One of the biggest challenges facing humanity is achieving sustainable food security in the face of population growth, resource scarcity, ecosystem degradation and climate change. Transitioning towards sustainable food systems (SFS) is a must for achieving sustainable development. This review paper highlights the need to adopt a holistic, multidimensional, interdisciplinary and systemic approac...

Available online xxxx Smallholder livestock keepers represent almost 20% of the world population and steward most of the agricultural land in the tropics. Observed and expected increases in future demand for livestock products in developing countries provide unique opportunities for improving livelihoods and linked to that, improving stewardship of the environment. This cannot be a passive proc...

†Background Agricultural systems are amended ecosystems with a variety of properties. Modern agroecosystems have tended towards high through-flow systems, with energy supplied by fossil fuels directed out of the system (either deliberately for harvests or accidentally through side effects). In the coming decades, resource constraints over water, soil, biodiversity and land will affect agricultu...

European farming is dealing with global questions as food safety, climate change and energy, while attempting to sustain competitiveness in world markets, higher standards of food production and responding to new demands for public goods and services. The energy requirements of food production are here a central issue. But a literature review on this topic, centered in the Mediterranean, reveal...

Intensive agriculture, which depends on unsustainable levels of agrochemical inputs, is environmentally harmful, and the expansion of these practices to meet future needs is not economically feasible. Other options should be considered to meet the global food security challenge. The plant microbiome has been linked to improved plant productivity and, in this microreview, we consider the endosph...

One of the fundamental lessons learned through the past half century of agricultural research is that there are no “one size fits all” best management practices. The interaction of different soils with different cultures in different climates results in the need for unique approaches to sustainable agricultural systems in each situation. The transition to systems that are both sustainable and s...

Sustainable Intensification (SI) of agriculture has recently received widespread political attention, in both the UK and internationally. The concept recognises the need to simultaneously raise yields, increase input use efficiency and reduce the negative environmental impacts of farming systems to secure future food production and to sustainably use the limited resources for agriculture. The o...