Sustainable agriculture

A systemic approach which considers all stakeholders and combines multiple policy instruments is necessary to reduce global reliance on chemicals in agriculture, according to a review of the agronomic and economic challenges and barriers to existing policies.

Elevated CO₂, global warming, ozone pollution and drought are major climate-related environmental challenges affecting field crop production. This Review discusses strategies and opportunities for crop production under climate change and air pollution at the plant, field and ecosystem scales.

The role of law and policy in encouraging a sustainable global diet is often underestimated. I argue that targeted laws and environmental policy are key to bring the agricultural sector on the path towards sustainability.

Plastics need to be used more sustainably in agricultural practice, for example by recovery and reuse, and by selected application of safe biodegradable plastics and phasing out of toxic additives, suggests a literature synthesis and perspective on structural polymers in agriculture.

Terrestrial controlled environment agriculture (CEA) will have an increasingly important role in food production. By comparing the technical similarities between space controlled environment agriculture (SpaCEA) and CEA systems, the authors argue that the development of SpaCEA provides a proportionate approach to addressing the technical, environmental and economic challenges of conventional CEA design.

India’s green revolution has made the country a world leader in rice and wheat production, but at the expense of people and the environment. Here, we call for transformative changes in its agriculture to reduce greenhouse gas emissions while maintaining production levels.

Increased yields, reduced food waste and loss, and a shift to healthier diets are key to achieve carbon neutrality, food security and global sustainability simultaneously.

Whether diets will evolve through social interventions to move closer to sustainable agriculture is being investigated in a growing and promising area of research.

In their Comment in @CommsEarth, Manuel Morales and colleagues argue that we must act now to protect green agricultural policies in the EU to ensure food security in the future.

Indigenous food systems ensure ecological and socio-economic sustainability but remain marginalized in science and policy. We argue that better documentation, deeper understanding, and political recognition of indigenous knowledge can help transform food systems.

Agriculture can be transformed to enhance farmland biodiversity and food systems’ sustainability through agroecological principles tailored to the current interplay between farmland biodiversity and agricultural production on all agricultural land.

Strategic redistribution of wheat in China’s Huang-Huai-Hai region could significantly reduce environmental impacts and groundwater depletion by improving water and nitrogen use efficiency without decreasing wheat production, according to optimization models

Northeast China has a high potential to reduce carbon dioxide emissions and nitrogen losses to air, water and soil via interprovincial maize trade, according to an analysis that combines agriculture and trade data with a life cycle assessment and linear optimization model.

Organic and conventional farming exhibit no significant disparities in global warming potential, eutrophication, and energy usage per unit of product mass, according to a quantitative review of life cycle assessment studies.

Increased soil carbon, lower soil bulk density, higher earthworm abundance and vascular plant richness indicate that permaculture in Central Europe enhances soil health and biodiversity, suggest field experiments in Germany and Luxembourg.

Soil moisture and temperature determine A horizon and solum thickness, while land use and soil erosion contribute to its temporal variation across the conterminous United States, according to analyses of soil survey data over the period 1950–2018.

Excessive rainfalls have led to a greater decrease in monsoon-season rice yield in India than deficit rainfalls, suggests a statistical analysis of historical rice production and climate data from 1990 to 2017.

In Ireland, afforestation, organic soil re-wetting, and cattle destocking are key for meeting the net zero goal regardless of its definition; technical abatement moderates but does not substitute these actions, according to an analysis of agriculture and land use scenarios.

The European Green Deal aims to promote biodiversity and reduce pesticide use. Here, the authors combine farm and landscape data from Europe showing that landscape features supporting natural pest control have a positive impact in productivity and farmer revenues when pesticide use is reduced.

Estimating weather-induced shocks on food production requires reliable global weather datasets. Here, the authors compare global (GMFD and ERA5-Land) and regional (PRISM) datasets, showing that global datasets can uncover non-linear temperature relationships despite their lower predictive skill.

Maize demand in Sub-Saharan Africa is expected to increase. Here, the authors use data collected by One Acre Fund on 14,773 smallholder fields in the region and determine that maize production can be increased with minimal cropland expansion by improving management practices.

Sustainable agricultural policies need to be practically assessed. Here, the authors assess how management practices affect ecosystem services in Swiss agricultural grasslands showing that organic farming has a lesser impact than the eco-scheme and the use as pasture or meadow.

