Consumers’ and Stakeholders’ Acceptance of Indoor Agritecture in Shanghai (China)

During recent decades, there has been increasing awareness of the development of “agritecture” (“agri”culture + archi“tecture”) as a means to transform and revolutionize the food supply of future cities. The different forms of agritecture include building-integrated agricultural concepts such as vertical farms or indoor farms. In this way, urban food production could take place in proximity to consumers while employing so-called “urban waste” products (such as wastewater, waste heat, and organic waste) as valuable production inputs. Although scholars frequently highlight the potential of vertical farming and other agritecture approaches for Asian megacities, there is still a lack of academic research and completed projects related to this field in China. This study uses a mixed-methods approach, combining quantitative and qualitative research in the study location of Shanghai, to reveal the social acceptance of indoor agritecture among consumers and experts. First, to explore the perceptions of consumers, a survey of 713 potential consumers was conducted in Shanghai. Second, these surveys were complemented by 20 expert interviews with academics and practitioners from Shanghai to frame the quantitative research results. Our results revealed that the surveyed consumers’ social acceptance of indoor agritecture and the expectations of the experts are high. Additionally, there is already a high level of demand and a potential market for indoor agritecture in Shanghai. This has been confirmed by the ongoing construction of the first moderate-scale vertical farm and several indoor farms, in combination with the increasing existence of edible landscape approaches and rooftop farms. This development can be viewed as the rise of urban agritecture in Shanghai. The interviews revealed that experts raise more doubts about the economic dimension, whereas its social and ecological dimensions and the contextual framework of indoor agritecture are considered to be positive.Peer Reviewe

Resilience characteristics of the urban agriculture system in Lansing, Michigan: Importance of support actors in local food systems

Urban agriculture is a growing movement in cities across the United States, including the post-industrial Midwest. Maintaining a resilient local food system is a challenge given the environmental, resource, and institutional barriers facing urban farmers. In this descriptive correlational study, we take an in-depth look at the demographics, farm characteristics, motivations, barriers, and resilience indicators of individuals in the urban agriculture system in Lansing, Michigan, a city of the US Midwest with a growing urban agriculture system. Survey responses (n = 92) revealed that support actors, community gardeners, and farmers have descriptive differences in their motivations, with support actors (e.g. non-profits, university extension, or municipalities) being most strongly motivated by social and environmental justice. Community gardeners reported the lowest barriers to engaging in urban agriculture. Individuals who reported stronger motivations for building community and social and environmental justice showed significant correlations to several resilience indicators, indicating that those motivations may be important to system resilience. Urban agriculture support agencies report high barriers and are most often consulted for informational and social support. These results can inform recommendations for organizations, local governments, and researchers working in midwestern urban agriculture initiatives to better assess and promote a thriving system into the futur

Consumers’ and Stakeholders’ Acceptance of Indoor Agritecture in Shanghai (China)

During recent decades, there has been increasing awareness of the development of “agritecture” (“agri”culture + archi“tecture”) as a means to transform and revolutionize the food supply of future cities. The different forms of agritecture include building-integrated agricultural concepts such as vertical farms or indoor farms. In this way, urban food production could take place in proximity to consumers while employing so-called “urban waste” products (such as wastewater, waste heat, and organic waste) as valuable production inputs. Although scholars frequently highlight the potential of vertical farming and other agritecture approaches for Asian megacities, there is still a lack of academic research and completed projects related to this field in China. This study uses a mixed-methods approach, combining quantitative and qualitative research in the study location of Shanghai, to reveal the social acceptance of indoor agritecture among consumers and experts. First, to explore the perceptions of consumers, a survey of 713 potential consumers was conducted in Shanghai. Second, these surveys were complemented by 20 expert interviews with academics and practitioners from Shanghai to frame the quantitative research results. Our results revealed that the surveyed consumers’ social acceptance of indoor agritecture and the expectations of the experts are high. Additionally, there is already a high level of demand and a potential market for indoor agritecture in Shanghai. This has been confirmed by the ongoing construction of the first moderate-scale vertical farm and several indoor farms, in combination with the increasing existence of edible landscape approaches and rooftop farms. This development can be viewed as the rise of urban agritecture in Shanghai. The interviews revealed that experts raise more doubts about the economic dimension, whereas its social and ecological dimensions and the contextual framework of indoor agritecture are considered to be positive

