S09 - Session O3 - The approach to sustainable food security management in the Balkans through urban agriculture

Authors: Kristina Maknea *, Julia Nerantzia Tzortzi, Adrian Asanica, Claudia Fabian

The pandemic has reinforced the importance of formulating an urban food policy and prioritizing the principles that express it, with a view to sustainable food security. Healthy and sustainable nutrition is a critical element of European policy as improving nutrition will focus on enhancing both ecosystem health and public health. Many factors that have created the economic, climate and social crisis have emerged or revived strategies to combat their effects in recent years. Urban horticulture has come to stay as an alternative strategy for sustainable development and upgrading urban life. The formulation of a sustainable urban food policy started with the Milan Urban Food Policy Pact, the "Projets Alimentaires Territoriaux" (territorial food plans) in France, etc., trying to accelerate the change of mentality regarding environment and nutrition. Some approaches to this policy also apply to urban agriculture and make it an alternative to tackling problems in large cities. These problems include urbanization, social exclusion, lack of free space, climate crisis, poverty, lack of environmental education and social solidarity, food deprivation, etc. For this reason, the present work seeks to approach urban forms of agriculture in the Balkans, with references to its advantages and disadvantages, as recorded in recent surveys and interviews with city dwellers. The aim is to refer to the possibility of sustainable land use in cities, through urban solutions, based on nature. The primary purpose is to present all forms of urban agriculture applied in the Balkans, with a view to their use as tools for tackling food insecurity and environmental sensitivity, reusing and promoting the values of organic farming, strengthening social cohesion and job creation.