gardening basics, soil, seeds and cuttings, composting) and Kelmarna Community Farm's spring seedling sale in Auckland. Policies add Bhutan's Peri-Urban and Urban Farming (PUUF) initiative — the first Bhutanese entry — and the City of Cincinnati's urban agriculture grants.
Events: added harvest and seed festivals from Oman, Belize, Uzbekistan, Belarus, and Bangladesh
Added one event each from five countries not previously in the DB (Oman, Belize, Uzbekistan, Belarus, Bangladesh): an expatriate home-gardening harvest fest, a national school garden competition, a melon harvest festival, a regional harvest fair, and a native-seed exchange festival.
Turkish and Nepali allotment schemes and a Jakarta urban farming festival added
Two cases, four policies and one event. New: the Toit en Vert rooftop garden in Casablanca; the UN-Habitat/ENPHO/municipal rooftop farming project in Madhyapur Thimi, Nepal; three Turkish municipal allotment schemes (Meram's five-year plots in Konya, Beylikdüzü's free 15 m² plots in Istanbul, and Yalova's Kent Bostanı inside a city park); Madhyapur Thimi's own rooftop farming support programme; and Jakarta's province-wide Festival Urban Farming 2026.
Events: added local small-scale events in Seoul Farm (South Korea), Ho Sheung Heung (Hong Kong) and Tiantongyuan (Beijing)
Added 4 grassroots-scale events: Seoul City's "Seoul Farm" family harvest trips in Yeongwol and Buyeo (both Sep 19-20), the Ho Sheung Heung sustainable farming & migratory bird conservation exhibition/workshops in Tsuen Wan, Hong Kong (Sep 14-20), and the Tiantongyuan Dongsan community composting rain garden opening in Changping, Beijing (Aug 21).
New cases from Central America and Mauritius, plus European and Korean events and policies
New cases from El Salvador (San Salvador's FAO-backed urban agriculture demonstration centres, and the Cosechando Sonrisas community garden in San Marcos), Honduras (Ciudades Verdes in Tegucigalpa) and Mauritius (the Priest Peak agroforestry site in Port Louis) — all first entries for those countries. New events: the Apple Festival in Rossinver, Ireland; two German seed events (Heilbronn Seed Festival and a tomato tasting and seed swap in Bad Berleburg); and the 22nd Busan Urban Agriculture Expo in South Korea. New policies: Mauritius's Household Gardening Scheme, the 2024 revision of the ecological urban garden ordinance in Arroyo de la Encomienda, Spain, and a Jalisco state bill on school and pollinator gardens in Mexico.
New local events: 5 grassroots community-garden events added across Czechia, the Netherlands, Spain, Poland and Norway
Added five small, locally organised events: a natural-garden open day in Brno (Czechia), an urban-garden harvest festival in Utrecht (Netherlands), a traditional-seed fair in Orce, Granada (Spain), a new community garden's opening event in Rydułtowy (Poland), and an allotment-garden autumn festival in Oslo (Norway).
Added cases from Pakistan and Mozambique, policies from Bolivia and the US, plus harvest fairs and a seed swap
Two cases: Crops in Pots, the citizen network spreading organic growing in pots and on rooftops in Karachi (Pakistan), and the Green Zones peri-urban cooperatives of Maputo (Mozambique) with their union, the UGC, running since 1980. Three policies: La Paz's Municipal Law 321 promoting urban gardens (Bolivia), the urban agriculture ordinance passed by Rock Island, Illinois in January 2026, and New Orleans' amendment removing cover crops from the definition of weeds. Four events: the Juneau community garden harvest fair (Alaska), two Community Farmer Days at a community farm in Chew Magna (UK), and a seed and plant swap in Reading, Pennsylvania. Four research entries: gender in Dar es Salaam, the shrinking allotment area in Poland and Czechia, home gardening in Bengaluru, and soil lead in Brooklyn school gardens (a critical finding).
Reset the Germany series heroes to the people-tile style, with topic cues and titles
The 30 Aug people-tile look is the style of record. Each of the seven now carries topic props (huts, turnips, seals, the horseshoe estate, a dividing wall) and a Japanese title band.
Restored the Germany series hero images to risograph style and added titles
Rebuilt the seven heroes from the original risograph plates, adding non-figure cues (huts, seals, maps) and compositing each column title into a bottom band.
Added small local urban-farming events (Netherlands, Belgium, Finland, Sweden)
Added a small urban-farm open day in Arnhem (Netherlands), a citywide open-garden day in Mouscron (Belgium), an autumn seedling market in Turku (Finland), and two allotment-garden harvest festivals in Malmö and Gothenburg (Sweden). (events +5)
Community gardens in Spain and Poland, plus home-gardening policies from Nigeria and Fiji
Three cases: Puerto de la Cruz's first community urban garden on Tenerife (19,000 m², seven accessible plots), 24 ecological urban garden plots in Soria's Los Royales district under the EU-funded BRERA programme, and the community garden in the courtyard of Kraków City Hall. Two policies: Nigeria's National Urban Agricultural Programme (NUAP) and Fiji's scaling-up home gardening initiative, 'From Our Backyards to Our Plates'. Three events: LandPaths' Harvest Festival in Santa Rosa, the Festival de la Cosecha in Providencia, Santiago, and the ECHO Asia Community Seed Bank Forum in Chiang Mai. Three research entries: home gardening and wellbeing in India, domestic gardens and climate adaptation in Flanders, and protecting peri-urban farmland in Erzurum, Türkiye.
Events: added 5 grassroots events in Sweden, Canada, New Zealand and Ireland
Added Stockholm's Kolonisternas Hus 100th-anniversary open house, a Vancouver school-garden compost workshop, a Wellington seed-starting workshop, Ireland's National Allotments & Community Gardens Week, and a small volunteer garden drop-in in Crumlin, Dublin.
Started the series 'How Germany became a country of gardens — 150 years of law, associations and foundations' (2 Sep – 8 Sep 2026)
A seven-day feature running Wednesday to Tuesday. It reads Germany's roughly 870,000 allotment plots through four devices — law, association, land and money, and foundations — rather than through people or landscapes. Day 1 the map; Day 2 the 1919 ordinance; Day 3 what became of Migge's estate gardens; Day 4 the Nazi organisation of the movement; Day 5 the divided decades and the 1983 federal act; Day 6 the anstiftung foundation; Day 7 a comparison with Britain, France and Poland.
Published column 'From poor gardens to community gardens — a 200-year map of Germany's plots'
Series 'How Germany became a country of gardens' Day 1/7. A single sweep across 200 years, from the poor gardens of 1797 to the intercultural gardens of 2025, mapping what the following six days examine in detail: law, association, land and money, and foundations.
Added citizen gardens in Slovenia and Costa Rica, plus events and policies from Europe, Latin America and Asia
New cases: Ljubljana's municipal allotment scheme (about 1,100 plots, Slovenia) and the Currihuerta community garden in Curridabat, Costa Rica. Five new events: NYC GreenThumb's 46th Harvest Fair (3 Oct, Brooklyn), the Rakvere food share fair (Estonia), a community-garden launch and composting workshop in Carnikava (Latvia), the CEE Permaculture Convergence (Hungary), and the Universidad de Concepción community-garden workshops (Chile). Four new policies: Malaysia's KENDIRI home-garden campaign and Kebuniti neighbourhood community-garden programme, Singapore NParks' Grow and Share initiative, and Yogyakarta City's Kampung Sayur programme.
Events: added grassroots events from Greece, Estonia, Latvia, Hungary and Ukraine
Added Serres (Greece) municipal garden enrollment, North Estonia's open greenhouses/gardens day, Jūrmala (Latvia) autumn harvest festival, Budapest's Kőris community garden monthly open day, and Lviv's Rozsadnyk community garden weekly gathering (events +5).
Published column 'The sin and the point of trying to measure the unmeasurable — the case against impact evaluation, and what to do anyway'
Series Day 7/7 (final). Confronts the limits and abuse of measurement, including the Kids Company case, and closes out the full seven days.
New cases from Ukraine, Jerusalem and Panama, plus urban-farming laws from Buenos Aires and Bangladesh
New cases: Rozsadnyk in wartime Lviv, where displaced people's harvest becomes free meals at a city bistro (Ukraine); Jerusalem Community Gardens, turning vacant lots into resident-tended green space (Israel); and the Don Bosco community garden started by a neighbourhood council in Panama City. New policies: Buenos Aires City Law 6377, which creates a route to apply for public land for community gardens; the Buenos Aires Province urban garden programme supplying seedlings and training; and Bangladesh's 10% holding-tax rebate for rooftop gardens. New research covers protecting community gardens through data (Philadelphia), a UK qualitative study questioning whether growing your own really cuts food waste, and a field trial of biochar rates in compost-amended urban soils. Events: allotment open days in Luton and South Croydon (UK) and an organic growing course in Fanling, Hong Kong.
Added 3 small local urban-farming events (Ireland, Czechia, Australia)
Added a GIY school-garden workshop in Waterford, Ireland (Sep 12), a neighborhood clean-up day at Prokopka community garden in Prague 13 (Sep 20), and a native bee hotel workshop by a local beekeeping club in Moe, Victoria, Australia (Sep 1) — all small, single-organizer grassroots events.
Published column 'When evaluation itself exhausts the organisation — the cost of measuring impact'
Series Day 6/7. The real cost of evaluation, including the sharp US decline in nonprofits with dedicated evaluation staff.
Added a new urban-farm visual to the home page
Added a colorful illustration of people planting, watering and harvesting in a city community garden, with a responsive layout that keeps the collection totals easy to scan on desktop and mobile.
First entries from Cambodia, Paraguay and Trinidad and Tobago (5 cases, 1 event, 2 policies added)
Added the first cases from Cambodia (the AG4F agroecology school gardens in Phnom Penh), Paraguay (the Red de Huerta garden network in Pilar) and Trinidad and Tobago (the Cashew Gardens community greenhouse in Couva). From Amman, Jordan, we also added the community urban garden opened inside Queen Rania Al Abdullah Park and the country's first urban farming training centre. New policies cover the Greater Amman Municipality guideline requiring 15% of each newly urbanising plot for green use or urban agriculture, and Trinidad and Tobago's government-run Grow it Yourself kitchen-garden challenge. The new event is the Seoul Agricultural Technology Center's children's nature experience classroom (1 September – 8 October).
Added 4 grassroots urban-farming events (New Zealand, Mexico, South Africa, Belgium)
Added four small, grassroots urban-farming events: a seed/seedling swap at Rānui Library in Auckland, New Zealand; an Indigenous-knowledge gathering at Huerto Roma Verde in Mexico City; an edible-weeds foraging workshop at Oranjezicht City Farm in Cape Town, South Africa; and a weekly inclusive community garden session in Ath, Belgium.
Refreshed the seven hero images for the Germany series
Refreshed the seven hero images for next week's Germany series in a colorful dense fashion-figure tile style.
Published column 'How dormant deposits are reshaping community gardens — Japan's impact-evaluation landscape today'
Series Day 5/7. How Japan's Dormant Deposit Utilization scheme actually distributes money, and how regional-revitalisation grant KPIs constrain projects.
Added cases from New Zealand, Malta and Luxembourg, plus local events from Australia, New Zealand and Germany
Focusing on under-covered countries, added three cases (Kaicycle urban farm and composting in Wellington, the Friends of the Earth Malta urban garden in Floriana, and the Kirchberg community gardens in Luxembourg City) and seven events (North Brighton Community Garden's spring open day and working bee in South Australia, the Kelburn garden working bee and Crop Swap Pito One in the Wellington region, Kaicycle's community open day, and Leipzig's Tomatentag and seedling market). Two policies were added: Wellington City Council's Our City's Food Future food system action plan (2023) and New Haven's draft two-year urban agriculture services pilot ordinance (2026).
