Adaptation of farming management practices to changing environmental conditions, such as climate, is a major issue that controls the success or failure of food production. Therefore Robert et al. review how flexible management strategies are in farming decision models. They propose a sequential decision-making process.
Crop-livestock farms are declining across Europe despite the fact that they are theoretically sustainable. Agronomists Martin et al. evidenced collaborations among farms and farmers, such as the direct exchange of raw materials. They propose to set up participatory workshops to improve farm-farm collaborations.
Agricultural innovations such as disease resistant maize varieties and integrated pest management often hold a potential for wider application. This motivates many agricultural development interventions to aim for scaling agricultural innovations. However, several factors may constrain such intentions. Scaling may also lead to undesirable side-effects such as environmental degradation. Wigboldus et al. review current and alternative approaches to scaling. They present a framework to enrich views on what is involved in helping such innovations go to scale in an effective and responsible way
Is production of coffee, tea and cocoa sustainable in smallholder farms? Mukashema et al. studied the sustainability of smallholder coffee fields in Rwanda. They found that 60% of coffee farms have suitable socio-economic and environmental locations.
Accurate yield forecasts can improve sustainability in the sugarcane industry by delivering better environmental and economic outcomes. Foreknowledge of the size of the upcoming crop can influence fertilizer management, mill planning and maintenance and marketing decisions. Everingham et al. developed statistical models to accurately forecast sugarcane yield in Tully, Australia. These models used random forest datamining techniques to find relationships between yield, climatic indices and crop model outputs. They found that accurate yield forecasts were possible 8 – 14 months before the end of the harvest season.
Grain legumes like lupin, pea and faba bean are disappearing from European landscapes. Zander et al. seeked why farmers are losing interest in cultivating legume crops. They found that unfavorable market conditions, failure to appreciate environmental benefits, changes in subsidy policies, disadvantageous trade agreements and some biological disadvantages that reduce the farm profitability are driving legumes out of the continent. The authors suggest introducing payments for ecosystem services, building awareness on the benefits of these crops among farming community, reforming trade policies, facilitating changes in consumption patterns, investing in research and developing new value chains to bring them back into European landscapes. This may restore the diversity of cropping systems, provide ecosystem services and reduce the European production deficit of plant proteins.
Labor shortage, water scarcity and climate change threaten the sustainability and profitability of traditional transplanted rice. Tao et al. show that wet direct-seeded rice has higher grain yield, higher water productivity and lower global warming potential than traditional transplanted rice.
As for weather forecasting, agronomists use mathematical models to calculate the best cropping conditions suitable to local fields. Actually two kind of models are available, biophysical models and decision models. Bergez et al. have developed a new plugin that merges the two model types, thus allowing to calculate the impact of agricultural practices on the biophysical system, e.g. soil and plants.
Climate change is forecasted to impact deeply agricultural and food production in the next decades. Actually there is few knowledge on the major issues faced by farmers in Central Asia. Therefore agronomists Hamidov et al. reviewed 362 scientific papers published from 2008 to 2013. They classified the papers into three categories: environmental, economic and social issues. They found that the major issues of land use are the quality of air, soil, minerals and water; ecosystem services for fertilisation and food production; and biomass and energy.
Issues such as food contamination by toxic pesticides have fostered the need to develop safer cropping. Farmers are thus trying to implement alternative ecological practices, but the results of such changes, either positive or negative, is so far not clear. Therefore agronomists Toffolini et al. have analyzed indicators of ecological change to provide guidelines.