Relevance Concerns about the environmental impact of farming has increasingly been the focus of discussions in the EU. Croplands, a primary land use in Europe, have a significant impact on the environment (soil, water bodies, global climate, local biodiversity and human health). The use of fertilisers and pesticides associated with conventional farming may lead to pollution and/or climate chang...

FAO promotes Sustainable Production Intensification (SPI), which consists of a technology menu for optimizing crop production per unit area, taking into consideration the range of sustainability aspects including potential and/or real social, political, economic and environmental impacts. The author suggests that Genetically Modified Organism (GMO) cropping is not only well aligned to SPI but a...

Food production is a major driver of global environmental change and the overshoot of planetary sustainability boundaries. Greater affluence in developing nations and human population growth are also increasing demand for all foods, and for animal proteins in particular. Consequently, a growing body of literature calls for the sustainable intensification of food production, broadly defined as "...

This article reviewed on agricultural intensification from livelihood and environment perspectives in mid-hills of Nepal. Agricultural intensification has provided improved economy, food security, employment opportunities, decision-making, labor division, local institutions and leaderships. But soil degradation has been accelerated along with greenhouse gases emission. Additionally, the potenti...

Mixed crop-livestock systems provide livelihoods for a billion people and produce half the world’s cereal and around a third of its beef and milk. Market orientation and strong and growing demand for food provide powerful incentives for sustainable intensification of both crop and livestock enterprises in smallholders’ mixed systems in Africa. Better exploitation of the mutually reinforcing nat...

A case study comparing extensive, low-yielding smallholder maize production with an intensified, high-yielding production system (‘sustainable intensification’) is used to illustrate potential trade-offs between agricultural product carbon footprints (PCFs) and land use (LU). In the comparative analysis the extensive systems had lower PCFs so the conclusion may be that these systems should be e...

— It is widely agreed that smallholder-led agricultural growth would contribute most to improved food security and reduced poverty. Yet, how to achieve broader and more sustainable access by smallholder farmers to productivity-enhancing inputs for food crop production remains a largely unsolved riddle. In light of the great institutional diversity across cotton sectors in Sub-Saharan Africa, th...