scholarly journals Intensification for redesigned and sustainable agricultural systems

Science ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 362 (6417) ◽  
pp. eaav0294 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jules Pretty
Keyword(s):  
Irrigation Management ◽  
Environmental Cost ◽  
Agricultural Systems ◽  
Nutritional Security ◽  
The Sustainable Development ◽  
Development Goals ◽  
Sustainable Agricultural Systems ◽  
Food And Nutritional Security ◽  
Forage Management ◽  
Global Food

Redesign of agricultural systems is essential to deliver optimum outcomes as ecological and economic conditions change. The combination of agricultural processes in which production is maintained or increased, while environmental outcomes are enhanced, is currently known as sustainable intensification (SI). SI aims to avoid the cultivation of more land, and thus avoid the loss of unfarmed habitats, but also aims to increase overall system performance without net environmental cost. For example, large changes are now beginning to occur to maximize biodiversity by means of integrated pest management, pasture and forage management, the incorporation of trees into agriculture, and irrigation management, and with small and patch systems. SI is central to the Sustainable Development Goals of the United Nations and to wider efforts to improve global food and nutritional security.

scholarly journals Domesticating the Undomesticated for Global Food and Nutritional Security: Four Steps

Agronomy ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (9) ◽  
pp. 491 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ajeet Singh ◽  
Pradeep Kumar Dubey ◽  
Rajan Chaurasia ◽  
Rama Kant Dubey ◽  
Krishna Kumar Pandey ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Large Scale ◽  
Climatic Conditions ◽  
Nutritional Security ◽  
Innovative Strategy ◽  
Crop Varieties ◽  
Development Goals ◽  
Food And Nutritional Security ◽  
Poor Soil ◽  
Global Food

Ensuring the food and nutritional demand of the ever-growing human population is a major sustainability challenge for humanity in this Anthropocene. The cultivation of climate resilient, adaptive and underutilized wild crops along with modern crop varieties is proposed as an innovative strategy for managing future agricultural production under the changing environmental conditions. Such underutilized and neglected wild crops have been recently projected by the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations as ‘future smart crops’ as they are not only hardy, and resilient to changing climatic conditions, but also rich in nutrients. They need only minimal care and input, and therefore, they can be easily grown in degraded and nutrient-poor soil also. Moreover, they can be used for improving the adaptive traits of modern crops. The contribution of such neglected, and underutilized crops and their wild relatives to global food production is estimated to be around 115–120 billion US$ per annum. Therefore, the exploitation of such lesser utilized and yet to be used wild crops is highly significant for climate resilient agriculture and thereby providing a good quality of life to one and all. Here we provide four steps, namely: (i) exploring the unexplored, (ii) refining the unrefined traits, (iii) cultivating the uncultivated, and (iv) popularizing the unpopular for the sustainable utilization of such wild crops as a resilient strategy for ensuring food and nutritional security and also urge the timely adoption of suitable frameworks for the large-scale exploitation of such wild species for achieving the UN Sustainable Development Goals.

scholarly journals Review of congruence between global crop wild relative hotspots and centres of crop origin/diversity

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nigel Maxted ◽  
Holly Vincent
Keyword(s):  
Crop Wild Relatives ◽  
Crop Domestication ◽  
Nutritional Security ◽  
Adaptive Diversity ◽  
Breeding Programmes ◽  
Crop Origin ◽  
Food And Nutritional Security ◽  
Global Datasets ◽  
Original Concept ◽  
Global Food

AbstractCrop wild relatives (CWR) are important sources of adaptive diversity for plant breeding programmes. This paper aims to investigate the extent to which the centres of crop origin/diversity are congruent with areas of high CWR diversity. We established the predicted potential CWR distributions for 1,425 CWR species related to 167 crops using 334,527 known distribution locations and generated a global CWR hotspot map. This was then compared to the centres of origin/diversity proposed by Vavilov (amended by Hawkes); Zeven and Zhukovsky’s mega gene centres, Harlan’s centres and non-centres of crop domestication; and crop domestication areas identified using current archaeological evidence proposed by Purugganan and Fuller. Greatest congruence between the global CWR hotspots and other concepts was found with the concept proposed by Vavilov and amended by Hawkes, but there remained significant differences between the CWR hotspots and Vavilov’s concept. This paper concludes that all four centre concepts reviewed have some overlap with CWR diversity but that Vavilov’s original concept has the closest geographic coincidence with CWR hotspots. With the benefit of significant additional global datasets to those used by Vavilov, we were able to suggest amendments to his concept, adding further centres based on CWR hotspots in west and east USA, West Africa, South-east Brazil and Australia. As a result of this study more precise targeting of CWR and crop landrace can be implemented in future, aiding global food and nutritional security.