The Socio-Cultural Benefits of Urban Agriculture: A Review of the Literature

© 2022 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).Despite extensive literature on the socio-cultural services of urban open spaces, the role of food-producing spaces has not received sufficient attention. This hampers advocacy for preserving and growing urban agricultural activities, often dismissed on justifications that their contributions to overall food supply are negligible. To understand how the social benefits of urban agriculture have been measured, we conducted a systematic review of 272 peer-reviewed publications, which drew on insights from urban agriculture sites in 57 different countries. Through content analysis, we investigated socio-cultural benefits in four spheres: engaged and cohesive communities, health and well-being, economic opportunities, and education. The analysis revealed growth in research on the social impacts of gardens and farms, with most studies measuring the effects on community cohesion and engagement, followed by increased availability and consumption of fruits and vegetables associated with reduced food insecurity and better health. Fewer studies assessed the impact of urban farming on educational and economic outcomes. Quantifying the multiple ways in which urban agriculture provides benefits to people will empower planners and the private sector to justify future investments. These findings are also informative for research theorizing cities as socio-ecological systems and broader efforts to measure the benefits of urban agriculture, in its many forms.Peer reviewedFinal Published versio

The role of urban agriculture in food-energy-water nexus policies: Insights from Europe and the U.S

The growth of urban agriculture (UA) has raised the awareness of city officials and civil society organizations of its potential effects on food systems. This has led to various policies to regulate and support UA. This research characterizes existing food, energy and water (FEW nexus) policies based on policy data from five case study cities in Europe and the U.S. (Dortmund, Gorz´ow Wielkopolski, London, Nantes, and New York City) to analyze their relationships to UA, and to identify policy types that support resource-efficient UA. The paper presents the results of an analysis of 78 policy documents related to UA and the FEW nexus, and the results of a Q-sort ranking by UA policy experts on the effectiveness of 16 generalized UA policies in promoting resource-efficient UA. The number, type, and degree of support for nexus policies vary among the five case studies. The results show that the majority of policies (36) are implemented at the local scale, that few policies (19) incorporate all elements of the nexus, yet many nexus policies include UA indirectly. Regulations are more prevalent and are considered more effective at ensuring resource-efficient UA than incentives or awareness-raising policies. The study offers guidance to policy makers who want to improve resource use in future UA pointing at the increasing importance of local food policies

Detecting Foci of Malaria Transmission with School Surveys: A Pilot Study in the Gambia.

BACKGROUND: In areas of declining malaria transmission such as in The Gambia, the identification of malaria infected individuals becomes increasingly harder. School surveys may be used to identify foci of malaria transmission in the community. METHODS: The survey was carried out in May-June 2011, before the beginning of the malaria transmission season. Thirty two schools in the Upper River Region of The Gambia were selected with probability proportional to size; in each school approximately 100 children were randomly chosen for inclusion in the study. Each child had a finger prick blood sample collected for the determination of antimalarial antibodies by ELISA, malaria infection by microscopy and PCR, and for haemoglobin measurement. In addition, a simple questionnaire on socio-demographic variables and the use of insecticide-treated bed nets was completed. The cut-off for positivity for antimalarial antibodies was obtained using finite mixture models. The clustered nature of the data was taken into account in the analyses. RESULTS: A total of 3,277 children were included in the survey. The mean age was 10 years (SD = 2.7) [range 4-21], with males and females evenly distributed. The prevalence of malaria infection as determined by PCR was 13.6% (426/3124) [95% CI = 12.2-16.3] with marked variation between schools (range 3-25%, p<0.001), while the seroprevalence was 7.8% (234/2994) [95%CI = 6.4-9.8] for MSP119, 11.6% (364/2997) [95%CI = 9.4-14.5] for MSP2, and 20.0% (593/2973) [95% CI = 16.5-23.2) for AMA1. The prevalence of all the three antimalarial antibodies positive was 2.7% (79/2920). CONCLUSIONS: This survey shows that malaria prevalence and seroprevalence before the transmission season were highly heterogeneous

