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The “Urban Agriculture Europe” EU COST-Action (2012–2016) has shown that the complexity of urban agriculture (UA) is hardly compressible into classic business management models and has proposed new management models, such as the Business Model Canvas (BMC). Business models of UA have to be different from rural ones. In particular, factors such as differentiation and diversification, but also low cost-oriented specialisation, are characteristic and necessary business models for UA to stay profitable in the long term under challenging city conditions. This paper aims to highlight how farm enterprises have to adjust to urban conditions by stepping into appropriate business models aiming to stay competitive and profitable, and how the BMC is useful to analyse their organisation and performance, both economically and socially. The paper offers an inter-regional analysis of UA enterprises located in Spain, Italy, and Germany, which are further subdivided into: local food, leisure, educational, social, therapeutic, agri-environmental, cultural heritage and experimental farms. The analysis demonstrates that UA is differentially adjusted to specific urban conditions and that the BMC is useful for analysing urban farming. Heterogeneous local food farms and the integration of local and organic food production in social farming business models are most frequent in our case studies.

In recent years, collaborative and participatory supermarkets are spreading all over Europe, especially in France, as a new purchase model. This article aims to analyse the "promise of difference" (LE VELLY, 2017) that distinguishes this model from the current food offer. This promise is assessed both through the analysis of those projects in terms of products selection, work organisation and decision making, and through the implementation of concrete regulation activities. The methodological tools we used were content analysis of speeches, documents and on-line newpapers communication, as well as participant observation. The main results show that these models emerge as an alternative to the current food offer, both conventional supermarkets and alternative food networks. The study contributes to demonstrate that these cooperative supermarkets are shaped taking into account economic (reasonable price of products, reduction of fixed costs), social (accessibility, creation of a space to exchange and share, participation to the decision making) and environmental (local and organic products) issues. They inspire on conventional devices in terms of accessibility (low prices, long opening hours) and variety of products range. However, they distinguish themselves, in the first place, for being nonprofit organisations, reinvesting the profits into the cooperative itself or into solidarity projects, but also by actively involving consumers in decision-making. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

All over the world, different forms of urban food gardens (family gardens, school gardens, community gardens, allotment gardens, and so on) are flourishing. These initiatives vary in terms of space, actors, functions, and forms of organization. This article explores community garden typologies, focusing on Incredible Edible (IE) initiatives. We propose a theoretical discussion of IE initiatives and the differential adaptation of this model in contrasting contexts, specifically the city of Rennes, in France, and the city of Montreal, in Canada. The investigation of IE in both case studies is predicated on a qualitative methodological approach. A key conclusion is that the IE movement survives largely because of the input of volunteers. However, its longer-term sustainability requires resources and investment from municipal institutions if a real transition to edible cities is to be attained. [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]

The paper focuses on the Solidarity Purchasing Group (SPG), defined as a group of households that establishes an organization primarily to provide food to its members. The study aims at illustrating and testing two hypotheses. The first is that within the group, specific organizational processes take place according to which food communication practices determine the resource use objectives. The second hypothesis is the SPG tends to assign larger values to health and environmental protection than other resource use objectives. These hypotheses concern the ranking of the resource use objectives managed by the group. The idea is that an SPG defines the resource uses according to the specific group's objectives and by means of organizational tools, especially the food communication practices. For testing purposes, we conducted an empirical analysis by submitting an online questionnaire to 900 Italian SPGs. The results firstly indicate that the organizational dimensions of SPGs, including the relationships between SPGs and farmers, influence the group objectives, providing empirical evidence that supports the first hypothesis. Moreover, the test of the second hypothesis indicates that group objectives concerning health and environmental protection are particularly valued by the SPGs. We then conclude that the groups are aimed at co-producing health and environmental protection with public authorities. We then underlined limits of the study and potential future research paths. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the initial months of the COVID-19 pandemic, farmers worldwide were greatly affected by disruptions in the food chain. In 2020, São Paulo city experienced most of the effects of the pandemic in Brazil, with 15,587 deaths through December 2020. Here, we describe the impacts of COVID-19 on urban agriculture (UA) in São Paulo from April to August 2020. We analyzed two governmental surveys of 2100 farmers from São Paulo state and 148 from São Paulo city and two qualitative surveys of volunteers from ten community gardens and seven urban farmers. Our data showed that 50% of the farmers were impacted by the pandemic with drops in sales, especially those that depended on intermediaries. Some farmers in the city adapted to novel sales channels, but 22% claimed that obtaining inputs became difficult. No municipal support was provided to UA in São Paulo, and pre-existing issues were exacerbated. Work on community gardens decreased, but no garden permanently closed. Post COVID-19, UA will have the challenge of maintaining local food chains established during the pandemic. Due to the increase in the price of inputs and the lack of technical assistance, governmental efforts should be implemented to support UA. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since two decades, urban agriculture has been booming and a wide range of forms, from urban allotment gardens to rooftop farming under greenhouse, is developing. Various benefits are recognized for urban agriculture integration within the city and a specific consideration is dedicated to ecosystem services. In this article, we have focused on cultural ecosystem services provided by urban micro-farms. The state of the art reveals that urban agriculture delivers cultural ecosystem services that are well perceived and evaluated by users, but there are still few studies on this topic. Based on the analysis of specific literature on cultural ecosystems and micro-farms in parallel to a period of observation and documentary research of five urban micro-farms either on rooftop or at soil level, located in Paris and its surroundings, we proposed a specific methodology. This methodology aimed at quantitative and qualitative evaluation of the cultural ecosystem services provided by urban micro-farms and is based on a framework, which distinguishes exogenous and endogenous cultural ecosystem services. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]