scholarly journals Why Is Airline Food Always Dreadful? Analysis of Factors Influencing Passengers’ Food Wasting Behaviour

2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (20) ◽  
pp. 8571
Author(s):  
Fangzhou You ◽  
Tracy Bhamra ◽  
Debra Lilley
Keyword(s):  
Food Waste ◽  
Sustainable Development Goals ◽  
Behavioural Change ◽  
Situational Factors ◽  
Key Factors ◽  
The Sustainable Development ◽  
Global Issue ◽  
Development Goals ◽  
Food Losses ◽  
Global Food

Food waste is emerging as a global issue and has been recognised in the Sustainable Development Goals with a specific target to halve per capita global food waste at consumer levels and reduce food losses by 2030. Research on food waste has been neglected particularly in the aviation sector. The International Air Transport Association reported that 5.7 million tonnes of cabin waste was generated on airlines, up to 80.5% of which was leftover food and beverages. The exploration of passengers’ food wasting aims to provide insights for tackling the airline food waste problem. To address this issue, this research investigated the in-flight catering experience of 19 passengers from 21 full-service flights. Qualitative research techniques have been applied to analyse passengers’ food-wasting behaviour by collecting participant-produced photographs and completed questionnaires concerning food-related behaviour. This research identified key factors associated with passengers’ food wasting behaviour by adopting Design for Sustainable Behaviour approaches. Four types of factors were found to influence onboard passenger waste, these were normative, habitual, intentional and situational factors. This research indicates that behavioural change interventions need to incorporate the power of social norms to prevent food waste.

scholarly journals Assessing Transitions to Sustainable Agricultural and Food Systems: A Tool for Agroecology Performance Evaluation (TAPE)

2020 ◽  
Vol 4 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anne Mottet ◽  
Abram Bicksler ◽  
Dario Lucantoni ◽  
Fabrizia De Rosa ◽  
Beate Scherf ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Performance Evaluation ◽  
Food Systems ◽  
Evidence Base ◽  
Agricultural Systems ◽  
Agricultural Producers ◽  
The Sustainable Development ◽  
Development Goals ◽  
Agroecological Transition ◽  
Key Dimensions ◽  
Scale Step

There is increasing interest in agroecology as a way to move toward more sustainable agriculture and food systems. However, the evidence of agroecology's contribution to sustainability remains fragmented because of heterogeneous methods and data, differing scales and timeframes, and knowledge gaps. Facing these challenges, 70 representatives of agroecology-related organizations worldwide participated in the development of the Tool for Agroecology Performance Evaluation (TAPE), to produce and consolidate evidence on the multidimensional performances of agroecological systems. TAPE is composed of: Step 0, the preliminary step that includes a description of the main socio-economic and demographic characteristics of the agricultural and food systems and an analysis of the enabling environment in terms of relevant policy, market, technology, socio-cultural and/or historical drivers; Step 1, the Characterization of Agroecological Transitions (CAET), based on the 10 Elements of Agroecology adopted by FAO and its member countries, using descriptive scales to establish scores and assessing the degree of transition, with information from the farm/household and community/territory scale; Step 2, the Core Criteria of Performance listing the key dimensions considered relevant to address the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs): Environment & climate change; Health & nutrition; Society & culture; Economy and Governance. Finally Step 3, a participatory validation of the results obtained from the previous steps with the producers and relevant stakeholders. TAPE can be used (i) to assess the extent of agroecological transition among agricultural producers in a community or a territory, (ii) to monitor and evaluate projects by characterizing the initial and subsequent steps in an agroecological transition, and/or (iii) to evaluate widely diverse agricultural systems against agroecological elements and how they contribute to the achievement of the SDGs. Its application can support the transition of all forms of agricultural systems toward more sustainable practices and the formulation of adequate policies to enable this transformation. Preliminary results from pilot applications show that TAPE can perform in a variety of geographic regions and agroecosystems and that it allows assessment of performances of various criteria that move beyond classic indicators to begin to build a global evidence base for agroecology and support transformation to sustainable agricultural production and food systems.

