Editorial:Ecological intensification and sustainable intensification: increasing benefits to and reducing impacts on the environment to improve future agricultural and food systems (original) (raw)

Sustainable agricultural systems are pivotal to future agriculture’s capacity to support the projected global population of 9 billion people by 2050. Future agricultural food systems must effectively tackle pressing sustainability challenges that adversely affect both food production and the environment. These challenges encompass heightened land demand, sustainable use of synthetic nitrogen, declining soil carbon pool, and biodiversity loss. This Research Topic collection highlights different approaches to improving the environmental sustainability of agricultural systems around the world. Changes in climate require regional to farm-level approaches to climate change adaptation. From 2009 to 2018, maize production in China has been impacted by changes in climate but this is regionally dependent (Zhang et al.). Strategies to reduce agriculture’s environmental impact also depend on the region evaluated and the farm or agricultural stakeholder group involved. Within this context, the concepts of sustainable intensification (SI) and ecological intensification (EI) play important roles (Figure 1). SI of agricultural systems involves more efficiently using resources in order to spare future degradation of natural habitat. Meanwhile, EI diversifies farming systems which can not only improve agricultural production, but also enhance agro-ecosystems.

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