Search

This paper catalyses the academic urgency to understand agri-food system transformation pathways. Such transformation requires new food growing imaginaries of rooted in a change of thinking and ways of engaging with more-than-human perspectives. Urban spaces are hubs of human and more-than-human interactions, and urban organic farming offers an excellent site for exploring such new food growing imaginaries. The research presented here innovates theoretical and methodological knowledge in more-than-human geography. It develops alternative food growing imaginaries through a sensory ethnography at an urban organic workers’ cooperative Organiclea and visual arts methodologies. Through that, the paper brings to the fore the marginalized more-than-human perspectives by exploring more-than-human sensory Umwelts – taste and nutrition for the soil, sound for soil denizens, smell for honeybees, tactile perception for common weeds – and understanding human experience of food growing through sight. Attuning to a more-than-human sensorium broadens our knowledge of the life stories of other biotic and abiotic critters and recognizes that human and more-than-human world-making projects are interconnected. The paper concludes that sensory engagement is critical to the development of new imaginaries for a more sustainable food production. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Agricultural activity, as practised in the lowlands of the city of Yaoundé, gives rise to many concerns about the site of operation and the dubious quality of the water used. This work has the aim to assess the possibilities of using effluent from a wastewater treatment plant for hydroponic cultivation of lettuce ( Lactuca sativa L. ;) in urban agriculture. The experimental set-up was a completely randomised block design with three replications. The treatments applied to the lettuces were: raw effluent (T1), effluent diluted to 50% (T2) and 75% (T3), a solution of chemical fertilizer (T4) Maxigro 10-5-14 at a dose of 100 g for 50 l of tap water considered as a positive control and tap water considered as a negative control (T5). The growth parameters (plant height, number of leaves and leaf area) of the lettuces were evaluated along with their chlorophyll, fibre and protein content. The results show that T3 and T4 significantly improved (P<0.05) the growth parameters (18.96 cm and 16.37 cm for plant height, 9.87 and 11.65 for leaf length, 7.41 and 7.49 for number of leaves, 68.33 cm2 and 47.51 cm2 for leaf area, respectively). T3 and T4 showed the greatest improvement in chlorophyll a, protein and fibre content, with 36.54 and 25.90 ppm for chlorophyll a, 26.85 and 26.21% for protein and 1.53 and 1.34% for fibre, respectively. T3 obtained the best physiological and organo-mineral parameters after T4. The results obtained show that treated wastewater and hydroponics have significant potential that could be of interest to farmers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Increasing urbanization generates new challenges for cities, including housing shortages, environmental degradation, public health concerns, and food security issues, just to mention a few. High levels of food insecurity can motivate planners to increase their support for community gardening forms of urban agriculture. The COVID‐19 pandemic has amplified many pressures of urban living. In this paper, we focus on challenges around urban agriculture activities, in particular, exploring regulatory approaches and limitations when it comes to growing food in cities. This study uses qualitative research methods to explore the main barriers to urban agriculture as perceived by community‐based groups in Victoria, British Columbia. Data collection included 18 semi‐structured, face‐to‐face interviews, and two community mapping workshops with local residents, government officials, and non‐governmental groups. Data analysis generated initial codes and themes that revealed "urban agriculture zones" and "garden‐style" apartment housing as important avenues for urban agriculture projects. These findings are relevant in Victoria, where more than half of the population lives in apartments. A food action plan is a regulatory mechanism that can boost food production when aligned with the official community plan. Any progress towards far‐reaching changes, however, requires an efficient urban agriculture development process, including creating site inventories, increasing stakeholder participation, reducing waitlists, and tackling high land prices. Key Messages: This paper investigates existing planning barriers to urban agriculture in cities.We argue that urban planners must focus on existing regulatory challenges related to zoning bylaws, land‐use policies, and governance strategies to enhance food‐growing opportunities.Changing the mechanisms for urban agriculture development approvals and creating a specific food action plan are key elements for implementing successful food‐growing urban projects in cities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the contributions of a pragmatist approach to social innovation studies. It characterizes the epistemological assumptions of pragmatism and its implications to conceive of "science in action." It explores the contributions of pragmatisms in developing a perspective to analyze civil society and its action to promote social innovation, focusing on the key notions of "public inquiry" and "democratic experimentalism." The aim is to discuss the contributions, challenges, and limits of conducting pragmatic studies--from an analytical and methodological perspective--giving way to co-operative and engaged research that connects and co-ordinates teaching and knowledge transfer, theory and practice, experts and ordinary citizens, and knowledge and experiences in social innovation studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The issue of urban and peri-urban agriculture is topical in Tunisia today as it is becoming a concern for territorial policies and agri-urban