Added seven hero images for the social-impact series
Added seven diagrammatic hero images to the articles in the social-impact series.
Added 4 grassroots local events (Sweden, Vietnam, Hong Kong)
Added four small local events: Bergshamra allotment garden's Open Fall Garden Day (Solna, Sweden), Älvtomta allotment garden's Garden Day (Örebro, Sweden), Phuc Tan Forest Park community garden (Hanoi, Vietnam), and the Wui On Lane community garden trial (Sai Ying Pun, Hong Kong).
Published column 'No results, no payment — the gamble of the Social Impact Bond'
Series Day 4/7. The world's first Social Impact Bond, Peterborough (2010-2017), set beside the failed Rikers Island contract.
12 new entries: cases, events, policies and research (UK, Canada, Namibia and more)
Four cases: a Salvation Army yard garden in Keighley and a Ukrainian community allotment in Swindon (UK), a school learning farm in Memphis (US) and a pick-your-own blueberry farm in Edogawa, Tokyo (Japan). Four events: a plant and seed swap in Bryant Park (New York), the annual citizen-garden course at El Retiro (Madrid), and a composting workshop and garden potluck at Riley Park (Vancouver). Three policies: Jersey City's Adopt-A-Lot, Quebec City's shared-garden grants and Namibia's urban and peri-urban horticulture initiative. One research paper: a University of Florida study of what drives public support for urban agriculture.
Added 3 events (Portugal, Kenya, Zimbabwe)
Added the Porto Urban Greening Biennial 2026, the 1st Eastern Africa Indigenous Seed Conference 2026 in Nairobi, and the Mbire District Seed & Food Festival 2026 in Zimbabwe.
Published column 'When was impact invented? — a genealogy of the idea of social investment'
Series Day 3/7. From the Rockefeller Foundation's 2007 Bellagio meetings to Japan's 2016 Dormant Deposit Act — tracing how young this whole field actually is.
New cases from Panama, the Dominican Republic, Albania and Fiji, plus policies from Russia, Switzerland, Norway and Guatemala
Cases from four countries not previously covered: Panama City's school and community gardens programme, Santo Domingo's 30-urban-garden pilot, an urban farming school in a rooftop greenhouse at a Tirana culture centre, and Fiji's national home gardening programme. New policies cover Russia's gardening and horticulture law (217-FZ), the City of Zurich Garden Ordinance (GOZ), Oslo's 'Spirende Oslo' urban agriculture strategy, and Guatemala's urban and peri-urban gardens strategy run by MAGA's Urban Agriculture Department. Events add four composting and fruit-tree-pruning courses from Berlin's allotment federation and a tomato and chilli diversity festival in Graz.
Added 4 urban farming events (UK, Spain, Japan, Argentina)
Added the Garden Museum Harvest Festival (London), the Andalusian native-seed fair in Órgiva (Spain), Tama City's monthly community garden workshop (Tokyo), and the Sembrando Esperanza native-seed fair (Argentina).
Published column 'What SROI measures, and what it misses — the methodology of impact evaluation'
Series Day 2/7. How the SROI ratio is calculated and where it breaks down, logic models, why RCTs don't fit welfare programmes, and the Goodhart's-law-style distortion.
New cases from Iceland, Bosnia, Cameroon, Jamaica and Cyprus, plus urban-farming laws from three Mexican states and Chile
Five cases, all from countries new to the database: Seljagardur, a resident-run urban farm in Reykjavik that also rents greenhouse plots; Sarajevo's sensory garden built around children with developmental disabilities; the soil-free urban agriculture programme in Biyem-Assi, Yaounde; Kingston's rainwater-backed school and community gardens under UNEP CityAdapt; and citizen-founded Gardens of the Future in Nicosia. Four policies: state urban-agriculture laws from Michoacan (2017), Baja California (2023) and Puebla (2013), plus Chile's pending urban-gardens bill. Five events: the Aubervilliers shared-garden fortnight, Nagoya's autumn harvest days, and three New York State gatherings on soil health, pest management and community garden management.
Added 5 urban farming events — El Salvador, Jamaica, Panama, Algeria and Zimbabwe
Added a former-dumpsite community garden in San Salvador, a hurricane-recovery school garden programme in Jamaica, a school-garden training day in northern Panama, Torba's children's garden programme in Algiers, and an agricultural-extension training visit to a community garden in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe — small local events in countries previously under-represented in the database.
Started the series 'How do you measure good for society? — urban farming and social impact' (2026-08-26 to 2026-09-01)
As funding shifts toward evidence-based allocation, how is urban farming evaluated, measured and financed? Seven days on SROI, the history of impact investing, outcome-based contracts, Japan's dormant deposits, evaluation cost, and the impact-washing critique.
Published column 'The era when feels good no longer funds anything — a map for this series on social impact'
Series 'How do you measure good for society? — urban farming and social impact', Day 1/7. Opens from GIIN's 2020 finding that 66% of investors cite impact-washing concern as the top obstacle.
Added cases from Zagreb and Kazakhstan, events in Paris and Ireland, and allotment rules from three Spanish municipalities
New cases: Zagreb's municipal allotment scheme Gradski vrtovi (16 sites, over 2,252 plots, free two-year tenancies) and Kazakhstan's Green School project putting year-round greenhouses in 19 public schools and one college. New events: the City of Paris Fête des jardins et de l'agriculture urbaine 2026 (26-27 Sep), the shared-gardens festival in the village of Ercé, Ariège (5 Sep), and Ireland's National Community Gardens and Allotments Week 2026 (10-17 Oct). New policies: municipal allotment rules from Salamanca (2025 regulation, four-year cap and a garden council), Las Rozas (2022 regulation, with plots reserved for people with disabilities) and Cabanillas del Campo (2023 ordinance, 30 plots).
Events: added 6 small local urban/community farming events across Europe and South America
Added a community garden opening in Rydułtowy, Poland; a university community-garden workshop series in Concepción, Chile; a shared-gardens festival in Ercé, France; harvest thanksgiving festivals in Baden, Switzerland and Zurndorf, Austria; and a harvest festival in Outremont, Quebec, Canada — all small, single-organizer local events.
Published column 'Is compost actually good for the environment — the case against composting, and what to do anyway'
Series 'Composting Now — Systems, Economics, Limits', Day 7/7. The closing instalment sets out three objections — certified plastics that do not break down, PFAS and metals in finished compost, and the climate arithmetic once transport is counted — then puts what survives them into practice.
New cases from North Macedonia, Montenegro, Madagascar and Mongolia, plus policies from Skopje, Tennessee and Windhoek
Four countries new to the database: Bostanie, the first citizens' garden in North Macedonia (Skopje); Urbana Basta, Montenegro's first urban garden (Podgorica); Voly First Immo, which turns public primary school grounds into gardens that feed the canteen (Antananarivo, Madagascar); and the Poverty Alleviation Study Centre's urban gardening programme, which grew from 850 to 21,000 participating households during Mongolia's economic transition (Ulaanbaatar). On policy: the City of Skopje grant that created Bostanie, Tennessee's failed HJR 780 right-to-food constitutional amendment, and Windhoek's use of city-network funding for urban agriculture.
Events: added 5 small local events in Turkey, Poland, Switzerland and the Netherlands
Added five small, single-organizer local events: a compost workshop in Istanbul, a Saturday composting workshop in Warsaw, a weekly community-garden work session in Basel, and two harvest festivals in Utrecht and Renkum, Netherlands. Prioritized countries/cities under-represented in the DB, avoiding further concentration on large national festivals or conferences.
Published column 'Compost or methane — the two business models competing for your food scraps'
Series 'Composting Now — Systems, Economics, Limits', Day 6/7. The economics instalment: two industries price the same bucket of food scraps differently, and that asymmetry decides which plant gets built.
Added 4 cases, 5 events and 3 policies (Slovakia, France, USA, Australia, Germany, Colombia, Costa Rica)
New cases: Vnutroblok, mobile community gardens on Bratislava's idle plots (Slovakia); Jardin partage des Mille Feuilles, opened March 2026 in Toulouse's Croix-Daurade (France); the UMass Boston Community Garden, started summer 2026; and Black Butterfly Teaching Farm inside a Baltimore city park (USA). New events: two working bees at Bellfield Community Garden (Australia), a communal gardening day at Gemeinschaftsgarten Biesdorf in Berlin (Germany), a volunteer work day and potluck in San Diego (USA), and the Bogota Botanical Garden's urban agriculture day (Colombia). New policies: Washington State's urban agriculture zone authority (RCW 35.21.192) and Federal Way's urban agriculture chapter (USA), plus Curridabat's draft regulation on urban gardens and community plots (Costa Rica).
Events: added local events in the UAE, Mexico, Madagascar and Colombia
Added 4 events: Organic Festival at Emirates Bio Farm (Al Ain, UAE), Reto Naturalista Urbano at Huerto Tlatelolco (Mexico City), Festival des Initiatives Vertes (Antananarivo, Madagascar) and Festival de la Semilla (Garzón, Huila, Colombia). UAE and Madagascar were previously uncovered in the events dataset.
Published column 'Why Japan still doesn't sort its food waste — twenty years of the Food Recycling Act'
Series 'Composting Now — Systems, Economics, Limits', Day 5/7. Japan's present: high business recycling rates beside household scraps that still go to the incinerator.
New cases from Slovakia, Namibia, Luxembourg and Costa Rica, plus policies from Quito, Benalmádena and the Scottish Borders
Four cases: Krasňanský zelovoc, Bratislava's first community garden (Slovakia); Farm Okukuna, a three-hectare urban permaculture farm beside the informal settlements of Windhoek (Namibia); the City of Luxembourg's five neighbourhood-only, organic-only community gardens; and Currihuerta, built on a disused lot in Curridabat (Costa Rica). Three policies: Quito's 2025 ordinance requiring new residential developments to include space for urban gardens; Benalmádena's 2026 amendment extending allotment tenancies from two years to four (Spain); and the Scottish Borders' statutory Community Food Growing Strategy 2021–26. Five events: a harvest festival and seed swap in Madison, a cool-season growing class in San Diego, a harvest festival in Burgenland, twice-weekly open gardening in Basel, and an organic seedling sale in Devonport, Auckland.
Published column 'Mandating it isn't enough — where the world's composting rollouts have stumbled'
Series 'Composting Now — Systems, Economics, Limits', Day 4/7. France, New York, California and China lined up against the same three bottlenecks: household sorting, collection, and processing capacity.
New cases from South Africa, Nepal and the US, plus urban-agriculture policies from Olympia and Bernalillo County
Four cases: a youth-run permaculture garden on school grounds in Tsakane, South Africa; UN-Habitat's rooftop-farming programme with Lalitpur, Nepal; the NYC Health Department's first directly run community garden in Brownsville; and New Haven's 19 city-owned community gardens, left in limbo after the nonprofit that ran them withdrew. Three policies: Olympia, Washington's code update making farming a principal use; Bernalillo County's 2026 Urban Agriculture Master Plan; and the UK National Garden Scheme's community garden grants. Three events: a sweet-potato harvest in Kashiwa, Tokyo's rice-growing course, and the Exeter Seed Swap.
