THE EFFECT OF URBANIZATION ON FOOD SECURITY AND AGRICULTURAL SUSTAINABILITY

Because urbanization is an inevitable process accompanying economic growth, this research specifies impacts of urbanization on food security and agricultural sustainability, with a particular focus on Ukraine. Using methodological fundamentals of econometrics and divisive hierarchical clustering, the analysis depicts country features, world patterns, and notable examples of implementing food security and sustainable agricultural development. Data come from the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations, the World Bank Data, and State Statistics Service of Ukraine. Polynomial regressions show gradual sustainable agricultural development in Ukraine driven by domestic urbanization from 1996 to 2018. The analysis identifies country standing among 186 states distributed into four major world clusters of the pruned binary tree and evaluated through urbanization and securing food availability and affordability. The findings from comparative profiles of selected leading countries determine prospects of Ukrainian urban market size, crop farming and animal husbandry, food production per capita, employment in agriculture, and share in GDP, both within and beyond the EU. Matching at a country level reconciles urbanization with providing food security and economic, environmental, and social components of agricultural sustainability.