strategies in terms of environment management and sustainability. Nevertheless, this multidisciplinary theme still shows imprecisions and tautologies in terminologies and acceptability of this hybrid agricultural and urban production field. It is in this context that this work is undertaken to identify the perception of urban and peri-urban agriculture based on the various visions of different actors, public, semi-public and private. Surveys conducted directly (face to face) with a representative population of 85 actors reveal a dualism characterized by both "distancing" and "non-distancing" in the different qualifications of urban and peri-urban agriculture. It appears that professionalization and visibility of this sector are both reduced. However, all the surveyed people converge in affirming the interest of urban and peri-urban agriculture, but in a vision supporting a productivity agriculture. For 58% of public actors, urban and peri-urban agriculture is useful, but in a vision of a residual agricultural production; 30% of public actors consider it as in transition of latency, stock, or even as a land reserve. Semi-public actors show an anchoring in the socio-spatial dimensions and this, in an environmentalist agricultural landscape logic. This qualification is identified among three quarters of semi-public actors, and 50% for public actors. Another qualification is expressed by private actors, who are rather green town planning enthusiasts, as more than two thirds of them favor agro-ecological mediation services, green trades and the procurement of quality and proximity agricultural products. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article is a collective reflection on how militant commitment shapes urban agriculture research in France and in the United States. It is based on a qualitative literature review complemented by a series of seminars and interviews devoted to researchers' experiences of engagement. In the United States, researchers who define themselves as activists clearly refer to critical and radical traditions of geography. Scholar activism is associated with identified epistemic communities and designates relatively codified ways of conceiving research to serve community struggles and projects. In France, the political commitment of intellectuals is above all an individual affair. Research on urban agriculture exemplifies these differences. In the United States it is largely conducted by scholar-activists and focuses on community gardening, and promotes the overall goal of food justice. In France, it borrows from various registers and focuses on much more diversified spaces and actors, and is globally marked by a lack of critical and political reflexivity. The article concludes with a call for more reflexivity in clarifying the ontological and epistemological assumptions of this field of research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article takes the form of a dialogue between a researcher (Marco Alberio, holder of the Canada Research Chair in Social Innovation and Territorial Development) and two practitioners (Ophélie Couspeyre, Development Officer, Table nationale des corporations de développement communautaire, and Érick Plourde, Executive Director, Corporation de développement communautaire de Lévis). Taking up several points that emerged during a joint event that took place in October 2020, this dialogue aims to discuss the practice of autonomous community action (especially through the voices of the protagonists themselves) in a social, economic and political context that is changing rapidly--and not just because of the pandemic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous research has identified the potential of community-based development processes to reverse inequalities. However, in many cases, constraints arise that hinder the achievement of community goals. This article focuses on the role contributed by a school to overcome these barriers. Specifically, we address the role played by the Mare de Déu de Montserrat School, which is a Learning Community, in the launch and development of a community-based process. Known as The Dream, this process was initiated by a group of unemployed Moroccan residents in an impoverished urban neighbourhood in Spain. Through this process, the neighbours have created a self-managed community garden, which has enabled them to improve their job training and build social networks. Based on the communicative methodology, our qualitative study finds that this school has contributed to the creation of specific conditions that helped to overcome some barriers that had hindered the emergence of community responses. In addition, the contributions of the school have promoted a horizontal and dialogical organization of the process, placing neighbours in central positions in decision-making and leadership roles. This case study provides relevant theoretical and practical implications for the contributions that certain school-based interventions can provide to promote community initiatives in impoverished environments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the aftermath of failed urban renewal projects and the decline of central cities, community gardens have become increasingly popular in urban planning, public health, and environmental circles. However, gardens still occupy a tenuous and contradictory position in the city. While urban gardens are bounded spaces, they are also dynamic places where different understandings of (agri)culture, land use, and belonging are enacted and contested. In this paper, we identify three distinct ways in which gardens in a small Midwestern city are used and experienced by refugee gardeners and local officials: the material garden, the imagined garden, and the community's garden. The material garden, embodied in the biophysical aspects of the soil, seeds, and resources needed to cultivate plants, shapes what can grow in the garden and the transformations by refugee agricultural practices. While planners tend to see urban gardens as temporary spaces that can promote limited pathways of migrant incorporation, gardeners practice, and imagine gardening differently through social, cultural, and economic interactions. We argue that these practices challenge traditional understandings of nature and urban planning, and can promote inclusive understandings of agriculture, cities, and sustainability, embodied in the ideal of the community's garden. