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• ICLS combines the benefits of specialization with increased resilience of the system.• Clear opportunities but also barriers for ICLS were observed.• ICLS need to be embedded within future environmental legislation.• ICLS systems with a range of intensities are needed to support a biodiverse landscape.Ongoing specialization of crop and livestock systems provides socioeconomic benefits to the farmer but has led to greater externalization of environmental costs when compared to mixed farming systems. Better integration of crop and livestock systems offers great potential to rebalance the economic and environmental trade-offs in both systems. The aims of this study were to analyze changes in farm structure and review and evaluate the potential for reintegrating specialized intensive crop and livestock systems, with specific emphasis on identifying the co-benefits and barriers to reintegration. Historically, animals were essential to recycle nutrients in the farming system but this became less important with the availability of synthetic fertilisers. Although mixed farm systems can be economically attractive, benefits of scale combined with socio-economic factors have resulted in on-farm and regional specialization with negative environmental impacts. Reintegration is therefore needed to reduce nutrient surpluses at farm, regional and national levels, and to improve soil quality in intensive cropping systems. Reintegration offers practical and cost-effective options to widen crop rotations and promotes the use of organic inputs and associated benefits, reducing dependency on synthetic fertilisers, biocides and manure processing costs. Circular agriculture goes beyond manure management and requires adaptation of both food production and consumption patterns, matching local capacity to produce with food demand. Consequently, feed transport, greenhouse gas emissions, nutrient surpluses and nutrient losses to the environment can be reduced. It is concluded that reintegration of specialized farms within a region can provide benefits to farmers but may also lead to further intensification of land use. New approaches within a food system context offer alternatives for reintegration, but require strong policy incentives which show clear, tangible and lasting benefits for farmers, the environment and the wider community.

A meta-analysis assessing the relative yields of organic and conventional agriculture shows that organic yields are on average lower, but that the magnitude of the difference is dependent on context. Crop yields compared There is much debate over the relative merits of conventional farming, which has a large environmental impact on the land it uses, and organic farming, which may require greater land use for the same yield. Central to this debate — and the subject of some controversy — are the relative yields of the two farming systems. Seufert et al . present a meta-analysis of the available scientific literature on organic-to-conventional yield comparisons, and conclude that organic yields are indeed lower, but that the difference varies substantially according to crop type, growing conditions and management practices. For instance, for perennials grown on favourable soils organic yields are just 5% lower than conventional yields, but the yield difference between the most comparable conventional and organic systems is as high as 34%. The authors conclude that the factors that limit organic yields need to be better understood to enable meaningful comparisons between the rival forms of agriculture. Numerous reports have emphasized the need for major changes in the global food system: agriculture must meet the twin challenge of feeding a growing population, with rising demand for meat and high-calorie diets, while simultaneously minimizing its global environmental impacts 1 , 2 . Organic farming—a system aimed at producing food with minimal harm to ecosystems, animals or humans—is often proposed as a solution 3 , 4 . However, critics argue that organic agriculture may have lower yields and would therefore need more land to produce the same amount of food as conventional farms, resulting in more widespread deforestation and biodiversity loss, and thus undermining the environmental benefits of organic practices 5 . Here we use a comprehensive meta-analysis to examine the relative yield performance of organic and conventional farming systems globally. Our analysis of available data shows that, overall, organic yields are typically lower than conventional yields. But these yield differences are highly contextual, depending on system and site characteristics, and range from 5% lower organic yields (rain-fed legumes and perennials on weak-acidic to weak-alkaline soils), 13% lower yields (when best organic practices are used), to 34% lower yields (when the conventional and organic systems are most comparable). Under certain conditions—that is, with good management practices, particular crop types and growing conditions—organic systems can thus nearly match conventional yields, whereas under others it at present cannot. To establish organic agriculture as an important tool in sustainable food production, the factors limiting organic yields need to be more fully understood, alongside assessments of the many social, environmental and economic benefits of organic farming systems.