Inorganic fertilization reduces plant biodiversity. Here, the authors conduct a global meta-analysis on the use of organic and inorganic fertilizer in croplands and grasslands, showing that while both fertilizers increase plant biomass, only organic fertilizer increases biodiversity.

Rps genes are used to manage the major soybean pathogen Phytophthora sojae, which causes Phytophthora stem and root rot (PRR). Here, the authors show that widely used Rps genes are no longer effective for managing PRR in the United States, Canada and Argentina.

Drip irrigation mitigates water shortage yet suffers high flow resistance and blockage. Here, the authors design a drip irrigation mechanism inspired by bodhi leaf morphology which can enhance water saving and seedling growth.

The greater wax moth (GWM) is a major bee pest. Here, the authors show how a pest control method that combines a strain of Bacillus thuringiensis and a lure-based entrapment can help to control GWM using lab experiments and field beehives.

We have limited knowledge on how soil conditions affect microbiota and plant health. Here, the authors find that soil acidification impacts bacterial communities and reduces the capacity of soils to combat fungal pathogens such as Fusarium.

This study demonstrates the energy use of US pump irrigation produced 12.6 million tonnes CO₂e in 2018, with spatial variability modulated by water source and fuel choice. These county-level estimates can inform strategic irrigation expansion and emissions reduction efforts.

Sustainability in agriculture can be improved harnessing biological N₂ fixation in legumes. Here, the authors combine different crops with peanut plants finding that maize and oilseed rape are the most successful combinations which have potential to enhance rhizosphere microbiota N₂ fixation.

Food production systems need to balance yield and sustainability. Here, the authors conduct 6 years long crop diversification field experiments in the North China Plain, showing that diversifying cereal monocultures with cash crops and legumes cand improve yield and reduce GHG emissions.

Phosphate-solubilising microorganisms can contribute to reduce the use of P fertiliser. Here, the authors use two artificial selection methods, environmental perturbation and propagation, to build phosphate-solubilising communities that retain P-solubilising capacity in hydroponic systems.

Intercropping has the potential to improve plant nutrition and crop yield. Here, the authors intercrop peanut and maize and show that Pseudomonas secreted siderophore pyoverdine play an important role in plant iron nutrition.

It is not clear how agricultural intensification affects spatially coupled ecosystems. Here, the authors use long-term datasets on managed grasslands coupled with unmanaged wetlands showing that grassland intensification affects ecosystem service multifunctionality of spatially coupled wetlands

Competition between agriculture and land conservation may hinder climate and biodiversity targets. Here, the authors use global models integrating multiple spatial scales to assess how ambitious land conservation action and associated land-use dynamics could drive changes in landscape heterogeneity, pollination supply and soil loss.

The growth in global milk demand has been accompanied by an increase in waste milk disposal. Here, the authors transform waste milk through humification and incorporate the product into attapulgite creating a nano-fertiliser that benefits for plants growing in pots.

The conversion of forage to grain legume production in Switzerland can increase the amount of legume protein and replace around 41% of animal protein consumption with plant protein, making Swiss agriculture more self- sufficient and sustainable, suggests an analysis of expert opinions and model projections.

Social assets and farm location determine the financial well-being of fruit farmers in Chile and Tunisia more than climate change, according to face-to-face interviews with 801 randomly selected cherry and peach farmers in Tunisia and Chile.

Efficient agricultural management and irrigation infrastructure expansion, could reduce crop water footprint by 2040 in Africa, but more blue water would be needed after 2040 to maintain increasing yields, according to model projections of water footprint for the 21st century

Optimizing agricultural management practices has the potential to support sustainable agricultural intensification. This study presents a hybrid data-model integration approach that enables spatiotemporal optimization of agricultural management practices to maximize crop yield while reducing resource use and greenhouse gas emissions.

Temporarily flooded depressions within croplands are hotspots of nitrous oxide emissions and may account for 30% of total nitrous oxide fluxes from total cultivated area despite representing only 1%, suggest remotely sensed aerial mapping analyses and in situ flux measurements in Zealand, Denmark.

Both food and water security can be achieved in the Indus Basin in the short term through intensification of wheat production, land leveling and irrigation expansion, but not in the long term under future high population scenarios, suggests a spatially explicit adaptation pathway framework.

