Environmental Sustainability of Agriculture in a Changing Climate

Dear Colleagues,

This Special Issue offers the possibility of sharing the latest scientific advances in agriculture that allow it to meet the growing needs of the population and its dietary culture, and to contribute positively to the scope of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of the United Nations. Under a changing climate, it is important now as well as in the near future for agriculture to offer sustainable food systems. The sustainable development of agriculture, however, is a complex issue. Sustainability analyses require long-term series of experimentations or time series projections to evaluate the environmental impact of different management practices and climate conditions.

Environmental sustainability must be applied to agriculture analysis for an optimum management of land, biodiversity, soil, water, nutrient, and waste management from a systemic point of view, from local to global sustainability. These methodologies combine the farm and ecosystem levels, through the evaluation of a series of indicators that define an ecosystem by starting with its initial conditions and examining their evolution over time. On the other hand, social, economic, and governance sustainability also needs to be taken into account. Agriculture must provide both a good quality of life to farmers and adequate food, materials, and ecosystem services to society. Moreover, the design of sustainable systems must reduce the risk of famine or natural disasters, in order to achieve the SDGs by 2030.

Agriculture has a dual role in the face of climate change, as a sink or as a source of greenhouse gases, mainly involved in the carbon and nitrogen cycle. There is great uncertainty in this, but clear baselines are needed. Agriculture replaces the natural environment to generate economic utility—for example, replacing wild with domestic herbivores—and as such, it is necessary to identify how these changes affect the environment. Research that focuses on this and other topics in this field will be welcomed.

We are pleased to invite you to contribute to this Special Issue on “Environmental Sustainability of Agriculture in a Changing Climate” in Sustainability. The Special Issue focuses on the analysis of the environmental sustainability of agriculture from farm to global level within a complex environment now and in the near future, considering a multidisciplinary approach, according to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of the United Nations.

This Special Issue welcomes submissions which address (but are not limited to) questions such as:

(1) How the environment will be managed for the sustainability of agriculture;

(2) How climate change affects the environmental sustainability of agriculture;

(3) How the environmental sustainability of agriculture contributes to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs);

(4) Which future agricultural model can successfully marry a healthy environment and climate with a robust economy;

(5) One health global and environmental sustainability of agricultural transition;

(6) What the right approaches are to maintain and increase crop productivity into the future.

The purpose of the Special Issue is to gather general scientific evidence on sustainable agriculture that can help decision-making, especially that which can accelerate change to reach the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, in a scenario in which some objectives, such as zero hunger (SDG 2), are much more urgent than others. Additionally, the Special Issue aims to analyze the effect of the environmental sustainability of agriculture within indicators of SDG 15 Life on land and SDG Climate Action.

References:

Béné, C., Prager, S. D., Achicanoy, H. A., Toro, P. A., Lamotte, L., Bonilla, C., & Mapes, B. R. (2019). Global map and indicators of food system sustainability. Scientific data, 6(1), 1-15.

Cassman, K. G., & Grassini, P. (2020). A global perspective on sustainable intensification research. Nature Sustainability, 3(4), 262-268.

Sadras, V. O. (2020). Agricultural technology is unavoidable, directional, combinatory, disruptive, unpredictable and has unintended consequences. Outlook on Agriculture, 49 (4): 293-297.

Sadras, V., Alston, J., Aphalo, P., Connor, D., Denison, R. F., Fischer, T., H. R. Richard Gray, Peter Hayman, Holger Kirchmann, Martin Kropff, H Renee Lafitte, Peter Langridge, Jill Lenne, M Inés Mínguez, John Passioura, John R Porter, Tim Reeves, Daniel Rodriguez, Megan Ryan, Francisco J Villalobos, David Wood (2020). Making science more effective for agriculture. Advances in Agronomy, 163: 153-177.

Struik, P. C., & Kuyper, T. W. (2017). Sustainable intensification in agriculture: the richer shade of green. A review. Agronomy for Sustainable Development, 37(5), 39.

If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact us.

Kind regards,

Prof. Dr. Carlos G.H. Díaz-Ambrona
Dr. Esperanza Arnés Prieto
Dr. Carlos Germano Ferreira Costa
Dr. Jaime Martínez Valderrama
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

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• agricultural systems
• agroforestry
• risk analysis
• system dynamics
• evaluations and forecasting
• sustainable development goals
• one health global