URBAN AGROTECHNOLOGIES (CITY-FARMING) AS A PERSPECTIVE BRANCH OF DEVELOPMENT OF WORLD AGRIBUSINESS AND THE WAY TO IMPROVE THE CITIES FOOD SECURITY

Abstract

The outlook of the development of world urban agrotechnologies ("city-farming") by means of key innovation technological and market trends analysis has been researched. It is noted that the tendencies to reduction of the area of productive lands, exhausting ecosystem resources, including World ocean resources, harmful consequences of the climate changing are the main limiting factors of the development of traditional agriculture and supplying food products to the growing population of the world. The remote territories of mass food production from the mass markets result in a large amount of waste products (food losses) in supply chains, along with decreasing product quality and raising costs. Growth of the world population, increasing concentration of urban citizens along with changing of consumers’ food preferences towards "health", "natural", "organic" food bring up the development of an additional, or alternate, system of uninterrupted supply or self-provision of cities with food products, ensuring future food security. The article highlights the prospect of developing the international branch of agriculture in terms of its transition to the high-tech stage of development ("AgTech"), and reviews the innovation technologies inseparable from that transition. It has been found that the development of the urban agrotechnologies (city-farming), as a combination of innovative high-performance agro-practices of the food production in urban environment, can step up the level of food security due to increasing food availability in qualitative and quantitative aspects. The review of main city-farming technologies in accordance with directions of its practical applications was done for the first time. The conception "urban agrotechnologies" ("city-farming") has been defined as the scientific term.