Added 5 urban farming events (Poland, Indonesia, Malaysia, Turkey, Finland)
Added a Warsaw Sadyba neighborhood garden festival, a community harvest day at an experimental garden in Gresik, Indonesia, a weekly community garden work day in Kuala Lumpur, a harvest festival at Yedikule Garden in Istanbul, and an open day at Kumpula allotment garden in Helsinki — all small, grassroots-scale events.
Published column 'How cities turned compost into garbage — chemical fertiliser and the century of the landfill'
Series 'Composting Now — Systems, Economics, Limits', Day 3/7. A history of the twentieth century in which chemical fertiliser left urban organic matter without a buyer, and the landfill took its place.
Added 20 September 2026 events (16 Kobe compost workshops, Bristol Get Growing Trail, Ireland Lisdoonvarna series, Boulder harvest festival, Hatfield allotment open day)
20 new September 2026 events added: 16 Kobe compost tour-workshop sessions across Tarumi, Nada, Chuo, Hyogo, Nagata, Kita, Nishi and Suma wards; Bristol's citywide Get Growing Trail (12–13 Sep); Ireland's Lisdoonvarna Growing Together workshop series (incl. 3 & 24 Sep sessions); Growing Gardens' Community Harvest Festival at Hawthorn Farm, Boulder, CO (7 Oct); and the Green Lanes Allotments harvest festival open day in Hatfield, UK (12 Sep).
Added urban farming events (Ireland, Czech Republic, Turkey)
Added 3 grassroots urban farming events: the Churchfield Allotments open day in Cork, Ireland; the opening of the Kopaniny community garden in Brno-Kohoutovice, Czech Republic; and a sunflower harvest at Yedikule Garden in Istanbul's Fatih district, Turkey. All are small, locally organized events.
Published column 'How much methane if you don't compost it? The greenhouse-gas arithmetic of food waste'
Series 'Composting Now — Systems, Economics, Limits', Day 2/7. The climate ledger: 0.86 tonnes per tonne landfilled, the 61% never captured, and what 'certified compostable' does not certify.
New cases from Coventry, Casablanca and Kryvyi Rih, plus urban-farming policies from the Philippines, Malaysia and India
Four cases: Coventry Grows, the UK council scheme opening idle city land to resident growers; ARADD's 1,600 m² educational garden in Casablanca irrigated with treated wastewater; Soil Born Farms on 55 leased county acres near Sacramento; and an eight-year-old civic garden in a park in Kryvyi Rih, Ukraine. Four policies: the Philippine DA–TESDA agreement making urban farming a certified vocation, Selangor's directive to councils to lease idle land for community gardens, Bihar's 75%-subsidy rooftop gardening scheme, and Evanston's proposed urban agriculture ordinance after a zoning gap stalled a community farm. Five events, from Singapore's Gardeners' Day Out to open days and workshops in Berlin, Belgium and Switzerland.
Added 9 grassroots urban-farming events (Peru, Bolivia, Costa Rica, Jordan, Rwanda, Hong Kong, China, Fiji x2)
Added local grassroots events previously under-represented in the DB: a barter fair, an organic-garden tour, a composters' gathering, a rooftop-greening clean-up, a composting training, a park allotment scheme, a school-garden house competition, a community garden build, and a school-garden harvest.
Started the series 'Composting Now — Systems, Economics, Limits' (2026-08-19 to 2026-08-25)
Turning food scraps from garbage into infrastructure is accelerating worldwide. Seven days on the greenhouse-gas arithmetic, the history of chemical fertiliser and the landfill, where mandates have stumbled, twenty years of Japan's Food Recycling Act, the money that decides compost versus methane, and the case against composting itself.
Published column 'The day food scraps become infrastructure — a map for seven days on composting'
Series 'Composting Now — Systems, Economics, Limits', Day 1/7. An opening map of the three currents — climate targets, food-waste law and landfill scarcity — that pushed food scraps toward infrastructure.
Twelve new entries: Estonia and Kazakhstan cases, Ireland's new law, and more
New cases: Pelguaed, the allotment garden Tallinn calls its largest community garden (Estonia), and Zhasyl Mektep, which is spreading school greenhouses across Astana and Almaty (Kazakhstan). New policies: section 48 of Ireland's Planning and Development Act 2024, which defines community gardens in Irish law for the first time; Sacramento's urban agriculture ordinance, which legalised selling produce on site; and Jamaica's Backyard Gardening Kit Programme. New events include organic-growing and community-garden courses in Tokyo, Madrid's monthly seed swap, a tour of Mexico City's urban gardens, and an Austrian garden community's harvest festival. Two research entries cover the history of irrigated urban agriculture in Maputo (Mozambique) and urban nature-based solutions in Lilongwe (Malawi).
Replaced compost-series heroes with flat white diagrams
Replaced the compost-series heroes with flat white diagrams — no people or mascots — and put each instalment's punchline in a slim caption band so the diagram stays visible.
Urban farming events: added small local events in Barbados, Moldova, Turkey, Vietnam, Hong Kong and Brazil
Added 6 new grassroots events: a parish home-garden contest (Barbados), a botanical watercolor workshop at a community garden (Chișinău, Moldova), a composting workshop (Istanbul, Turkey), volunteer work sessions at a reclaimed 'rubble garden' (Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam), an urban agriculture seminar with community/school farm tours (Hong Kong), and a university-led community garden workshop (Guarapuava, Brazil). Net events +6 (691→697).
Added diagrammatic hero images for the compost series
Added diagrammatic hero images to all seven articles in the series 'Where composting stands — institutions, economics, limits', visualising food-scrap infrastructure, methane, the broken nutrient cycle, stalled mandates, Japan's sorting gap, compost versus biogas, and environmental caveats at a glance.
Recovered 71 records stranded on unmerged session branches
Recovered data that sat on cloud-session branches pushed but never merged into main between mid-June and end of July — some for 2 to 7 weeks — without npm run audit:content ever catching it. 8 cases (Kumpula Allotment Garden in Finland, Harleyford Road in London, the Tarlataban student garden in Istanbul, Réseau Cocagne in France, Jardins de Cocagne in Geneva, the intercultural gardens of Göttingen, and two in Kinshasa/Blantyre); 24 of 44 candidate research records (compost microbial contamination and microplastics, African urban-farming public health, gender and land tenure, etc. — the other 20 turned out to have already been re-collected under different ids and were correctly dropped by the doi/title de-dup); 31 events across Taiwan, Russia, the Philippines, the Netherlands, Sri Lanka, Uganda, DR Congo, Nepal, Tanzania, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Papua New Guinea, India, Bolivia, Nicaragua, Venezuela, Cameroon, Armenia, Samoa, Tonga, Vanuatu, Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Moldova, Haiti, Uruguay, Norway and Chile; and 7 policies (UK allotments law history, sludge-use regulations, right to reclaim/regenerate land, EU/EC fertiliser regulations, Japan's Specified Farmland Lending Act). Columns were already recovered by the same mechanism separately and were not part of this pass. Went through npm run data:merge's normal de-dup (id / DOI / normalized name), so nothing was double-registered against existing data.
Published column 'Who was the farm planted for — the case against the green premium'
Series 'Urban Farming and Real Estate', Day 7/7. The closing instalment sets out three objections as accurately as it can — greenwash, green enclosed for residents and tenants, and the displacement structure by which the very people who needed the green can no longer afford to stay once the premium works — then puts what survives them into working language: how to fix the rights to the land, who holds the keys and the budget, and where in the first contract the conditions for removal are written. Reading King's Cross's Skip Garden, New York's POPS and the 2002 community garden settlement, Boston's Dudley Neighbors Incorporated, Liverpool's Deed of Dedication pledge, and Japan's certified citizens' green space scheme and urban farmland lending act, it also draws the week's seven instalments into a single line.
Added cases from Dar es Salaam, Maputo, Lahore and Lusaka, plus Bratislava and Reykjavík policies
Four cases: AGENDA's organic-growing and drip-irrigation training in Kigamboni, Dar es Salaam (Tanzania); the agroecological market gardening value chain in Maputo (Mozambique); a school-based community garden in Sher Shah Colony, Lahore (Pakistan); and DAPP's urban garden farming project launched in Lusaka in 2026 (Zambia) — the first entries for Mozambique, Pakistan and Zambia. Three policies: Bratislava's community garden scheme, which leases municipal plots for a symbolic €1; Reykjavík's ~600-plot allotment rental programme; and the urban farming provisions in Reykjavík's neighbourhood plans. Four events: an eight-session organic vegetable course at Adachi Urban Agriculture Park, compost workshops in Escondido and Santa Clara County, and the Ujamaa Seeds & Culture conference. One research entry on community garden siting costs and the displacement risk from rising adjacent property values.
Local events added: grassroots events in Namibia, Grenada, and Zambia
Added three grassroots events: a beginner beekeeping course in Windhoek (Namibia), Grenada's National Beautification Competition (community garden category), and the Lusaka Garden Club's monthly bring-and-buy market (Zambia). All are small, locally rooted activities (events +3).
Published column 'Leave it a field, and the tax divides — the arithmetic of not selling'
Series 'Urban Farming and Real Estate', Day 6/7. An institutions-and-money instalment following the gap that property tax and inheritance-tax deferral create, and showing that the size of the break is set not by farming's margin but by the price of the building plot next door.
New cases from Sri Lanka, Georgia and India, events in Quito and the US, and two new US urban-agriculture policies
New cases: Metta Garden, a training garden run by an environmental NGO in Colombo, Sri Lanka; Kokopelli, a community garden in Tbilisi, Georgia started on municipal land; and a pilot turning roughly 2,230 m² under a flyover near Mumbai airport into citizen allotments. New events: Compostatón in Quito, Ecuador, held each April for three years running; the 17th Harvest Hootenanny in Columbia, Missouri; and Pumpkin Party in Missoula, Montana. New policies: Hopewell, Virginia's 2025 zoning amendment adding an urban agriculture use category with performance standards, and Maryland's Urban Agriculture Grant Program launched in 2026, which funds infrastructure and composting education.
Added grassroots urban-farming events in Bahrain, Nicaragua and Cameroon
Added 3 small-scale citizen events from 3 previously uncovered countries (Bahrain, Nicaragua, Cameroon): a pollinator workshop, a school-gardens municipal launch, and an educational-farm kickoff (events +3).
Published column 'In 2022, Tokyo's fields were all supposed to go on sale — what became of productive green land'
Series 'Urban Farming and Real Estate', Day 5/7. Japan's present state, read through the productive green space system and the "2022 problem," inheritance-tax valuation of farmland, and developer-run rooftop and idle-lot farms.
New cases from Serbia, Bulgaria, Lithuania and Uruguay, plus events from Europe, Uruguay and New Zealand
13 entries, focused on under-covered regions. Cases: Baštalište (Belgrade) and Urbana bašta Novi Sad in Serbia, Gradina zaDruzhba in Sofia, the Garden of Ideas in Vilnius's Pilaitė district, and Campo Experimental in Montevideo. Events: Terra Madre Salone del Gusto 2026 in Turin, the Community Gardens Ireland Spring Gathering, Compost Collective's free workshops in Auckland, and the Huertizate 2026 course in Montevideo. Policies: Uruguay's Plantar es Cultura programme and Turin's urban-garden regulation. Plus two papers on community gardening in Belgrade.
Events: added grassroots urban farming activities in South Africa, Thailand, Algeria, Indonesia and Venezuela
Added 5 new local events: a food gardening course in Cape Town, a family allotment farm near Bangkok, a shared garden near Algiers, a wall-garden urban farming activity in Yogyakarta, and an elder-focused urban agriculture training in Caracas — covering 5 countries not previously represented in the events database, broadening regional diversity toward small-scale grassroots activities.