New Frontiers-class Uranus Orbiter: Exploring the feasibility of achieving multidisciplinary science with a mid-scale mission

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Exploring member trust in German community-supported agriculture: a multiple regression analysis

Opaque value chains as well as environmental, ethical and health issues and food scandals are decreasing consumer trust in conventional agriculture and the dominant food system. As a result, critical consumers are increasingly turning to community-supported agriculture (CSA) to reconnect with producers and food. CSA is often perceived as a more sustainable, localized mode of food production, providing transparent production or social interaction between consumers and producers. This enables consumers to observe where their food is coming from, which means CSA is considered suitable for building trust in food (production). However, it remains unclear how exactly members’ trust in ‘their’ farmers is built. To determine the factors that predict members’ trust in CSA and its farmers, and the importance of these factors when compared to each other, we conducted a quantitative study among CSA members in Germany and applied a multiple regression model (n = 790). The analysis revealed that trust in CSA and its farmers is influenced by “reputation”, “supply of information”, “direct social interaction” and the “duration of CSA membership”. Other factors such as the “certification status of the CSA farm” and “attitudes toward organic certification” did not significantly predict trust. We conclude that producers’ willingness to be transparent already signals trustworthiness to CSA members and is more important to members than formal signals. Other actors within the food system could learn from CSA principles and foster a transition toward a more regionalized value-based food system to help restore agriculture’s integrity

Development of a measure to evaluate competence perceptions of natural and social science.

Interdisciplinary scientific research teams are essential for responding to society's complex scientific and social issues. Perceptual barriers to collaboration can inhibit the productivity of teams crossing traditional disciplinary boundaries. To explore these perceptual barriers, survey measures related to perceived competence were developed and validated with a population of earth scientists (n = 449) ranging from undergraduates through professionals. Resulting competence scales included three factors that we labeled as Perceived Respect (PR), Perceived Methodological Rigor (PM), and Perceived Intelligence (Pi). A Mann-Whitney U test revealed that earth scientists perceived social science/scientists as significantly less competent than natural science/scientists. A multivariate multilevel analysis indicated that women perceived scientists as more intelligent than did men. Working with social scientists and holding an earth science PhD changed earth scientists' perceptions of social science on multiple scales. Our study indicates that competence in scientific disciplines is a multidimensional construct. Our results from earth scientists also indicate that perceptual barriers towards other scientific disciplines should be studied further as interdisciplinarity in scientific research continues to be encouraged as a solution to many socio-scientific problems

Ethical collaboration and the need for training: Partnerships between Native American Tribes and climate science organisations

Indigenous peoples develop and utilise climate science resources to address climate change impacts, and climate scientists often collaborate on such projects. Little is known about whether climate science organisations (CSOs) adequately train their staff to work ethically with Indigenous peoples, promoting benefits for Tribes while reducing harms. To research this training, we conducted interviews with CSO employees (n=9) and Native American Tribal citizens (n=7). Thematic content analysis revealed that many challenges, benefits and common goals exist for both groups. Tribes were more likely to discuss challenges, focusing on trust and capacity building. CSOs were more likely to discuss benefits, focusing on information exchange. Both CSOs and Tribes provide training activities for CSO employees, but training programs are not mandated or consistent across employees and organisations, and they are typically not evaluated. Our research indicates a need for co-created and evaluated training programs which take into account the challenges faced in cross-cultural partnerships. Keywords climate change, Indigenous peoples, community engagement, tribally driven participatory research, ethics, STEM educatio