Feeding a growing world sustainably In the coming years, continued population growth, rising incomes, increasing meat and dairy consumption and expanding biofuel use will place unprecedented demands on the world's agriculture and natural resources. Can we meet society's growing food needs while reducing agriculture's environmental harm? Here, an international team of environmental and agricultural scientists uses new geospatial data and models to identify four strategies that could double food production while reducing environmental impacts. First, halt agricultural expansion. Second, close 'yield gaps' on underperforming lands. Third, increase cropping efficiency. And finally, we need to change our diets and shift crop production away from livestock feed, bioenergy crops and other non-food applications. Increasing population and consumption are placing unprecedented demands on agriculture and natural resources. Today, approximately a billion people are chronically malnourished while our agricultural systems are concurrently degrading land, water, biodiversity and climate on a global scale. To meet the world’s future food security and sustainability needs, food production must grow substantially while, at the same time, agriculture’s environmental footprint must shrink dramatically. Here we analyse solutions to this dilemma, showing that tremendous progress could be made by halting agricultural expansion, closing ‘yield gaps’ on underperforming lands, increasing cropping efficiency, shifting diets and reducing waste. Together, these strategies could double food production while greatly reducing the environmental impacts of agriculture.

We hypothesize that biological diversification across ecological, spatial, and temporal scales maintains and regenerates the ecosystem services that provide critical inputs—such as maintenance of soil quality, nitrogen fixation, pollination, and pest control—to agriculture. Agrobiodiversity is sustained by diversified farming practices and it also supplies multiple ecosystem services to agriculture, thus reducing environmental externalities and the need for off-farm inputs. We reviewed the literature that compares biologically diversified farming systems with conventional farming systems, and we examined 12 ecosystem services: biodiversity; soil quality; nutrient management; water-holding capacity; control of weeds, diseases, and pests; pollination services; carbon sequestration; energy efficiency and reduction of warming potential; resistance and resilience to climate change; and crop productivity. We found that compared with conventional farming systems, diversified farming systems support substantially greater biodiversity, soil quality, carbon sequestration, and water-holding capacity in surface soils, energy-use efficiency, and resistance and resilience to climate change. Relative to conventional monocultures, diversified farming systems also enhance control of weeds, diseases, and arthropod pests and they increase pollination services; however, available evidence suggests that these practices may often be insufficient to control pests and diseases or provide sufficient pollination. Significantly less public funding has been applied to agroecological research and the improvement of diversified farming systems than to conventional systems. Despite this lack of support, diversified farming systems have only somewhat reduced mean crop productivity relative to conventional farming systems, but they produce far fewer environmental and social harms. We recommend that more research and crop breeding be conducted to improve diversified farming systems and reduce yield gaps when they occur. Because single diversified farming system practices, such as crop rotation, influence multiple ecosystem services, such research should be holistic and integrated across many components of the farming system. Detailed agroecological research especially is needed to develop crop- and region-specific approaches to control of weeds, diseases, and pests.

Creating typologies is a way to summarize the large heterogeneity of smallholder farming systems into a few farm types. Various methods exist, commonly using statistical analysis, to create these typologies. We demonstrate that the methodological decisions on data collection, variable selection, data-reduction and clustering techniques can bear a large impact on the typology results. We illustrate the effects of analysing the diversity from different angles, using different typology objectives and different hypotheses, on typology creation by using an example from Zambia's Eastern Province. Five separate typologies were created with principal component analysis (PCA) and hierarchical clustering analysis (HCA), based on three different expert-informed hypotheses. The greatest overlap between typologies was observed for the larger, wealthier farm types but for the remainder of the farms there were no clear overlaps between typologies. Based on these results, we argue that the typology development should be guided by a hypothesis on the local agriculture features and the drivers and mechanisms of differentiation among farming systems, such as biophysical and socio-economic conditions. That hypothesis is based both on the typology objective and on prior expert knowledge and theories of the farm diversity in the study area. We present a methodological framework that aims to integrate participatory and statistical methods for hypothesis-based typology construction. This is an iterative process whereby the results of the statistical analysis are compared with the reality of the target population as hypothesized by the local experts. Using a well-defined hypothesis and the presented methodological framework, which consolidates the hypothesis through local expert knowledge for the creation of typologies, warrants development of less subjective and more contextualized quantitative farm typologies.