Published column 'Developers do not build farms for the vegetables'
Series 'Urban Farming and Real Estate', Day 4/7. Rooftop farms as tenant amenities, allotments folded into mixed-use schemes, and the return-on-investment logic behind them, read across several countries.
Added cases from Bulgaria, Georgia, Lithuania and Zambia, and policies from Uruguay, Zambia and Bulgaria
Four countries that had no case at all are now represented: the Urban Gardening - Sofia community garden network (Bulgaria), the small Kokopeli community garden in Tbilisi (Georgia), the Garden of Ideas in Vilnius's Pilaite district (Lithuania), and DAPP's urban garden project launched in Lusaka in 2026 (Zambia). New policies: the Lusaka Food Policy Council (Zambia), Sofia's Green Sofia greening grant programme (Bulgaria), and Uruguay's Law 19.717, whose scope covers urban and suburban production. New events include the Garden Museum Harvest Festival 2026 in London (18 October), the Compost Festival in Berlin, a community farm work day in Wiltshire, and Community Growing Conferences in three Australian states.
Urban events: added 6 grassroots events in Thailand, Uganda, Egypt, Moldova, Dominican Republic and Panama
Added compost workshops, a community greenhouse, a seed-library network, a horticultural-therapy garden, and a municipal market-composting pilot — Moldova's first entry in the DB. Prioritized countries with little existing coverage and small local activities over large festivals.
Published column 'How farmland became housing — and how a little of it is coming back'
Series 'Urban Farming and Real Estate', Day 3/7. A history instalment tracing both the long pattern of farmland becoming housing and the reverse movement of vacant and idle property being converted back into farmland.
Added 15 entries covering Serbia, Croatia, Sri Lanka, Kazakhstan and other previously missing countries
Four cases: Baštalište, Belgrade's first organised community garden (Serbia); ECO-V's Metta Garden, which turned a dumping ground into a butterfly garden (Sri Lanka); Zagreb's Gradski vrtovi network of free citizen plots (Croatia); and the school gardens of Astana (Kazakhstan). Three policies: Zagreb's 2013 city-gardens programme, Colombo's Urban Harvest opening 240+ hectares of public land during the 2022 economic crisis, and Riga's free municipal land lease for family gardens. Five events: three Denver composting and worm-bin workshops, Ireland's National Allotments and Community Gardens Week, and the Yasugi agriculture and forestry festival. Three research entries: a Quezon City survey showing urban agriculture works as a safety net rather than an income source, a Cameroon study arguing satellite imagery alone cannot see urban agriculture, and a Bangladesh study of rooftop-gardening barriers.
Events: added grassroots urban-farming events in 3 Korean cities, Cebu (Philippines) and Puebla (Mexico)
Added Anseong (public garden opening), Cheongju (urban agriculture festival) and Suwon (citizen-farm field tour) in South Korea, an urban/peri-urban agriculture training in Cebu (Philippines), and a home-garden support call in Puebla (Mexico). events +5.
Published column 'Does a farm next door make a house worth more? The fight over the evidence'
Series 'Urban Farming and Real Estate', Day 2/7. Reading the hedonic-pricing literature to separate what proximity effects are actually demonstrated from where speculation begins.
Baltic and Eastern European citizen gardens and policies added (4 cases / 5 events / 4 policies)
Adds the first entries from Estonia, Latvia, Ukraine and Slovenia: Pelguaed, Tallinn's largest community garden; Sporta pils dārzi in Riga, held under temporary use on the site of a demolished Soviet-era sports palace; Podil Urban Farm, opened in wartime Kyiv in spring 2025; and Onkraj gradbišča in Ljubljana, which used a municipal construction site as a garden for twelve years before closing in 2022. New policies cover Vilnius's 2021 urban-gardening rules, Tallinn's grant for non-profit gardening (from 2020), and Ljubljana's 2020 allotment ordinance together with the repealed 2009 ordinance it replaced, recorded with its period in force and reason for repeal. New events: a village kitchen-garden open day in Kent, the Alt-Marzahn harvest and environment festival in Berlin, and the tomato festival, apple day and twice-weekly work parties at Riley Park Community Garden in Vancouver.
Added diagrammatic hero images for the real-estate series
Added diagrammatic hero images to all seven Urban Farming and Real Estate articles, visualising land, policy, tax and access at a glance.
Events: added 3 grassroots urban-farming events in Vanuatu, Nepal and Malta (Gozo)
Added 3 new events: Slow Food Festival 2026 (Santo, Vanuatu), the HASERA International Permaculture Design Course (Patalekhet/Dhulikhel, Nepal), and the Sow, Grow, Unite intergenerational community garden (Gozo General Hospital, Malta) — all in countries not previously represented in the DB.
Started the series 'Urban Farming and Real Estate' (2026-08-12 to 2026-08-18)
Is urban farmland a use, or an asset? Seven days tracing where urban farming and real estate intersect — the effect on land values, the history of farmland conversion and zoning, developer-led rooftop farms, Japan's productive green space system, tax and fund logic, and critiques of greenwashing.
Published column 'What is the land under that farm worth — a map of urban farming and real estate'
Series 'Urban Farming and Real Estate', Day 1/7. An opening instalment setting farming-as-land-use against farmland-as-asset, and mapping the tension between development and preservation.
New cases from Tunis, Brussels, Hong Kong and Kathmandu, plus events in NZ, the UK and the US
Four new cases: Jninet El Hafsia, a resident-run garden grown out of a former parking area in the Medina of Tunis; a 2.5-hectare temporary-use farm in Brussels open only until housing development starts; the University of Hong Kong rooftop farm running since 2013; and an eco foundation near Kathmandu combining a farm with a school and clinic. Six events were added (four free composting and worm-farming workshops around Auckland, Apple Day at Fulham Palace in London, and a harvest festival and seed swap in Wisconsin). Two policies: Ireland's Acquisition of Land (Allotments) Act 1926 and Brussels' Inspirons le Quartier citizen project call.
Events: added 6 grassroots urban-farming events across the Middle East, Pacific, and Central America
Added a seed swap and community garden open day in Doha, Qatar; a tree-planting event in Kuwait City; a seedling giveaway day in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia; a beekeeping training on Vanua Levu, Fiji; and a native seed exchange festival in Nahuizalco, El Salvador. Strengthens coverage of the Gulf states, Pacific islands, and Central America, which had few small-scale events on record.
Published column 'Disaster and urban farming ⑦ — Keep growing a farm that is useful to its community'
Series 'Disaster and Urban Farming', Day 7/7 (final instalment). The article scheduled on 2026-08-04 released automatically at 05:00 JST, drawing the week's arguments together into a practice: a small local register of farms and gardens, and agreements renewed each season. All seven instalments are now public; the next series, 'Urban Farming and Real Estate', begins on Wednesday 2026-08-12.
Added cases from the US, Denmark and the Netherlands, Kobe composting workshops, and food-cycle policies from Japan and the US
Six cases: Danny Woo Community Garden in Seattle (worked mainly by seniors, average age 76), Beacon Food Forest, Interbay P-Patch, the self-built Nokken allotment community in Copenhagen, the Bijenpark beekeepers' garden in Amsterdam, and New York's children's farm garden (1902-1932). Seven events including the Kobe Compost Project's August workshops, an Atlanta seed-saving and pollinator census, a San Antonio seed swap and Brooklyn farm volunteer days. Four policies: Japan's Food Recycling Act, Food Loss Reduction Act and Green Food System Act, plus California SB 1383. One research entry on restoring PAH-contaminated urban agriculture soil with fungi.
Added 6 events: grassroots gardening events in Ireland, New Zealand, Australia, Canada and Germany
Added seed-saving and wildflower-seed events in Ireland (Carrickmacross, Galway), a seedling-sharing day in Auckland NZ, a seed-saving workshop in Burton (Adelaide, Australia), Seedy Sunday in Nanaimo Canada, and a neighbourhood seed festival in Berlin. Prioritized small grassroots events run by local groups and community gardens over large national festivals.
Published column 'Disaster and urban farming ⑥ — Costs and authority that keep preparedness from becoming a nice story'
Series 'Disaster and Urban Farming', Day 6/7. The instalment scheduled on 2026-08-04 released automatically at 05:00 JST, covering maintenance and restoration costs alongside authority over activation, closure and spending. Next week's series 'Urban Farming and Real Estate' (2026-08-12 to 08-18) was also fixed and its trailer written to data/newsletters/upcoming-series.md.
Urban-farming research from Africa and South Asia, plus Scotland's allotment statutes
Added four research entries (a review of urban and home gardening in Ethiopia; climate adaptation among urban pearl millet farmers in Niamey, Niger; antimicrobial resistance genes in rooftop garden soils in Bangladesh; a home gardening intervention in Siaya, Kenya), four cases (Huerto Orgánico Lak'a Uta in La Paz, Bolivia; the Gura Siriului community garden in Bucharest, Romania; the Potage-Toit rooftop garden in Brussels, Belgium; the Parc Bertrand vegetable garden in Geneva, Switzerland), four events (autumn farming programmes in the Minuma paddy belt, Saitama, Japan) and three policies (the Allotments (Scotland) Acts 1922 and 1950, both repealed in 2018, and the Small Holdings and Allotments Act 1926).
Added 2 urban farming events (Namibia, Indonesia)
Added an Agra ProVision urban gardening course in Windhoek, Namibia (26 June 2026) and the West Jakarta closing community planting day of Indonesia's "Tanam Raya Bersama Jakarta 2026" movement, involving 127 citizen gardening groups (19 June 2026). Prioritized Southern Africa and Southeast Asia, both previously under-represented in the events dataset.
Published two missing exploration columns (series 'The roof as farmland', Day 4 and Day 5)
'Four motives, four roofs' (2026-07-29) and 'The rooftops nobody counts' (2026-07-30) had been pushed to session branches and never merged into main. Detected by npm run audit:content and restored verbatim, so the seven-day series is complete and the Day 3 pointer to 'tomorrow's fourth instalment' now resolves.
Irish, British and Dutch city farms added, with food-and-farming events from Tokyo and Yokohama
Five cases: Airfield Estate in Dublin, Hackney City Farm in London, Heeley City Farm in Sheffield (opened in 1981 on land held for a road that was never built), and Voedselpark Amsterdam and Tuinen van West in the Netherlands. Six events: four courses in Tokyo's food-and-farming experience programme plus a composting workshop in Yokohama's Kohoku Ward and a sweetcorn harvest with Sukusuku Farm Yokohama. Three policies: the Allotments Act (Northern Ireland) 1932, Article 22 of the EU Waste Framework Directive (which makes encouraging home composting an obligation on Member States), and Yokohama's local-production ordinance. Four research entries: mosquitoes in Brooklyn community gardens, greening and gentrification in Vancouver and Calgary, how Australian primary schools actually run their vegetable gardens, and barriers to collective gardening for Black African immigrants in Alberta.
Added 5 grassroots events in North Macedonia, Bosnia, Montenegro, Georgia and Myanmar
Added a community garden open day (Skopje), a pollinator planting (Sarajevo), volunteer garden days (Podgorica), seasonal gatherings (Tbilisi) and a community seed bank (Pyin Oo Lwin, Myanmar) — prioritizing grassroots, local-scale events in under-covered countries over large national festivals.
Use more inviting wording for column reactions
Changed the reader-feedback option from “Needs improvement” to “Want to learn more.”
