Success of urban farming's city-adjustments and business models-Findings from a survey among farmers in Ruhr Metropolis, Germany

- Common city-adjustments in urban farming are differentiation and diversification.
- Cluster analysis of 180 farms in Ruhr Metropolis reveals key business strategies.
- City-adjusted farms are more successful than non-city-adjusted farms in Ruhr Area.
- Agri-tourism, short supply chains, and participative concepts show profitability.
- High-value production alone faces problems to compete on the market.

Economic data of urban farming are scarce, while the discourse on urban farming's business models is progressively emerging since few years. Data of a web survey among farm managers in polycentric Ruhr Metropolis, Germany, is used here to address the research question whether city-adjusted farms are more successful than non-city-adjusted farms. Farms' common city-adjustment strategies high-value production, direct marketing, participative concepts, and tourism services as well as the spatial self-assessment of the farm managers are applied to cluster and analyse them. The 180 farms are clustered via a Complete Linkage cluster analysis into five groups, whereof three are city-adjusted clusters and two are non-city-adjusted clusters. City-adjusted farms are more successful than non-city-adjusted ones. Compared to their counterpart, city-adjusted farms name better economic farm situations, predict more positive farm prospects and more assured farm successions. Additionally, they appoint more Unique Selling Propositions for their farms and make use of agricultural extension services more often. Farm business declines and farm closures are predicted very little by the city-adjusted farms, which fit to the prevalence of named urban advantages over disadvantages. These findings contribute to the lack of reliable data used to orientate policy on agriculture and food within wider metropolitan areas and urban environments.