The importance of vegetables in ensuring both food and nutritional security in attainment of the Millennium Development Goals

Food Security ◽  
2011 ◽  
Vol 3 (4) ◽  
pp. 491-501 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. D. H. Keatinge ◽  
R.-Y. Yang ◽  
J. d’A. Hughes ◽  
W. J. Easdown ◽  
R. Holmer
Keyword(s):  
Millennium Development Goals ◽  
Nutritional Security ◽  
Development Goals ◽  
Food And Nutritional Security

scholarly journals Open in Order to Achieve Food and Nutritional Security

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sridhar Gutam
Keyword(s):  
Sustainable Development ◽  
Sustainable Development Goals ◽  
Agricultural Research ◽  
Principal Component ◽  
Nutritional Security ◽  
Food And Agriculture ◽  
2030 Agenda ◽  
Food And Agriculture Organization ◽  
Development Goals ◽  
Food And Nutritional Security

Agriculture is the principal component of the 2030 agenda for sustainable development and is directly or indirectly linked to all the 17 sustainable development goals (SDGs). The new estimate recently released by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations in their report, ‘The State of Food and Agriculture 2017,’ puts the number of chronically undernourished people in the world at 815 million. So, let’s make all the agricultural research data and information to be open in order to achieve food and nutritional security and realize the ambitious vision outlined in the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals.

Traditional/Indigenous Vegetables of the Kingdom of Eswatini: Biodiversity and Their Importance: A Review

2020 ◽  
pp. 204-215
Author(s):  
Michael T. Masarirambi ◽  
Kwanele A. Nxumalo ◽  
Emmanuel N. Kunene ◽  
Daniel V. Dlamini ◽  
Molyn Mpofu ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Digestive System ◽  
Sustainable Development Goals ◽  
Insect Pests ◽  
Nutritional Security ◽  
Pests And Diseases ◽  
Development Goals ◽  
Human Digestive System ◽  
Traditional Vegetable ◽  
Indigenous Vegetables ◽  
Food And Nutritional Security

Traditional (indigenous) vegetables of the Kingdom of Eswatini are important for their contribution to human nutrition. They are major sources of vitamins and minerals. They provide fibre which is required for the proper functioning of the human digestive system. Traditional vegetables are important economically however, no assessments have been done in the Kingdom of Eswatini to measure their contribution to the gross domestic product (GDP). A traditional vegetable concern provides employment and thus income, and ensuring food and nutritional security, and hence striving to attain sustainable development goals (SDGs) pertaining to human health, nutrition, food security and biodiversity. Traditional vegetables are infested relatively less by insect pests and diseases. They relatively out compete weeds in terms of resources essential for growth and development. In food, traditional vegetables provide interesting colour, texture and variety. Despite the immense importance of traditional vegetables, they have been neglected and regarded as poor man's food with no research prioritisation. The objective of this study was to explore their present status, prioritize consumer education, explore their importance as climate smart vegetables and to document their contribution to biodiversity.

scholarly journals The Effect of Processing on Bioactive Compounds and Nutritional Qualities of Pulses in Meeting the Sustainable Development Goal 2

2021 ◽  
Vol 5 ◽  
Author(s):  
Caleb Acquah ◽  
Godfred Ohemeng-Boahen ◽  
Krista A. Power ◽  
Susan M. Tosh
Keyword(s):  
Sustainable Development ◽  
Bioactive Compounds ◽  
Antinutritional Factors ◽  
Sustainable Development Goal ◽  
Nutritional Security ◽  
The Sustainable Development ◽  
Nutritional Qualities ◽  
Food And Nutritional Security ◽  
Processing Techniques ◽  
Nutritional Constituents

Diversification of plant-based food sources is necessary to improve global food and nutritional security. Pulses have enormous nutritional and health benefits in preventing malnutrition and chronic diseases while contributing positively to reducing environmental footprint. Pulses are rich in diverse nutritional and non-nutritional constituents which can be classified as bioactive compounds due to their biological effect. These bioactive compounds include but are not limited to proteins, dietary fibres, resistant starch, polyphenols, saponins, lectins, phytic acids, and enzyme inhibitors. While these compounds are of importance in ensuring food and nutritional security, some of the bioactive constituents have ambivalent properties. These properties include having antioxidant, anti-hypertensive and prebiotic effects. Others have a deleterious effect of decreasing the digestibility and/or bioavailability of essential nutrients and are therefore termed antinutritional factors/compounds. Various processing techniques exist to reduce the content of antinutritional factors found in pulses. Traditional processing of pulses comprises soaking, dehulling, milling, germination, fermentation, and boiling, while examples of emerging processing techniques include microwaving, extrusion, and micronization. These processing techniques can be tailored to purpose and pulse type to achieve desired results. Herein, the nutritional qualities and properties of bioactive compounds found in pulses in meeting the sustainable development goals are presented. It also discusses the effect of processing techniques on the nutritional and non-nutritional constituents in pulses as well as the health and environmental benefits of pulse-diet consumption. Major challenges linked to pulses that could limit their potential of being ideal crops in meeting the sustainable development goal 2 agenda are highlighted.

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