Add anonymous reader feedback to columns
Readers can mark each column as Helpful or Needs improvement without signing in. Each browser has one vote per article and can change its selection without adding another vote.
Add social sharing controls to columns
Each column can now be shared through the device share sheet, X, Facebook, LINE, or a copied link, with its explainer image shown in the shared card.
Add explainer images and social thumbnails to columns
The disaster and urban farming series now shows its explainer art at the top of each article and in the column index, and uses the same artwork for large social-sharing cards.
Add disaster-series social cards and improve citation navigation
Admins can download seven 1200×630 disaster-series social cards individually or as a ZIP. Research, source, and citing-column cards are now fully clickable, and the source label has been corrected.
Open column sources inside the database first
Column citations now open an internal research or source record before the original material. Method, practice, and recap headings in the disaster series are also specific to each instalment.
Add column drafts to the admin console
Admins can review only unreleased scheduled columns; each draft disappears automatically at its release time.
Fix structural paragraph duplication in disaster columns
Fixed the generator that injected one note into every section and added tests that reject duplicate body paragraphs.
Add database cases and papers to disaster columns
Added the Tokyo urban-agriculture study, Settsu disaster-cooperation farmland, and post-Katrina New Orleans school garden to the text and sources.
Remove repetitive filler from seven disaster and urban farming columns
Replaced shared boilerplate with instalment-specific evidence and removed title repetition and filler.
Added 9 missed Osaka urban farms (Gamoyon, Kleingarten, Harukas, Nagai, rice club, OCAT, Yokozutsumi, Midori, Uesumiyoshi)
Added 6 missed Japanese urban farms (Togoshi, Sugita, NURF, Mokuri, Jinnan, Yokohama farm parks)
Scheduled seven 'Disaster and Urban Farming' columns
Releases daily at 05:00 JST from August 5–11, with sources listed in every article.
Mobile navigation redesigned
Navigation is now collected in an easier-to-use hamburger menu in the top right.
Homepage redesigned
Added situation-based paths and a clearer overview of cases, research, policy and events.
Added 8 missing farms from Kobe City Urban Farming Map
Added Sheraton Farm, three LOCAL FARM sites, Motomachi Garden Club, Ujamaa, SIO9 and Sky Farm Lilas; linked the map page onto eight existing Kobe sites.
Published column 'Urban farming in Spain — the water court that sits at noon on Thursday, and the plot you hand back after five years'
Series 'Southern Europe, the dry city', Day 3 of 3 (final). Country Report strand. Adopted the draft built on Valencia's water court, framing allocation by turn as Southern Europe's third instrument (scored A=29 vs B=19). Also closes the series.
Added citizen-farming cases from Switzerland, Australia and Spain, plus four policies including the EU Soil Monitoring Law and Japan's agricultural residential zone
Four new cases: Les Jardins de Cocagne in Geneva (1978), Europe's first community-supported agriculture cooperative; Collingwood Children's Farm in Melbourne (1979); Can Masdeu, the squatted community garden in Barcelona (2001); and Kentish Town City Farm (1972), London's first city farm. Four new policies: the assets of community value scheme in the UK Localism Act 2011, the EU's first soil law (Directive (EU) 2025/2360 on soil monitoring and resilience), and two Japanese instruments — the agricultural residential zone under the City Planning Act and the certification of citizen green space plans under the Urban Green Space Act. Four new research entries cover urban agriculture and gentrification, toxic metals in Nigerian urban farming, soil fauna in Rio de Janeiro, and school gardens and school-meal consumption in the US.
Added press coverage links for most Japan cases
Bulk-added verified third-party web articles to Japan cases for the In the media section.
Added an In the media section on case pages (piloted with Minna no Uen)
Surfaces Web articles separately from citation sources. Added press links for Kitakagaya, Farm 2, Neyagawa and PARK Minatogawa.
Added 5 local Japanese urban-farm cases from web coverage
Added web-covered local JP cases not yet in academic literature: Tomoiki Farm (Kanagawa office rooftop), Senkawa Community Garden (Toshima), Kronosfarm (Ichihara), Minna Batake (Kunitachi), Potager Chayama (Shimonoseki national land).
Sakanoen vacant-lot gardens in Nagasaki plus related research
Added Sakanoen in Nakashinmachi, Nagasaki — five hillside vacant-lot allotment gardens since 2020 — plus four papers on vacant-land connectivity, food-safety risks, austerity interim use, and informal green space (Sapporo/Brisbane).
Added 5 urban farming events (Tirana Albania / Kawagoe Saitama / Musashino Tokyo / Takko Aomori / Chennai India)
Added 5 grassroots-focused local events: Tulla Culture Centre's weekly urban farming school in Tirana, Albania; Kawagoe's spring agriculture festival (Saitama, Japan); Musashino's Agriculture Fureai Park summer festival (Tokyo, Japan); Takko's garlic harvest festival (Aomori, Japan); and a resident-run terrace-garden seed swap community in Chitlapakkam, a Chennai suburb in India.
Published column 'Urban farming in Italy — the 59 farmsteads a city owns, and the 41 meadows it counted'
Series 'Southern Europe, the dry city', Day 2/3. Country report. Draft A, built on ownership and upkeep, was adopted (29 points) over Draft B. It avoids the acreage argument Day 1 already made about the Parco Agricolo Sud Milano and shifts to the individual objects inside the line.
Added citizen-run city farms in the UK and US, plus urban-farming policies and research
Four new cases: Meanwood Valley Urban Farm (Leeds), Taqwa Community Farm (Bronx, NYC), Freightliners City Farm (Islington, London) and Wythenshawe Community Farm (Manchester). Five new events, all US composting workshops and garden volunteer days (Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Palo Alto, Citrus Heights). Three new policies: the London Food Strategy (2018), Japan's Basic Plan for the Promotion of Urban Agriculture (Cabinet decision, 2016) and Tokyo's Farming Landscape Fostering District scheme (created 2011). Three new research entries: community-scale assessment of urban-agriculture potential (China), a comparison of heavy metals in Seattle community-garden versus grocery vegetables, and DDT effects on urban garden soil microbiomes in Istanbul.
Added grassroots urban-farming events in Hungary, Peru, the Philippines, Malta and Croatia
Added five small, local events: a monthly community-garden open day in Budapest, an urban-gardening course for southern Lima districts, a seed/seedling distribution programme in Manila, a hands-on community-garden session in Malta, and a vermicomposting workshop in Pula, Croatia. Prioritized grassroots, locally-run events over large national festivals.
Published column 'Farming a dry city — Southern Europe has held its farmland without owning it'
Series 'Southern Europe, the dry city', Day 1/3. The overview instalment. Three drafts were compared; draft B was adopted because its spine — EEA and Eurostat water indicators plus the basic data of the Milan and Baix Llobregat agricultural parks — could be verified (draft C was rejected because its sources were unreachable from this environment).
Eight Kobe community farms, four studies and three policies added
Eight new citizen-run growing sites across the wards of Kobe: a rooftop garden on a shopping centre (pick! nic! farm, Suma), a garden on unused high-school land (Gakugaoka Saien, Tarumi), a garden inside a public park (Ikutacho Park Saien, Chuo), rental plots on vacant lots that compost with a supported-employment workshop (Osanpo Batake, Hyogo and Nagata), a complex in a closed primary school (NATURE STUDIO, Hyogo), a group clearing neglected bamboo groves into menma and compost (Ogo Bamboo Project, Kita), a children's growing-to-selling club (Manokko Agri Club, Nagata) and an open garden and playground (Hata tainohata, Suma). Four studies were added, including a survey finding lead and arsenic in Chicago park soils highest in lower-income neighbourhoods, with some areas unsafe for gardening in native soil, and a study of 412 small-scale urban farmers in eThekwini, South Africa, finding only modest income gains from climate-smart practices. Three policies: the UK Allotments Act 1950, Japan's 1989 Specified Farmland Lending Act underpinning its allotment system, and Kobe City's Compost Project. One event: bamboo and straw craft workshops for children at Futaba Gakusha, Kobe, on 9 August.
Added local urban-farming events: small-scale gatherings in Norway, the US, Austria, Italy, Malaysia and Argentina
Added Oslo's allotment-garden autumn days, Buffalo's Urban Farm Day, Angewandte University's compost day in Vienna, Trento's open community garden, the Klang River microforest gotong royong in Kuala Lumpur, and Córdoba's agroecological market (events +6)
Published column 'What is a rooftop farm good for? — between 633 hectares and 1,284'
Series 'The roof as farmland', day 7 of 7. Adopted draft A (30 points against draft B's 28): tests three expectations — food, environment and green space policy — against figures from primary sources, then sets out an order of practice and closes the series.
15 new entries on health, nutrition and food security, weighted to critical findings and non-Western settings
Eleven research entries and four cases. Today's lens was health, nutrition and food security, carrying both evidence of benefit and evidence that benefits are limited. Five entries report critical or null findings: a Canadian systematic review (community gardening may have little to no effect on household food insecurity), a randomized trial of 381 older cancer survivors in Alabama that missed its primary composite outcome, wastewater irrigation and diarrhoea incidence in Ahmedabad, E. coli in 58.6% of samples from Dhaka urban gardens, and a Lima early-child-development project that improved food security and language delay but not motor or cognitive delay. Regions: USA, Canada, India, Bangladesh, Nepal, Brazil, Ecuador, Peru and sub-Saharan Africa. The cases are a Chicago produce prescription farm, a worker-cooperative garden in Quito for people with severe mental health problems, the Lima multi-sectoral project, and an FAO wall-garden project in Lebanon for refugees barred from cultivating land, which closed in 2016.
Published column 'Who pays for the roof — mandates, subsidies, and repeal'
Series 'The roof as farmland', day 6 of 7. Science x Society. Adopted the draft that compares the three instruments — mandate, subsidy and price — down to their actual figures.
Added local urban-farming events in Shanghai, Hyderabad, Lalitpur, Melbourne and more
Added the Shanghai Community Garden Week, a terrace-farming training in Hyderabad, an urban-farming support programme in Lalitpur (Nepal), a garden-club gathering in Melbourne, and composting workshops in San Jose and Lancaster, USA (events +6)
Published column 'A genealogy of the roof garden — from idea to technique, and on to the department-store roof'
Series 'The roof as farmland', day 3 of 7. Adopted the draft tracing the idea of soil on a roof as three lineages: fire safety (Rabitz, 1867), architectural idea (Le Corbusier, 1927) and commerce (Mitsukoshi, 1907).
Ten studies on the economics of urban farming, plus UK allotment law and five city-farm cases
Today's collection used an economics and business-viability lens. The ten research entries lead with negative and limiting evidence: tomato growing in Addis Ababa that returns a negative NPV of US$30,100/ha/yr once water costs are counted; community vegetable gardens in Zimbabwe found not cost-effective at EUR 12,456 per household reaching the target diet score; and a Ljubljana plot-taking boom during the Slovenian debt crisis that did not function as household provisioning. They are joined by household economics from Ghana, Uganda and Cambodia, siting and operating models for Japanese experience farms, and a willingness-to-pay study of a student farm. Cases include Growing Power in Milwaukee, which dissolved in 2017 under mounting debt despite its prominence (an inactive entry), and four London city farms, among them Stepney City Farm, which lost about a third of its site to Crossrail. Policies cover the UK Allotments Acts 1922 and 1925 (ministerial consent before statutory allotment land is disposed of), the Land Settlement (Facilities) Act 1919, and the Land Settlement Association, wound up and privatised in 1983.