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Urban agriculture is developed in various forms depending on place on underlying ideologies. Montreuil, an ancient horticultural town known for its production of peaches, is today the subject of new agricultural initiatives. It's particularly the case in the neighborhood of Saint-Antoine - Murs à Pêches. Located in the high part of the city, this neighborhood, abandoned for a time by the urban planning processes, saw the multiplication of various forms of individual and collective appropriations. At stake is the desire to restore a function of agronomic production in the neighborhood, by maintaining a dying horticultural heritage, by developing permaculture projects, and by creating new spaces for meetings and exchanges in a framework of collective gardens and cultural projects. Broadcast by many association, these processes of appropriation respond to different approaches and objectives. Actions are fragmented, and new conflicts appear between associations, local population and the public authorities. The multiplication of these projects raises the question of the coordination of these citizens's initiatives and the difficulty of building a common space. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In cities of the Global North, where reign private or public ownership, vacant lots are reclaimed by communities for urban agriculture. Especially in Detroit, a shrinking city, massive land vacancy constitutes an opportunity to solve the tragedy of the non-commons in contemporary urbanization. Yet reclaiming the land for community urban agriculture does not entail the creation of urban commons, which necessitate complex processes of use and management. Based on a field survey conducted in Detroit for doctoral research and on a review of the literature on vacancy, urban agriculture and the common(s), this article demonstrates that building agricultural urban commons lies on three constitutive dimensions: occupying the land as territorial commons; cultivating the land with commons of knowledge; and governing the land as a common. The appearance of agricultural urban commons in Detroit can thus be interpreted as rising alternatives facing a political, economical, social and food crisis, that are nevertheless vulnerable to land grabbing for non-common uses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article aims to contribute to the debate on the place of agriculture within the cities and the evolution of urban agriculture (UA) typologies and their modes of appropriation by city dwellers. In particular, it investigates the representations of UA in the context of direct democracy experience : the participatory budget of the city of Rennes (Brittany) (2015-2016). The innovative dimension of this article is based on the source of discursive data that includes the proposals of the project promoters, and the technical departments and city dwellers comments and remarks. So it is possible to take into account the standpoint of a broader spectrum of actors that have multiple and sometimes discordant point of views. The principal tools adopted to carry out the analysis were discourses and lexical analysis. The main objective is to detach the actor's different positions on the integration of agriculture into urban spaces based on project proposals and commentaries related. In addition, it aims to point out the contribution of the representations and the standpoints of the linkage between men and land to the collective and collaborative production of UA. Social ties, agricultural production, education, so pluralities of arguments are aired and it is backdrop the desire to live together. However, the conditions for the UA development are discussed and several constraints emerge questioning the place of UA. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Urban agriculture, a widespread phenomenon across the world, invites us to new ways of analyzing two spheres traditionally considered separately: the city and agriculture. This article seeks to emphasize the importance of the agriurban system concept to analyze the complexity of cityagriculture interactions. Taking the case study of a West African city, its objective is to develop an interpretative framework of these interactions at the territorial level of a city and its region.We propose a systems approach based on the intersection of three groups of interactions: i) spatial and historical interactions between nature, agriculture and the city, ii) interactions between the current urban system and urban agriculture, and iii) interactions within the agricultural system. The aim is to identify how a variety of relationships between city and agriculture are developed and what is at stake for the durability of urban agriculture. Firstly, we show the historical contribution of agriculture to the development of the city: farmers have mobilized local resources to develop a diversity of urban or periurban farming activities. Secondly, analyzing the agriurban system reveals specific forms of urban governance and the weight of informality in the development of urban agriculture. Finally, our analysis highlights the weight of croplivestock and ruralurban interactions in the functioning of the agriurban system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the South of Bogotá and in Soacha, research has been developed on urban agriculture carried out by populations that have experienced forced displacement, in a context of scarce resources and social exclusion characterized by the limited coverage of basic utilities, by the violation of rights, and by