China is facing one of the largest challenges of this century to continue to increase annual cereal production to about 600 Mt by 2030 to ensure food security with shrinking cropland and limited resources, while maintaining or improving soil fertility, and protecting the environment. Rich experiences in integrated and efficient utilization of different strategies of crop rotation, intercropping, and all possible nutrient resources accumulated by Chinese farmers in traditional farming systems have been gradually abandoned and nutrient management shifted to over-reliance on synthetic fertilizers. China is now the world’s largest producer, consumer and importer of chemical fertilizers. Overapplication of nitrogen (N) is common in intensive agricultural regions, and current N-uptake efficiency was reported to be only 28.3, 28.2 and 26.1% for rice, wheat and maize, respectively, and less than 20% in intensive agricultural regions and for fruit trees or vegetable crops. In addition to surface and groundwater pollution and greenhouse gas emissions, over-application of N fertilizers has caused significant soil acidification in major Chinese croplands, decreasing soil pH by 0.13 to 2.20. High yield as a top priority, small-scale farming, lack of temporal synchronization of nutrient supply and crop demand, lack of effective extension systems, and hand application of fertilizers by farmers are possible reasons leading to the over-application problems. There is little doubt that current nutrient management practices are not sustainable and more efficient management systems need to be developed. A review of long-term experiments conducted around the world indicated that chemical fertilizer alone is not enough to improve or maintain soil fertility at high levels and the soil acidification problem caused by overapplication of synthetic N fertilizers can be reduced if more fertilizer N is applied as NO 3 − relative to ammonium- or urea-based N fertilizers. Organic fertilizers can improve soil fertility and quality, but long-term application at high rates can also lead to more nitrate leaching, and accumulation of P, if not managed well. Well-managed combination of chemical and organic fertilizers can overcome the disadvantages of applying single source of fertilizers and sustainably achieve higher crop yields, improve soil fertility, alleviate soil acidification problems, and increase nutrient-use efficiency compared with only using chemical fertilizers. Crop yield can be increased through temporal diversity using crop rotation strategies compared with continuous cropping and legume-based cropping systems can reduce carbon and nitrogen losses. Crop yield responses to N fertilization can vary significantly from year to year due to variation in weather conditions and indigenous N supply, thus the commonly adopted prescriptive approach to N management needs to be replaced by a responsive in-season management approach based on diagnosis of crop growth, N status and demand. A crop sensor-based in-season site-specific N management strategy was able to increase Nuptake efficiency by 368% over farmers’ practices in the North China Plain. Combination of these well-tested nutrient management principles and practices with modern crop management technologies is needed to develop sustainable nutrient management systems in China that can precisely match field-to-field and year-to-year variability in nutrient supply and crop demand for both single crops and crop rotations to not only improve nutrient-use efficiency but also increase crop yield and protect the environment. In addition, innovative and effective extension and service-providing systems to assist farmers in adopting and applying new management systems and technologies are also crucially important for China to meet the grand challenge of food security, nutrient-use efficiency and sustainable development.

Intensive livestock farming has raised issues about environmental impacts and food security during the past 20 years. As a consequence, there is a strong social demand for sustainable livestock systems. Sustainable livestock systems should indeed be environmentally friendly, economically viable for farmers, and socially acceptable, notably for animal welfare. For that goal, many sustainability indicators and methods have been developed at the farm level. The main challenge is using a transparent selection process to avoid assessment subjectivity. Here, we review typologies of sustainability indicators. We set guidelines for selecting indicators in a data-driven context, by reviewing selection criteria and discussing methodological issues. A case study is presented. The selected set of indicators mainly includes (1) environmental indicators focusing on farmer practices; (2) quantitative economic indicators; and (3) quantitative social indicators with a low degree of aggregation. The selection of indicators should consider (1) contextualization to determine purpose, scales, and stakeholders involved in the assessment; (2) the comparison of indicators based on various criteria, mainly data availability; and (3) the selection of a minimal, consistent, and sufficient set of indicators. Finally, we discuss the following issues: topics for which no indicators are measurable from available data should explicitly be mentioned in the results. A combination of means-based indicators could be used to assess a theme, but redundancy must be avoided. The unit used to express indicators influences the results and has therefore to be taken into account during interpretation. To compare farms from indicators, the influence of the structure on indicator values has to be carefully studied.