Added 11 grassroots urban-farming events, including first entries for Cyprus, Panama, Palau, Solomon Islands, South Sudan, Eswatini and Iraq
Today's events-only routine added 11 local urban-farming events and standing community programs — community-garden open days, harvest festivals, trainings and composting workshops — including first-time entries for Cyprus, Panama, Palau, Solomon Islands, South Sudan, Eswatini and Iraq, plus a second Croatia entry.
Published column 'Designing for weight and water — the physics that turns a roof into farmland'
Series 'The roof as farmland', Day 2 of 7. Science × Society. Draft A adopted for its single descending line of argument, from the imposed loads of Article 85 through the layer stack, lightweight media, wind and the heat balance.
Added 13 entries through a methodology and review lens, including Africa, Kenya, Zimbabwe and developing Asia
Twelve research entries centred on systematic reviews, meta-analyses and re-analyses, ten of which report negative findings or limitations: heavy metals in African urban soils, lead and mercury in Nairobi leafy greens, wastewater-irrigated vegetables in developing Asia, a methods critique of green gentrification research and a review of its mental health effects, a review finding collective-garden health benefits unconfirmed due to cross-sectional designs, a meta-analysis where school gardening plus physical activity did not improve BMI, a review finding weak measurement behind greenery and mental health in aged care, and a Zimbabwe case study where urban agriculture did not reduce food insecurity for grandmother-headed households. On urban beekeeping both sides are now in the database: a Montreal study associating honey bee abundance with declining wild bee richness, and a re-analysis finding no statistical evidence for competition in Munich. One policy entry: Oakland's urban agriculture zoning, including the permitting burden once sales are involved.
Published column 'The roof as farmland'
Series 'The roof as farmland', Day 1 of 7. Science x Society. Three drafts were compared (institutions-first, area-first, science-first) and the area-first draft was adopted as the truest fit for an overview.
Started the series 'The roof as farmland' (2026-07-26 to 2026-08-01)
A topic series (Science x Society) inspecting the roof as farmland over seven days: definitions and area, the physics of load and water, history, world cases, where Japan stands, institutions and economics, and controversy and practice.
Consolidated duplicate exploration columns (42 → 32)
Columns generated more than once on the same subject (four on DIY, four on France, two each on Cuba, the Netherlands, Singapore and Germany) are now single articles. Canonical slugs are kept so existing links survive, and only non-overlapping sections were merged in.
Added three more columns (alternative Netherlands, Singapore and Germany reports)
Three alternative versions stranded on branches under an existing slug are now published as separate articles: polders and floating farms for the Netherlands, the November 2025 revision of '30 by 30' for Singapore, and law versus freedom for Germany.
Added three more columns and fixed a duplicate France slug
Two more DIY columns and a second Cuba column are now live. A recovered France column that collided with the existing slug was separated out as french-workers-gardens-to-rooftop-farms.
Published five exploration columns (three on France, DIY science, the nutrient loop)
Columns stranded on unmerged branches were recovered. The three French pieces run as separate articles — institutional history, Paris policy programmes, and the 19th-century market gardens. All 34 source URLs were checked; two dead links were replaced with primary sources.
Recovered unmerged routine output (+97 cases, +34 research, +151 events, +71 policies)
Data produced by the daily routine had been left on unmerged branches. It was recovered across all branches, de-duplicated in favour of existing records, and 15 research entries with placeholder authors were dropped per the fabrication check.
Added local urban-farming events from Côte d'Ivoire, Argentina, Indonesia, Fiji, and Saint Vincent and the Grenadines
Added five grassroots urban-farming events: an urban agriculture days conference in Bouaké (Côte d'Ivoire), a native-seed fair in Puerto Iguazú (Argentina), a home-garden workshop in Tebing Tinggi village, Riau (Indonesia), and home-gardening trainings in Labasa (Fiji) and Kingstown (Saint Vincent and the Grenadines) — all five countries new to the events dataset.
Published column 'Urban farming in Cuba — farming from necessity, raised by crisis'
Country Report. Cuba's organopónicos and urban agriculture born of Special Period scarcity, told as a crisis-to-agroecology arc. Chose the history/culture angle over policy and on-the-ground drafts.
2026-07-24 New data added
Added 9 urban farming cases from Sweden, Norway, Finland, Hungary, Portugal, New Zealand, Australia, and Singapore; 6 research entries on urban agriculture, food resilience, and biodiversity; 5 policies/programs from Kenya, Finland, Denmark, FAO, and Rwanda.
Improved overseas farm-map accuracy: relocated sites stacked on city centroids worldwide, added ~40 sites (defunct vertical farms, lost community gardens), and excluded area-level programs, policies and studies from the map
Improved farm-map location accuracy nationwide: moved ~100 sites that were stacked on city centroids to their real locations, and excluded area-level programs and multi-site brands from the map
Greatly improved farm-map location accuracy across Kansai (Kobe, Osaka, etc.) and added 3 Minna no Uen sites (PARK Higashisumiyoshi, Toyonaka, Asoviva)
New 'Learning from failure' column series — 3 pieces (free for a limited time)
Added three exploration columns that examine urban-farming failures even-handedly: (1) green gentrification — the paradox of greening raising land values and displacing residents, with High Line/Barcelona/606 evidence and the 'just green enough' prescription; (2) the vertical-farm bubble — the cascade of bankruptcies from AeroFarms to Plenty and the root economics of electricity and crop constraints; (3) the fragility of urban farmland — three types of loss (eviction, slow erosion, defunding) and the mechanisms that secure tenure. All cite paper DOIs or primary sources and are free to read for a limited time.
Government-policy failures added (+36 research, +10 policies, +6 cases)
Filled the policy-evaluation type of failure — where a government's promotion effort stalled or collapsed. Research +36: food-policy councils dissolved or underperforming (Portland; empirical evaluations of major US cities), urban-ag strategy implementation gaps (London ON, São Paulo, Normandy), austerity/neoliberal responsibilization onto volunteers (Rosol, McClintock, Cumbers, etc.), interim-use/licence-to-occupy precarity (Paris, Dublin), Detroit zoning legalization turning into speculation and 'planning for decline', policy-driven green gentrification displacing residents (High Line, Barcelona, Vienna), and limited food-security impact (Southern Africa, Malawi). Policies +10: real dissolutions/repeals/defundings (Portland, Orange County, DC, Denver food-policy councils; USDA land-access & Regional Food Business Centers cancelled; NYC GreenThumb auction; Missouri backyard-chicken law struck down; UK Local Food time-limited grant; Zimbabwe's reinstated urban-farming ban). Cases +6: publicly-run or grant-dependent urban farms closed by funding cuts (Newham, Gorgie, Coventry city farms; Edmonton City Farms; Ukiah; Detroit Farm-A-Lot). Every entry carries a DOI or primary-source URL. Repealed policies 4->11, inactive cases 33->39.
Balancing the record: critical research & failure cases (+72 research, +26 cases)
To counter a pro-urban-farming skew, added a large body of negative/critical/failure evidence. Research +72: environmental footprint (CEA/vertical-farm LCAs can exceed open-field carbon), soil/produce heavy-metal, PFAS & PAH contamination and health risks, weak economic viability and repeated bankruptcies, overstated food-security claims, gentrification/equity/'whiteness' critiques, garden loss/eviction and ecosystem disservices. Cases +26 are all status:inactive failures: vertical-farm/CEA bankruptcies (AeroFarms, AppHarvest, Kalera, Fifth Season, Infarm, Bowery, Plenty, FarmedHere, Agricool, etc.) and community gardens lost to development/eviction (South Central Farm, Esperanza, Adam Purple, Hayes Valley, Old Tidemill, Grow Heathrow, etc.). Every entry carries a DOI or primary-source URL.
Published column 'Walking the Edible Forest: Urban Food Forests and the Culture of Picking Allowed'
New Science x Society column reading public food forests worldwide (Seattle, Atlanta, Todmorden, Andernach) through governance and field practice, alongside the ecology of the seven layers and guilds.
Added local urban farming events in Lithuania, Ukraine, Guadeloupe, Georgia, Montenegro, Guyana and Mongolia
Added 7 events: a seed exchange (Varėna, Lithuania), composting workshops (Chortkiv, Ukraine; Georgetown, Guyana), a permaculture solidarity garden inauguration (Port-Louis, Guadeloupe), an ecovillage summer camp (Ninigori, Georgia), a plant/seed swap (Tivat, Montenegro), and a gardening club (Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia). Focused on small, grassroots local events in countries with previously thin coverage.
Added local urban farming events from Ireland, Slovenia, Wales, South Africa and Colombia
Added 6 small-scale local urban farming events across 5 countries: Ireland (Greystones pollinator guide launch), Slovenia (Ljubljana seed & toy swap), Wales UK (community garden open days in Cwmbran and Swansea), South Africa (Brakpan market day), and Colombia (Medellín gardeners' seed-exchange network).
Published column 'Urban farming in the Netherlands — farming as design, born of a small country'
Country Report. Reads Dutch urban farming as 'farming as design', from volkstuinen (from 1838, AVVN 1928) and school gardens to rooftop farms (DakAkker). Adopted the case-focused draft after comparing three editorial angles.
2026-07-21 New data additions
Added 4 new case studies (Chicago, Copenhagen, Singapore, Detroit), 5 research papers (food security & climate resilience), and 4 policies (USDA grants, municipal programs). Net +9 new entries (3 cases, 2 research, 0 events, 4 policies).
Added 4 urban farming events: local garden events from Portugal, the Philippines, Indonesia, and Argentina
Added Lisbon's Jardins Abertos open-garden network, Manila's Luneta Urban Garden relaunch, West Jakarta's citizen urban-farming group joint harvest, and Roldán, Argentina's urban garden meeting with seed distribution — all small, local-scale events in countries/cities not previously represented in the events dataset.
2026-07-19: Add new data from Latin America, Canada, and policy research
Added: 2 cases (Rosario El Bosque, Thorncliffe Park), 2 research papers (pollination citizen science, SSA food security), 2 policies (Egypt success index, South Africa transformation). All sources verified. Coverage: cases 359→361, research 896→898, policies 86→88.
Added local garden events from Iceland, France, Finland, Switzerland, Austria, and Denmark
Added 6 small local urban-farming events: a spring plant exchange in Kópavogur (Iceland), a shared-garden open day in Toulouse (France), an allotment garden open day in Tampere (Finland), an open-garden weekend in Hochwald (Switzerland), community garden days in Graz (Austria), and an allotment work day in Aarhus (Denmark).
2026-07-18 Added urban farming cases and policies from Greece, Poland, South Africa, Chile, Philippines, and Malaysia
Added Greece's municipal gardens program, Poland's Krakow-Warsaw urban agriculture plans, South Africa's Cape Town-Johannesburg initiatives, Santiago community gardens, Philippines government program, and Malaysia's Young Agropreneur Programme. 6 new cases, 8 new policies.
Published column 'Urban farming and DIY — how making it yourself reclaims sovereignty over growing'
Science × Society. On DIY/open-source urban farming; adopted the case-led draft covering Windowfarms, Farm Hack, FarmBot and L'Atelier Paysan for its factual grounding.
Add Bangladesh, Poland, Palestine urban agriculture data
Added new cases including Dhaka rooftop farming, Kraków community gardens, and Palestine urban agriculture integration. Integrated research on sub-Saharan African urban agriculture and Bangladesh rooftop gardening. Added policies including Bangladesh National Agriculture Policy and Kraków pilot program.
