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Sustainable agricultural progress is one of the world's greatest challenges in the twenty-first century as the global population is estimated to rise to over nine billion by 2050. Over the years, the Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) and the African Union (AU) have sought prosperous African Policies based on sustainable agriculture and inclusive growth. Additionally, the AU has adopted the Comprehensive African Agricultural Development Programme (CAADP) policy framework. Given the growing need for innovative policies and studies to reduce the negative environmental effects of agricultural development in Africa, this paper investigates the significance of green finance and digital technologies on green agricultural growth in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) from 2003 to 2018. Analysis of panel co-integration estimates indicates all variables are integrated. Using the panel-corrected standard errors estimator for long-run equilibrium co-integration assessment, the outcomes indicate mitigated green finance (MGF), internet and mobile phone use (IMU), as well as sustainable energy utilization (RE), individually and collectively exert a positive effect on agriculture, forestry and fishing value added (AVA). Additionally, panel causality estimates indicate (i) a bi-directional causality between MGF and AVA. (ii) A uni-directional causality running from IMU towards AVA without any rebound effect. For policy insights, the AU could urge member states to implement macro-policies to increase agricultural green credit to sustain food production and employment generation. Similarly, the FAO and AU could provide technical support in digital agricultural research and value chains towards ensuring sustainable agriculture development in SSA. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The increasing demand on water resources, reduced land for agriculture, and concerns over food and nutrition security have prompted the evolution of innovative and complex food production systems. In this context, efficient and sustainable food production systems such as aquaponics are viewed as an important and environmentally friendly technology for adaptation under resource-limited environments. Producing food in soilless systems is a promising strategy, as this method utilizes significantly less water than traditional agriculture. However, optimizing growing conditions to enhance crop and fish yields in aquaponics is frequently ambiguous and is often not economically feasible. One of the strategies to improve plant yields and supply of nutrients in aquaponics is the application of probiotics. With this strategy, the crop yields in aquaponics are improved via a variety of mechanisms, including nitrogen fixation, solubilization of mineral nutrients, organic matter mineralization, plant hormone modulation, and biocontrol. As a result, incorporating probiotics in aquaponic systems is a strategy for mitigating environmental effects and advancing sustainable agriculture. This review paper provides the current knowledge of the use of probiotics in aquaponics. Suggestions for further studies on the effects of probiotics in aquaponic systems are proposed. Through literature review, integrating probiotics into aquaponic systems has the potential to improve nutrient supply, modulation of water quality parameters, and microbial communities, which are key processes in enhancing the productivity of aquaponic systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sustainability in our food and fiber agriculture systems is inherently knowledge intensive. It is more likely to be achieved by using all the knowledge, technology, and resources available, including data-driven agricultural technology and precision agriculture methods, than by relying entirely on human powers of observation, analysis, and memory following practical experience. Data collected by sensors and digested by artificial intelligence (AI) can help farmers learn about synergies between the domains of natural systems that are key to simultaneously achieve sustainability and food security. In the quest for agricultural sustainability, some high-payoff research areas are suggested to resolve critical legal and technical barriers as well as economic and social constraints. These include: the development of holistic decision-making systems, automated animal intake measurement, low-cost environmental sensors, robot obstacle avoidance, integrating remote sensing with crop and pasture models, extension methods for data-driven agriculture, methods for exploiting naturally occurring Genotype x Environment x Management experiments, innovation in business models for data sharing and data regulation reinforcing trust. Public funding for research is needed in several critical areas identified in this paper to enable sustainable agriculture and innovation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reports a realistic analysis of a region using Grounded Theory (GT) to provide a sustainable model for family farming systems based on the intercropping system in rural communities of Iran. Furthermore, the fuzzy analytic hierarchy process (FAHP) was applied to assign weights to the criteria and sub-criteria of intercropping and monocropping systems. According to the model, the main phenomenon was "sustainability in the family farming system based on intercropping". In this model, the causal factors were found to include behavioral and attitudinal motivators. Micro- and macro-factors were identified as the interfering factors in family farming systems based on intercropping. Social factors, economic components, and environmental potentials were the contextual factors of this system. Finally, the consequences included the conceptual development and evolution of sustainability, socioeconomic transformation, and ecological-environmental transformation. The results of FAHP showed that the environmental criterion was ranked the first among all criteria underpinning the sustainability of the intercropping