the lack of opportunities for the residents. Such activity is also analyzed in relation to vulnerable populations living under the poverty line. The analysis has been performed from their livelihood perspective using 20 local actors and public and private institutions that carried out urban agriculture programs as information sources and taking into account that city agriculture has connotations different from agriculture's connotation in rural environments. It has been found out that urban agriculture, as livelihood occupation alternative, has a symbolic value and has been framed in a concept of collective wellbeing that transcends money concerns. Urban agriculture reflects a peasant identity struggle for overcoming city life, but it is not em entirely sustainable activity. This article discusses some of the results from a research whose personal motivation was based on an institutional presence in urban agriculture processes in the study area for 4 years. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An interdisciplinary program (ADURAA) analyzes the sustainability and the urban functions of agriculture inside and .around Antananarivo. Its aim is to develop knowledge and to help public decisions about the interest, limits and conditions of the local maintenance of agriculture, compared with other land uses. Six research themes were identified based on a typology of urban farms; they contribute knowledge on three main functions of this agriculture, viz. food supply, land use and risk prevention, and the emerging role of urban waste reuse. A wide diversity of activities systems and agricultural production systems has been identified in relation to distance to the town and water availability. This urban agriculture significantly contributes to the vegetables supply of the district as well as toits rice supply. Flooding in the lowland and erosion in the hills are also efficiently contained by agricultural land use, but anarchic building and the use of agricultural soil for brick making largely counteract this role. Uncontrolled discharge of industrial liquid wastes into the irrigation network greatly reduces rice production and has even led to the desertion of some intra-urban rice-growing areas, while domestic pollution strongly affects the sanitary quality of intra-urban vegetables. However a positive externality could be developed by using some urban solid waste as fertilisers for the growing horticultural sector. Emerging questions such as the quality of urban produce and potential new risks open up new avenues for future research on this agriculture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objectives To identify risk factors for Schistosoma mansoni and hookworm infections in urban farming communities, and to investigate small-scale spatial patterns of infection prevalence. Methods A cross-sectional survey was carried out in 113 farming households (586 individuals) and 21 non-farming households (130 individuals) from six agricultural zones in the town of Man, western Côte d'Ivoire. Heads of households were interviewed on common agricultural activities, land and water use, education attainment, socioeconomic status and sanitation facilities. Household members provided stool specimens that were processed by the Kato-Katz technique and a formol-ether concentration method and diagnosed for S. mansoni, hookworms and other soil-transmitted helminths and intestinal protozoa. Bayesian statistics were employed for spatial analyses. Results The prevalences of S. mansoni and hookworm in farming households were 51.4% and 24.7%, respectively. Risk factors for a S. mansoni infection comprised living in close proximity to the Kô River, water contact with irrigation wells and ponds and low education attainment. Living in zones of smallholder irrigated rice plots or large rice perimeters, using water from domestic wells, and low socioeconomic status were risk factors for a hookworm infection. We found significant spatial heterogeneity between agricultural zones, with the highest infection prevalences of S. mansoni and hookworm in the zone where there was a large rice perimeter. Conclusions In this urban setting, both S. mansoni and hookworm infections were related to specific agricultural activities. Health education and active participation of urban farmers for the control of schistosomiasis and soil-transmitted helminthiasis is recommended. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

L'interrogation centrale de cet article est la suivante: dans le - très risqué - contexte kinois, quelles sont les stratégies mises en œuvre par les maraîchers et que révèlent ces stratégies sur les capacités de ces derniers? Les deux premières sections posent les bases conceptuelles de l'analyse, en plaçant la question des risques au cœur de l'approche par les capacités et en proposant une approche faisant des stratégies des personnes un proxy acceptable de leurs capacités. Les troisième et quatrième sections confrontent cette discussion théorique aux données recueillies lors d'un travail de terrain mené dans trois périmètres maraîchers de Kinshasa. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims at presenting a critical view of urban agriculture, which is seen as the empirical expression of the emergence of new rural practices. In search of arguments to explain the occurrence of transformations, the paper begins with a reference to the classical distinction between rural and urban affairs and then introduces the concepts of urban and city-outskirts agriculture. The discussion is then focused on the following questions: Is urban agriculture different form rural agriculture? How does the urban expansion process encourage agricultural and livestock practices in cities? What role does direct agricultural production play as an activity incorporated into urban dynamics? Finally, a classification of urban agriculture according to the reasons behind it is proposed, and some final considerations are presented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]