Added local urban-farming events from 19 previously uncovered countries
Added 20 grassroots urban-farming events (seed exchanges, composting workshops, community garden visits, and small local fairs) across 19 previously uncovered countries: Jordan, Bulgaria, Serbia, Latvia, North Macedonia, Palestine, Zimbabwe, Nigeria, Egypt, Malawi, Namibia, Pakistan, Cambodia, Myanmar, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Dominican Republic, Honduras, and Cuba (events +20).
Published our privacy policy, terms of use and legal notice (operator information)
2026-07-14 New Research and Policy Entries
Added 5 recent research papers (2025-2026) on elderly, food-loss, and pollinator themes, plus 4 urban agriculture policies from Africa, Middle East, and South America. Strengthens elderly welfare, food-waste reduction, and pollinator conservation literature.
Added local garden events from Estonia, Slovakia, Spain and Malta
Added a Tallinn Old Town community garden open programme, a Bratislava open-gardens weekend featuring a community growing-plot garden, community urban garden open days in Madrid and Marratxí (Mallorca), and a garden potluck & ethnobotany workshop at an NGO garden in Malta (events +5).
Published column 'Urban farming in France'
Country report, adopted from the policy/institutions angle: how the City of Paris — which does not farm itself — turned land into farmland through institutions, from the 1896 worker gardens to the 2016 Parisculteurs.
2026-07-13 Research added (100 urban-agriculture papers on Germany & China)
Added 50 papers on urban agriculture in Germany and 50 on China; research +100, all with verified DOIs.
Gap-fill: under-covered themes & regions (45 research, 26 cases, 23 policies)
Filled thin themes and geographic/spatial gaps. Research +45 (elderly/horticultural therapy, food-loss/gleaning, pollinators/urban beekeeping, community composting; plus Sub-Saharan Africa, MENA, South & Southeast Asia, Latin America). Cases +26 (wall & building-interior: underground/subway/vertical farms and edible walls; plus Kenya, Egypt, Nigeria, Uganda, Zimbabwe, Ethiopia, Ghana, Jordan, Palestine, Lebanon, Bangladesh, Nepal, Bolivia, Cuba). Policies +23 (repealed: Germany KGO 1919, US Victory Gardens; green-building: SF/Toronto green roofs; zoning: Cleveland/Detroit/Chicago; plus NL/BE, Latin America, Asia, Africa). All with source URLs.
Research added (50 events, 100 DIY)
Added 50 studies on urban-farm events and activities (festivals/markets, education programs, horticultural therapy, seed swaps) and 100 studies on DIY growing equipment (raised beds, hydroponics/aquaponics, self-watering/irrigation, composting rigs, low-cost sensors/IoT, rooftop/green-wall/indoor, mushroom/propagation/solar-drying). All with DOIs.
Added local urban-farming events from Chile, Czechia, Malaysia, South Africa and South Korea
Added two Chilean seed-exchange gatherings (Chillán, Ancud), a small permaculture community garden open weekend near Prague, twice-weekly volunteer days at a Kuala Lumpur community garden, a Johannesburg garden club open day, and the opening of a district-run allotment garden in Incheon — all small, local events rather than large festivals.
Published column 'Urban Farming and Community: The Social Capital that Soil Grows'
Science x Society. Leads with the mechanism of social capital (bonding/bridging), covers health, resilience and the shadows, grounded in P-Patch, GreenThumb, UK allotments, Incredible Edible and Japan's citizen farms. Adopted draft A (25 pts) after a 3-way comparison.
Published column 'Urban farming in Singapore — 30 by 30, a city-state that made farming national policy'
Country Report series. Institutions-and-policy angle adopted after comparing three drafts (score 25, highest factuality). Covers 90% imports, 30 by 30, SFA, HDB car-park rooftop tenders, Sky Greens and Community in Bloom.
Added 100 US urban-farming research papers to the database
Added 100 peer-reviewed papers on US urban agriculture, community gardens, food justice, vacant-land reuse and soil contamination. Every entry is built from real CrossRef metadata with DOI resolution and title/year verified.
New events: local grassroots events in Turkey, New Zealand, Canada, UK, and Australia
Added grassroots local events: a seed exchange festival in Istanbul, a community garden fundraiser in Warkworth NZ, a recurring sharing-garden volunteer program in North Vancouver Canada, an allotment seed/plant swap in Bridge near Canterbury UK, and a recurring community food forest working bee in Perth Australia. All are small, single-organizer local events.
Daily routine: add cases, research, policies
Added 16 new entries (6 cases, 5 research papers, 5 policies) from East Africa, Southeast Asia, and USA, including Nairobi garden-in-a-sack and Thailand sustainable farming models.
Free newsletter signup opens; latest columns now free to read
The weekly Urban Farm DB digest is now available to everyone via free email signup. The three newest exploration columns are free to read in full; older columns move into the members' archive.
Domestic urban agriculture and compost events added
Added 15 new sessions of Kobe Compost Project workshops (July 21 - August 22, 2026) and Tono Hop Harvest Festival in Iwate (August 21-23, 2026).
Added local garden events from South Korea, Colombia, South Africa, Czech Republic and Vietnam
Added 6 grassroots local events from under-covered regions: citizen-farm programs in Suwon and Incheon (South Korea), a seed workshop at Bogotá's botanical garden (Colombia), a Mandela Day garden volunteer day (South Africa), a community garden open day in Prague (Czech Republic), and a new circular-economy community garden in Ho Chi Minh City (Vietnam).
2026-07-06 New data added
cases +1 (Detroit urban farming grant program) / research +2 (compost and urban agroecology studies) / policies +1 (Nairobi County urban farming policy)
Added grassroots urban-farming events (events +11)
Added allotment-garden open days, seed swaps, composting workshops and a herb harvest in Finland, Norway, Czech Republic, Romania, Morocco and Zambia, plus two grassroots events in Kochi and Nagano, Japan.
Published column 'Food loss: the science and the societies — prevent, share, return'
Science × Society. Adopted the principle-first draft (A) after comparing three angles.
2026-07-04 Routine: Add new data
Added 5 new policies: Philippines NUPAP, Mexico LGAAS, Indonesia Jakarta urban farming regulation, Thailand Bangkok City Farm Program, and EU EPBD green roof requirement. Added 2 new case studies: Brooklyn Grange Rooftop Farm, Incredible Edible Todmorden, and AeroFarms Newark vertical farm. Added 4 new research articles covering global trends, food systems strengthening, vertical farming systems, and sub-Saharan Africa food security.
Domestic events added / Kobe Compost Workshops
Added domestic compost workshops in Japan. Two sessions from Kobe Compost Project (Kobe City) on 2026-07-21: Minnanoueen Zenshouji farm (Suma Ward, 11:30~) and Marutto Garden Asobiba (Tarumi Ward, 14:30~).
2026-07-02 New data added: urban farming cases, policies, research from under-represented regions (Austria, Mexico, Turkey, Egypt, Palestine, Jordan, Hong Kong)
Collected new data from under-represented regions to expand global coverage. Added 9 new cases from Austria (Zukunftshof), Mexico City (Miravalle, El Terreno), Istanbul (rooftop initiatives, Peninsula), Cairo (Urban Greens, Schaduf), Palestine (Planting Hope), Jordan (Greening the Camps), Hong Kong (Rooftop Republic). Added 6 new policies from Turkey, Egypt, Mexico City, Hong Kong, Taipei, UAE, Singapore. Included 13 research papers covering urban agriculture economics, composting, biodiversity, and climate adaptation.
Added 26 local grassroots events (small-scale events across Africa, Latin America, Europe and Asia)
Added small local events (community garden open days, seed swaps, composting workshops, volunteer farming days) from Uruguay, Chile, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, South Africa, Rwanda, Kenya, Uganda, Ghana, Senegal, Ireland, Slovenia, Hungary, Croatia, Israel, South Korea, Thailand, Malaysia, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Philippines, Taiwan, China, and Vietnam.
New column 'Disaster and the Urban Farm,' 3 new pioneers, and a new history chapter
A new exploration column on crisis and resilience; pioneer profiles for Jac Smit ('father of urban agriculture'), Karen Washington and Antonio Lattuca; and a new history chapter on urban farming in the Global South.
Filled major coverage gaps: +22 cases, +16 research papers, +10 policies
Added 22 cases across Europe (DE/FR/IT/Nordics/Central Europe) and the Global South (Latin America, Africa, MENA), 10 policies incl. Korea's 2011 Urban Agriculture Act and the UK's 1908 Allotments Act, and 16 papers on pollinators, elderly gardening, compost, food loss and DIY.
Added 12 local/grassroots events from Switzerland, Greece, Poland, India, Argentina, Mexico, and Chile
Added grassroots, small-scale events not previously covered: community garden days, seed exchanges, and composting workshops in Zurich, Thessaloniki, Athens, Warsaw, Chennai, Bengaluru, Rosario, Carmen de Patagones, Mexico City, and Niebla (Chile).
Published column 'Urban farming in Germany — 150 years from Schreber's garden'
Country Report. Selected the history-and-culture angle after scoring three drafts. Traces German urban farming from the 1860s Schreber movement through the Federal Allotment Gardens Act to today's intercultural gardens, Prinzessinnengärten and Andernach's edible city.
Added 91 papers from 24 previously-missing countries
Added 91 peer-reviewed papers and institutional reports on urban and peri-urban agriculture from 24 countries previously absent from the database; all links verified (78 cross-checked against CrossRef metadata).
Added 58 papers across 7 newly created fields: urban–rural linkage, food miles, CSA, peri-urban agriculture, climate change, food sovereignty, and digital agriculture
Filling previously thin research areas: urban–rural linkage (URCA, UN-Habitat guiding principles, Tacoli's classics), food miles & supply chain (Nature Food 2022, Coley 2009), CSA & Teikei (incl. 50 years since the 1971 Kobe origin), peri-urban multifunctionality, climate adaptation, food sovereignty & justice, and digital/smart agriculture. Also adds Osaka/Kobe empirical studies (Hara 2013/2018, Hirano Co-op Farm). Seven new theme tabs were added to the research page.
Added 12 local urban-farming events from Germany, Belgium, France, Brazil, Colombia, Sweden, South Africa, and South Korea
New entries: Berlin seed exchange (ZLB/VERN), Aktion Offener Garten (SH & Hamburg), Velt Zadenfest in Kalmthout and Reclaim the Seeds in Oedelem (Belgium), Châtillon community-garden open day (France), Casa de Sementes at SESC Piracicaba and Cultiva Comunidades in Recife (Brazil), Bucaramanga native-seed exchange and Bogotá roving urban-ag fair (Colombia), Tusen Trädgårdar national open-garden day (Sweden), Noordhoek Open Gardens (South Africa), Gangdong-gu urban allotment season opening (South Korea). All small-scale grassroots events.
Added reports and records on 'Minna no Uen' to the research database (+4)
大阪・北加賀屋発のコミュニティ農園「みんなのうえん」に関する実在文献を探索し、国土交通省のコミュニティ農園活用調査報告書(2017)、環境省グッドライフアワード受賞記録(2014)、greenz.jpの取材記事(2020)、UR都市機構の湊川PARK報告(2023)の4件を追加。専論の学術論文はほぼ存在せず、公的報告・受賞記録・媒体記事が中心であることを確認。
Added local community garden events in Netherlands, Canada, Portugal, Italy, Austria, Germany, Australia, and the US
Added 9 local grassroots urban farming events across 8 countries: Reclaim the Seeds seed fair (Amsterdam), East Vancouver Seedy Saturday, Jardins Abertos Lisbon (community allotments open day festival), Festival Regador Lisbon (community garden festival), Appuntamento in Giardino Italy (national open gardens day), Vienna community garden open day, Erdfest compost event at StadtAcker Munich, Sydney City Farm volunteer working bees, and Marra Farm Seattle volunteer work parties.