The question of how to meet rising food demand at the least cost to biodiversity requires the evaluation of two contrasting alternatives: land sharing, which integrates both objectives on the same land; and land sparing, in which high-yield farming is combined with protecting natural habitats from conversion to agriculture. To test these alternatives, we compared crop yields and densities of bird and tree species across gradients of agricultural intensity in southwest Ghana and northern India. More species were negatively affected by agriculture than benefited from it, particularly among species with small global ranges. For both taxa in both countries, land sparing is a more promising strategy for minimizing negative impacts of food production, at both current and anticipated future levels of production.

The realization of the contribution of peasant agriculture to food security in the midst of scenarios of climate change, economic and energy crisis, led to the concepts of food sovereignty and agroecologically based production systems to gain much attention in the developing world in the last two decades. New approaches and technologies involving application of blended modern agricultural science and indigenous knowledge systems and spearheaded by thousands of farmers, NGOs, and some government and academic institutions are proving to enhance food security while conserving agrobiodiversity soil and water resources conservation throughout hundreds of rural communities in the developing world. Case studies from Cuba, Brazil, Philippines, and Africa are presented to demonstrate how the agroecological development paradigm based on the revitalization of small farms which emphasizes diversity, synergy, recycling and integration, and social processes that value community participation and empowerment, proves to be perhaps one of the only viable options to meet present and future food needs. Given the present and predicted near future climate, energy and economic scenarios, agroecology has emerged as one of the most robust pathways towards designing biodiverse, productive, and resilient agroecosystems available today.

Conventional farming has led to extensive use of chemicals and, in turn, to negative environmental impacts such as soil erosion, groundwater pollution and atmosphere contamination. Farming systems should be more sustainable to reach economical and social profitability as well as environmental preservation. A possible solution is to adopt precision agriculture, a win–win option for sustaining food production without degrading the environment. Precision technologies are used for gathering information about spatial and temporal differences within the field in order to match inputs to site-specific field conditions. Here we review reports on the precision N management of wheat crop. The aims are to perform an investigation both on approaches and results of site-specific N management of wheat and to analyse performance and sustainability of this agricultural practice. In this context, we analysed literature of the last 10–15 years. The major conclusions are: (a) before making N management decisions, both the measurement and understanding of soil spatial variability and the wheat N status are needed. Complementary use of different sensors has improved soil properties assessment at relatively low cost; (b) results show the usefulness of airborne images, remote and proximal sensing for predicting crop N status by responsive in-season management approaches; (c) red edge and near-infrared bands can penetrate into higher vegetation fraction of the canopy. These narrowbands better estimated grain yield, crop N and water status, with R ² higher than 0.70. In addition, different hyperspectral vegetation indices accounted for a high variability of 40–75 % of wheat N status; (d) various diagnostic tools and procedures have been developed in order to help wheat farmers for planning variable N rates. In-season adjustments in N fertilizer management can account for the specific climatic conditions and yield potential since less than 30 % of spatial variance could show temporal stability; (e) field studies in which sensor-based N management systems were compared with common farmer practices showed high increases in the N use efficiency of up to 368 %. These systems saved N fertilizers, from 10 % to about 80 % less N, and reduced residual N in the soil by 30–50 %, without either reducing yields or influencing grain quality; (f) precision N management based on real-time sensing and fertilization had the highest profitability of about $5–60 ha⁻¹ compared to undifferentiated applications.