Articles in 2021

High-resolution satellite observations provide an accurate and cost-effective solution to monitoring national and global progress towards Sustainable Development Goals. With a new global cropland dataset, this study reports that during the first two decades of the twenty-first century, the global cropland area increased by 9%, whereas the per-capita cropland area decreased by 10% and the per-capita annual cropland net primary production increased by 3.5%.

Conflicts pose a serious threat to food security. Using remote sensing, this study reveals the location and extent of war-related cropland abandonment and its impact on food insecurity in South Sudan from 2016 to 2018—and offers a basis for timely aid provision.

The consolidation of small farms into large-scale agricultural enterprises may have important socioeconomic and environmental consequences. Based on 40,000 rural surveys, ecological modelling and geostatistical analysis, this study assesses the spatial feasibility and cost-effectiveness of land consolidation in China, and its impact on a set of sustainability indicators.

An anticipatory life cycle assessment of ovalbumin produced using cellular agriculture demonstrates sustainability gains with limited trade-offs, particularly when produced using low-carbon energy sources.

Population growth and dietary changes affect ammonia emissions from agriculture and the concentration of particulate matter in the atmosphere. This study quantifies the adverse health impacts associated with these processes in China using a mechanistic model of particulate matter formation and transport. It also compares them with direct health impacts of changing diets upon premature death from food-related diseases.

Big data collected through apps can facilitate large-scale study of diet and lifestyles. Information from the ZOE COVID Study indicates the variety and extent of impacts that the COVID-19 pandemic has had on the diets and lifestyles of adults in the United States and the United Kingdom.

Owing to its short atmospheric life, methane’s contribution to agricultural emissions and climate change may vary substantially depending on the temporal scale considered. Based on projections from three agricultural economic models, this study reveals how different appreciations of methane’s global warming potential may affect the cost-effectiveness of carbon pricing and low-meat diets.

Accurately determining the concentrations of NH₄⁺ and NO₃⁻ in the soil is important for optimizing nitrogen fertilizer application, but the standard laboratory testing approaches are expensive and slow. A low-cost technology that combines point-of-use sensor measurements, weather and timing data with a machine learning model can rapidly and accurately determine and predict soil nitrogen levels.

Crop pests and diseases (CPDs) can substantially reduce attainable crop yields worldwide, but the understanding of CPD dynamics remains limited because CPD occurrence is complex and interacts with climate and agronomic practices. Using a historical dataset of CPD occurrence in China, the national average rate of CPD occurrence was found to increase by a factor of four during 1970–2016, and climate change will lead to a greater increase in CPD occurrence by the end of the century.

Climate change affects agricultural productivity. New systematic global agricultural yield projections of the major crops were conducted using ensembles of the latest generation of crop and climate models. Substantial shifts in global crop productivity due to climate change will occur within the next 20 years—several decades sooner than previous projections—highlighting the need for targeted food system adaptation and risk management in the coming decades.

Climate change may pose a fundamental challenge to maintaining the high productivity of US dairy systems. Based on weather variability and milk yields from 1981 to 2018, this study estimates the impact of extreme heat and cold on productivity, the sensitivity of specific regions and the importance of farm management for mediating such impacts.

Estimating the global cropland N₂O mitigation potential is limited by the uncertainty and variability of direct emission factors (EFs). Here, using a data-driven approach with 1,507 chamber-based field observations of EFs, the study shows that EF variation is primarily driven by climatic and edaphic factors. Two-thirds of the mitigation potential could be achieved on one-fifth of the global harvested area, mainly located in humid subtropical climates and across gleysols and acrisols.

An integrated methodology that includes climate, crop, economic and life cycle assessment models was developed to explore the climate adaptation and mitigation opportunities throughout the US potato and tomato supply chains. This study shows that supply chains for two popular processed products in the United States, French fries and pasta sauce, will be remarkably resilient, through planting adaptation strategies.

A nutrient profiling system is developed to incorporate 54 attributes across 9 domains, bringing together a broad and unique range of food characteristics and uniform scoring principles. The Food Compass presents a detailed profiling system for the healthfulness of foods.

Resource depletion and environmental impacts associated with food and feed imports and exports must be measured. This study maps and quantifies land and nitrogen losses from agricultural trade in more than 240 countries for the past six decades through an innovative trade optimality evaluation method.

To increase crop yields in many regions of sub-Saharan Africa, farmers would need to use more fertilizers. However, estimating the local maize yield responses to fertilizers shows that the fertilizer and maize price ratio presents a strong barrier to achieving higher yields in most regions.

Ancestral wheat relatives can enrich the genetic diversity of modern cultivars and contribute to stress adaptation. A meta-genome-wide association study identifies the exotic genome footprints in a wheat pre-breeding population, as well as some exotic-specific agronomic traits.

Effective prioritizing of R&D investments in agriculture needs robust estimation of yield gaps for major cropping systems. Yield potential derived from the ‘top-down’ spatial frameworks is subject to a high degree of uncertainty and would benefit from incorporating estimates from ‘bottom-up’ spatial frameworks.

Costs are often assumed to be a barrier to the adoption of healthier and more sustainable diets. A comparison of the EAT–Lancet healthy reference diet, national dietary guidelines and current food intake in Mexico reveals that better diets do not always imply higher food expenditures.

African swine fever has spread to all Chinese provinces, limiting pork production and trade. Outbreaks occurring between 2018 and 2019 led to economic losses in pork and related industries—but projected future outbreaks could cause greater economic impacts.