Land suitable for profitable diversification of agricultural systems is mainly located in Europe and North America because of well-developed infrastructure, according to a maximum entropy modelling approach driven by socio-economic variables.

Plant-beneficial bacteria provide multiple benefits to plants. This study constructs a database to couple microbial taxonomy with their plant-beneficial traits, and predicts that fossil-fuel-dependent scenarios could potentially lead to a marked decline of plant-beneficial bacteria abundance in global soils.

Fertiliser inputs have increased rice yield in southwest China since 2009, but the effect is declining, and less than half of the rice fields have optimal level of soil nutrients, according to a modelling analysis that uses field experiments and nutrient assessments.

The extensification of farming practices, reduction of losses and shift in diets improve European food system sustainability but has uneven economic impacts on producers and consumers of crops and livestock, according to an analysis of the European Green Deal with an economic model.

Weak adhesion is a common hindrance to efficient utilization of pesticides in agricultural applications. Here, authors demonstrate leaf-adhesive tebuconazole nanopesticides which can be water-dispersed via flash nanoprecipitation using temperature-responsive copolymers PDMAEMA-b-PCL as the carrier.

The effects of climate change on the yield and aroma of beer hops remains unknown. Here the authors demonstrate a climate-induced decline in the quality and quantity of traditional aroma hops across Europe and calls for urgent adaptation measures to stabilize international market chains.

Understanding plant–microbe–soil interactions enables the design of effective solutions for agriculture under suboptimal conditions. This study reports the identification of aluminium-resistant bacteria and their potential contribution to increased rice yields in acidic soils.

Crop intensification has increased agricultural production albeit with an increase in field antibiotic pollution. Here, Chen et al. project how antibiotic pollution undermines production and how intensification needs to be kept below a threshold.

Current cereal crop production levels could be sustained with significantly reduced total global fertilisation if nitrogen fertiliser use is evenly distributed across global croplands, according to an analysis of simulations from the LandscapeDNDC biogeochemical model

Earthworms contribute to plant growth. Here, Fonte et al. conduct a global meta-analysis and estimate that earthworms contribute to roughly 6.5% of global grain (maize, rice, wheat, barley) production and 2.3% of legume yields, equivalent to over 140 million metric tons annually.

Enhancing nitrogen use efficiency can improve global food production while minimizing environmental damage. Here, the authors combine 29 meta-analyses revealing that tailored practices based on local conditions can boost NUEr by 30% with variation between high- and middle-income regions.

Meat and dairy alternatives are promoted for diet sustainability. Here, the authors use a modelling approach to show that replacing 50% of pork, chicken, beef and milk globally with plant-based alternatives can reduce GHG emissions by 6.3 Gt CO₂eq year^-1 and more than half biodiversity loss by 2050.

Agricultural diversification can enhance ecosystem services, provide socio-economic benefits and increase yields in major cropping systems. This study synthesizes research about the effects of agricultural diversification on global rice production and shows that diversification can increase biodiversity by 40%, improve economy by 26% and reduce crop damage by 31%.

The adoption of climate-resilient crop varieties has the potential to build farmers’ climate resilience. Here, the authors show that adoption of climate-resilient groundnut varieties in West Africa benefits all households, with the biggest gains accruing to small-scale farmers.

Prebiotics can be used to encourage beneficial organisms. Here, the authors select rhizosphere metabolites that can be used as prebiotics to reduce the effect of the plant pathogen Ralstonia.

Synergistic effects of chemical and organic microbial inoculation improve the health of calcareous saline-sodic soils by up to 134% and the derived soil health indices can explain 29 to 87% of the variation in wheat growth, suggest an experimentally derived soil health assessment framework.

Livestock farms in the Spanish Pyrenees are increasingly driven by non-renewable resources despite longer grazing periods and reduced off-farm animal feed, according to an emergy accounting analysis of 50 cattle farms from 1990 to 2018.

In a semi-arid grassland located underneath an agrivoltaic array, grass photosynthesis was reduced by only about 6% and evapotranspiration by about 1%, despite a reduction in light availability by 38%, according to a mechanistic analysis of plant physiological data from a commercial agrivoltaic facility.

