City farms could boost future food security

This photo taken with a mobile phone on Jan 25, 2024 shows an engineer maneuvering a farm robot in a field at Tinglin township's Diantian Farm in East China's Shanghai. Urban agriculture could play a key role in addressing challenges to global food security as the world population grows and urbanization increases, experts and officials said at a conference in Chengdu, Sichuan province, on Saturday. "The German Federal Government supports joint efforts of sustainable agricultural innovation, including in urban agriculture," he said, adding that an increasing amount of food could be sourced from urban areas in the future as technological innovation and research pilots continue to drive the development of urban agriculture. Bohn suggested integrating urban agriculture into existing and planned green infrastructure, supporting cities in setting up economically viable food system projects, and developing urban food strategies and policies in collaboration with stakeholders. Yang Qichang, chief scientist at the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences' Institute of Urban Agriculture, who presented the institute's vertical farming practices in his report, said that vertical farming is an important means of production to meet the rising urban food demand as it can produce more food with less land and fewer resources.