Published column 'Pollinators and Urban Biodiversity — Building a City for Pollinators, Starting from the Ground'
Science × Society. Adopted the cases-first draft built around real field practice (Oslo's bee highway, Ginza rooftop hives, No Mow May, B-Lines), anchored on the caveat that keeping honeybees is not the same as conserving pollinators.
Published column 'Hitler and Migge: subsistence gardens in the age of Blood and Soil' (+19 papers)
ワイマール期の造園家レーベレヒト・ミッゲの自給菜園思想と生産的ジードルング、バウハウス・近代主義の社会住宅、そしてナチスの『血と土』イデオロギーへの語彙の流用と断絶を、歴史研究19本をもとに論じる歴史×社会コラムを新設。関連論文19本も研究データベースに追加。
Added 98 research papers on corporate involvement and on poverty/hunger/food-deserts in urban agriculture
Added ~50 papers on corporate/commercial urban agriculture and ~50 on urban agriculture for poverty, hunger and food deserts, collected from around the world and verified as real.
Added all Kobe Compost Project events (events +18)
Comprehensive coverage of Kobe City's Kobe Compost Project (Environment Bureau Resource Recycling Division / Ondo). Added 17 touring composting-workshop sessions across Kobe wards from the official workshop listing, plus one project-overview entry.
Made Exploration Columns more prominent (homepage feature + nav promotion)
Added two pathways to surface the Exploration Columns across the site. In the header, 'Columns' was promoted from the 'Learn' group to a top-level standalone link (always visible). On the homepage, a new feature band right after the hero presents a large spotlight card (Composting: the science and the societies) plus a compact three-item list (care farming / Japan country report / water and soil) and a callout to the new ten-country Country Report series, all in the existing terracotta-accented editorial UI.
Added 5 local events from France, UK (Newcastle), Netherlands, Denmark and Taiwan
Added Rendez-vous aux Jardins 2026 (France, first French event), Newcastle Allotment & Garden Festival 2026 (UK, first non-London city), Farmsterdammers 2026 neighbourhood plant swap (Amsterdam), Øens Have monthly volunteer working days at Copenhagen's largest urban farm (Denmark, first Danish event), and Zuozheng Four-Season Agritourism food-ag education programme (Tainan, Taiwan — first Taiwanese event)
Launched the 'Country Report' series in Exploration Columns with ten countries at once
A new 'Country Report' category that digs into each country's urban-farming situation. Ten pieces — Japan, the US, Canada, South Korea, China, India, Indonesia, Taiwan, the UK and South Africa — published bilingually on a template of overview → history → who-and-how → policy → regions → featured cases (linked to the DB) → outlook. Each article was drafted in three editorial angles (policy / field / history), compared and selected, then fact-checked by an independent review pass (factual errors, sources, translation) before release. The opening is free; the full article is for the Pro plan.
Added 158 domestic urban-farming, garden and lecture events
みんなのうえん（北加賀屋・神戸湊川ほか）、関東・関西・地方の農園マルシェ／収穫体験、都市農業・食育・コンポスト・在来種の講演・シンポジウム、種交換会・援農・棚田オーナーなど、過去開催分を含む国内イベントを158件追加。
Published Exploration Column #4, 'Food education and school gardens,' completing the four-part series
The fourth piece in the Exploration Columns (Pro) series. The science covers the science of taste (the instinct for bitterness, neophobia, repeated exposure) and of learning (experiential learning, crossing subjects); the society half surveys the US Edible Schoolyard, Japan's school lunch and Basic Act on Food Education, Europe's slow-food lunches and FAO's school gardens. As the close, it ties the four pieces — composting (return), care (heal), water-and-soil (support) and food education (connect) — into a single cycle. The opening is free; the full article is for the Pro plan.
Published Exploration Column #3, 'Water and soil in the city'
The third piece in the Exploration Columns (Pro) series, a long-form on soil and the water cycle. The science covers soil crumb structure, how water moves through soil (infiltration, retention, evapotranspiration), how cities break water and soil (imperviousness, compaction, contamination) and the restoration of healthy soil; the society half surveys Japan's rainwater use and paddy dams, US green-infrastructure cities and soil lead, China's sponge cities and Europe's decentralised rainwater management. The opening is free; the full article is for the Pro plan.
Published Exploration Column #2, 'Care farming and horticultural therapy'
The second piece in the Exploration Columns (Pro) series, a long-form on the link between farming and health/welfare. The science covers stress physiology (cortisol, attention restoration theory), the soil-microbiome hypothesis (M. vaccae, hygiene hypothesis), the benefits of exercise/sunlight/manual work, and the limits of the evidence; the society half surveys Dutch care farms (PGB), Japan's agriculture–welfare collaboration, UK social prescribing and Nordic green care. The opening is free; the full article is for the Pro plan.
Launched Exploration Columns (Pro) with the first piece, 'Composting: the science and the societies'
A new long-form series taking urban-farming themes from scientific principles to social systems worldwide. The first piece covers composting — microbiology, C/N ratio, aerobic vs anaerobic and the phases of composting, plus the collection-and-composting systems of Japan, Korea, Taiwan, the US, Europe and the Global South. The opening is free; the full article is for the Pro plan.
Added 7 local urban-farming events: seed swaps in Turin & Milan (IT), spring tool swap in Primiero (IT), Japan's first Compost Enjoyment Day, Community Growing Conferences in Victoria & Queensland (AU), and Amsterdam West open-garden day (NL)
Added seed exchanges in Turin (Una Babele di Semi) and Milan (Siamo seMI), a spring tools-and-seeds swap in the Dolomite village of Primiero (all IT), Japan's inaugural Compost Enjoyment Day by LFC Compost, Community Growing Conferences for Victoria and Queensland (AU), and the Open Tuinen West neighbourhood garden open day in Amsterdam (NL). Focused on grassroots, small-scale local events rather than large national festivals.
New urban-farming data added (Belgium, Switzerland, Portugal, Greece and more)
Added 4 citizen-led cases (Chant des Cailles in Brussels, Quartierhof Wynegg in Zurich, Lisbon's municipal horticultural park, PER.KA in Thessaloniki), 3 events (Singapore Garden Festival 2026, London Food Growing Conference 2026, Seedy Sunday in Brighton), 3 policies (Lisbon municipal horticultural parks, Argentina's ProHuerta, Berlin's community garden programme), and 2 research entries.
Added 8 local community garden events from UK, US, Australia, Spain, Germany and Canada
Added Kew Community Open Week (UK), Crop Swap LA Weekly Farm Stand (US), Pocket City Farms monthly working bee (AU), Rochester Urban Agriculture Seed Swap (US), Madrid allotments San Isidro open day (ES), TMU Urban Farm workbee Wednesdays (CA), Jardin de Libros Nomadas monthly open day (ES), 58th Koelner Pflanzentauschboerse (DE)
Added citizen-led urban farming data (cases in Sweden, Poland, Spain and more)
Added 3 cases (Botildenborg in Malmö, the MOST cooperative farm in Warsaw, Madrid's community gardens network), 2 research entries, 5 events worldwide, and 3 policies (Poland's allotment-gardens act, Barcelona's Pla BUITS, Singapore's Community in Bloom).
Added global urban-farming data (Australia & NZ cases, events and policies)
Added citizen-driven cases (Pocket City Farms in Sydney, Kelmarna Gardens in Auckland), events (International Compost Awareness Week, UK National Allotments Week, Oxford Real Farming Conference 2027, Australia's Community Growing Conference), and policies (Brazil's 2024 national urban & periurban agriculture law, Cuba's national urban agriculture programme, and Vancouver's urban-agriculture guidelines).
Refreshed the site-wide visual design (typography, emoji removal, accent colour)
Switched headings to a serif display face (Fraunces / Mincho) with a subtle paper texture, removed all decorative emoji in favour of numbered indices and typographic hierarchy, introduced a terracotta accent colour, and restyled the changelog as a node-marked timeline.
Added overseas community-garden cases, policies and global events (2026-06-16)
Added four citizen-driven urban-farm cases from Europe — including the previously uncovered Denmark and Italy (NoordOogst in Amsterdam, Barcelona's urban-allotment network, ØsterGRO in Copenhagen, Zappata Romana in Rome). Also added five national/municipal policies (Germany's Federal Allotment Garden Act, Hull's 'Right to Grow', Florida SB 82, the repealed Miami Shores front-yard vegetable ban, and Rome's shared-gardens regulation) and four global urban-farming events (UFSS 2026, National Seed Swap Day, Atlanta's Soil Festival, London's Good to Grow).
Added theme tabs to the Research page
Added theme filter tabs (with article counts) below the keyword search on the Research page, ordered by count.
Added Japanese pioneers (Yoshimatsu Kato, Isoya Shinji)
Added Yoshimatsu Kato, who created the Nerima 'experience farm' model, and Isoya Shinji, a landscape scholar who championed 'environments with farming'; also added Alice Waters's portrait.
Pioneers: added portraits and Alice Waters
Added portraits for Migge, Liz Christy, Will Allen, Pam Warhurst and Ron Finley (Howard and Pingree use free-licensed images), and added Alice Waters, founder of the Edible Schoolyard, to the pioneers.
Added 'Pioneers of urban farming' (in-depth profiles)
A new section listing people who advanced urban farming, each with a deep-dive article: Leberecht Migge, Ebenezer Howard, Hazen Pingree, Liz Christy, Will Allen, Pam Warhurst and Ron Finley — written from verified sources.
Added 'A history of urban farming' (long read)
From 19th-century Schrebergärten and Detroit's potato patches to wartime Victory Gardens, 1970s NYC community gardens, Cuba's crisis-born urban agriculture, Japan's productive green land and allotments, and today's rooftops and policy — a narrative, era-by-era read on citizens growing food in the city.
New section: urban-farming policy & law (11 entries)
Added a Policy & law page covering Japan (urban-agriculture acts, productive green land), the US (USDA office, California AB 551, Detroit/NYC ordinances), Singapore's 30 by 30, Seoul's urban-agriculture ordinance, Paris's Parisculteurs and Toronto's green-roof bylaw. Repealed instruments are kept with their period in effect and reason for repeal.
Added urban-farming events from around the world
Added 5 citizen-driven events — Japan's National Urban Agriculture Festival, Australia's Urban Agriculture Month, the UK's Apple Day and London Open Gardens, and NYC GreenThumb's GrowTogether conference — on the new Events page, listing upcoming events and recent past ones.
Filled in Japan's map — from Hokkaido to Okinawa
Added citizen-driven cases across prefectures that previously had none — Hokkaido, Tohoku, Hokuriku, Chugoku, Shikoku, Kyushu and Okinawa — so Japan now covers nearly every prefecture.
Major expansion of cases worldwide and in Japan
Added citizen-driven cases from previously thin regions — China, India, Indonesia, Taiwan, Korea, Southeast Asia, the Middle East, Russia, South America, Africa and Canada — plus more from Osaka and Kobe (Minna no Uen sites and others), reaching 231 cases across 47 countries.
Added Start guide, Topic summaries and Significance pages
An FAQ for first questions about starting a farm, topic-by-topic digests, and pages explaining urban farming's social effects (21 lenses) from the database.
Public submissions with moderation (hybrid) added
Anyone can submit a case; it is published after moderation.
Insight layer added (aggregates, situation-based entry, related cases)
World map of cases added