Ponds played an important role in ancient rice-growing regions such as China and India. Here, the authors find that reviving small water bodies to recycle drainage water for irrigation can reduce China’s rice production water footprint by 9% and alleviate 2-3% yield loss in dry years.

Population growth in China has increased the demand for food. Combining data-driven projections with field experiments, Luo et al. find that China can achieve self-sufficiency in maize production by 2030 implementation of optimal planting density and management without expanding cropping areas.

Ensuring that waste or by-products from one process form the input of another is key for food systems sustainability. This study assesses the biophysical potential of redesigning the European (EU27 + UK) food system on the basis of circularity principles. Changes in food consumption, crop production, animal production and fertilizer patterns are considered through scenario analysis.

Increasing crop functional richness in rotations can support grain yields more than species diversity in many environments, suggest grain yield data from 32 long-term experiments across Europe and North America.

Availability of modern seed varieties in developing countries has had positive effects on households’ well-being. Here, the authors show that without support to maintain soil fertility, access to modern seed varieties increases primary forest clearance in DR Congo.

Stakeholders can use an exploratory and interactive model to investigate relationships, synergies, trade-offs, and sensitivities between key variables in the UK food and agriculture system, which can help them design pathways to reach sustainability objectives.

The climate crisis will increase the frequency of extreme weather events. Harrison et al. show that while global waterlogging-induced yield losses increase from 3–11% historically to 10–20% by 2080, adapting sowing periods and adopting waterlogging-tolerant genotypes can negate such yield losses.

National climate strategies focus on enhancing terrestrial carbon sinks and largely fail to quantify residual emissions, according to analyses of 41 of 50 submitted strategies to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.

Multilateral crop trading that maximizes the system benefit and minimizes the inequality level of water-land benefits could effectively mitigate both nutrient surplus and footprint, according to an integrated evaluation model for China and central Asia.

Resolving ecological-economic trade-offs is a challenge in agriculture. Here, Wurz et al. find that in Malagasy vanilla agroforests, vanilla yield is generally not related to tree, herbaceous plant, bird, amphibian, reptile and ant biodiversity, creating opportunities for conservation outside protected areas.

Responses of agriculture and fisheries to climate change are interlinked, yet rarely studied together. Here, the authors analyse more than 3000 households from 5 tropical countries and forecast mid-century climate change impacts, finding that communities with higher fishery dependence and lower socioeconomic status communities face greater losses.

Optimising the spatial distribution of global croplands could substantially reduce carbon emissions and biodiversity loss associated with rain-fed crop production, according to a mathematical framework applied to environmental impact and crop yield data

Using decision support systems to schedule fungicide application based on disease risk provides similar protection to calendar-based strategies but uses 50% less fungicide, according to a global meta-analysis.

Crop diversification could be important for food security. Here, using methods from network science, the authors find that a positive relationship between crop diversity and nutritional stability globally does not necessarily equate to improving nutritional stability in a given country.

Long-term no-tillage systems enhance cotton yield resilience to climate extremes through improved soil quality in Tennessee, USA, according to a 29-year rain-fed plot-scale cotton experiment.

A proposed optimal nitrogen rate strategy together with analysis of an extensive on-farm dataset shows that meeting national rice production targets in 2030 in China is possible while concurrently reducing nationwide nitrogen consumption.

A meta-analysis of 1,521 field observations from the past two decades led to the identification of 11 key measures to cost-effectively mitigate nitrogen pollution from global croplands.

Compound heat and moisture extremes influence crop yield, threatening food security. This Review outlines the mechanisms, projections and adaptation options for compound extreme–crop yield relationships, highlighting an urgency to better understand the impact of joint stresses.

Modelling reveals large swathes of land in tropical grassy and dry forest biomes that are climatically suitable for commercial plantations of oil palm and would comply with current zero-deforestation commitments, but where conversion to oil palm would, in many locations, cause loss of habitat and biodiversity.

The EU needs an integrated nutrient directive that regulates the agricultural application of nitrogen and phosphorus to prevent ecosystem degradation and support the Farm to Fork initiative. This directive must go beyond the current, inadequate regulations by considering nutrient balances and accounting for regional differences.

This Perspective reviews the practical and conceptual challenges inherent in the development of crop variety mixtures, and considers three domains in which they might be particularly beneficial: pathogen resistance, yield stability and yield enhancement.