system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reports a realistic analysis of a region using Grounded Theory (GT) to provide a sustainable model for family farming systems based on the intercropping system in rural communities of Iran. Furthermore, the fuzzy analytic hierarchy process (FAHP) was applied to assign weights to the criteria and sub-criteria of intercropping and monocropping systems. According to the model, the main phenomenon was "sustainability in the family farming system based on intercropping". In this model, the causal factors were found to include behavioral and attitudinal motivators. Micro- and macro-factors were identified as the interfering factors in family farming systems based on intercropping. Social factors, economic components, and environmental potentials were the contextual factors of this system. Finally, the consequences included the conceptual development and evolution of sustainability, socioeconomic transformation, and ecological-environmental transformation. The results of FAHP showed that the environmental criterion was ranked the first among all criteria underpinning the sustainability of the intercropping system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2018, Lisbon won the title of Green capital of Europe 2020. It was described by the Expert Panel as an inspirational city which had started its journey towards sustainability during a period of economic crisis. A year later, Covid-19 had become a global pandemic. Imposed confinements highlighted the extent to which globalisation has spread the virus, as well as the particular fragility of places like cities where people, living together, were asked to not physically interact anymore. Exploring further that very particular global crisis can help to identify the faults in our economic systems and to ask why Lisbon was neither resilient nor sustainable in the face of that adversity. In addition to highlighting how weak our health is, Covid-19 has exacerbated vulnerabilities in Lisbon such as job losses (especially in the touristic sector), food supply (Portugal imports 70% of its food) and food waste. This paper explores how the activity which, 'par excellence', meets the most basic of our needs (food), through the example of Urban Agriculture (UA), could contribute to discussions on what makes a city sustainable. A literature review on UA in Lisbon highlights its various benefits, complemented by a broader literature review which converges to showing how UA can help to address the vulnerabilities generated or exacerbated by Covid. Having shown its potential contribution to addressing crises, this article then suggests to examine how systems approaches could help to incorporate UA further in a new type of more participatory urbanism aimed at creating sustainable cities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Few studies have been conducted to assess agricultural sustainability in the European Union (EU), and all of them fail to provide a holistic view of sustainability in a relevant temporal horizon that could effectively support the design of policies. In this paper, a composite indicator is constructed based on the geometric aggregation of 12 basic indicators measured yearly in the period 2004–2020 (17 years) on all EU countries plus United Kingdom, with weights determined endogenously according to the Benefit of Doubt (BoD) approach. Our composite indicator has a two-level hierarchical structure accounting for the contributions of the economic, social and environmental dimensions of sustainability. In our results, Bulgaria, Croatia, Lithuania and Poland are the countries with the strongest growth rate of sustainability, while countries reaching the 90th percentile of the score in sustainability include Austria, Czechia, Estonia, France, Germany, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Slovakia and Sweden. In overall, the social and the environmental dimensions have similar levels, while the level of the economic dimension is definitely higher. Interestingly, several countries with a high level of sustainability are characterized by a decline of the economic dimension, including Austria, Finland, Italy, Latvia and Slovakia. The reliability of our composite indicator is supported by the substantial agreement of sustainability scores with subsidies attributed by the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP). Therefore, our proposal represents a valuable resource not only to monitor the progress of EU member countries towards sustainability objectives, but also to refine the scheme for the attribution of CAP subsidies in order to stimulate specific sustainable dimensions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To promote greater sustainability in agriculture, development of agroecology is increasingly being invoked. What are the conditions for establishing agroecological production in tropical regions? Based upon case studies in several tropical areas, we provide here some answers to this question. We review the "pillars" (i.e. principles) and the "implementation levers" (i.e., tools) for the development of agroecology. We identify three main pillars: (1) the mobilization and management of ecological processes for the sustainable production and the resilience of agroecosystems; (2) the development of interactions between technical, social, environmental, and institutional components of agroecosystems for a holistic approach to agroecology; and (3) the scaling up of agroecology that takes place with a plurality of actions and pathways at different organization levels rather than an increase in resources and a replication of standardized technical processes. To implement these three pillars, we identify 11 main bio-technical, cognitive, socio-political, and organizational levers. Bio-technical levers include those for (1) mobilizing complementarity between crop species to optimize natural resources use, (2) mobilizing functional biodiversity at the plot scale to optimize natural regulation of pests and diseases, (3) managing biodiversity at landscape and territorial scales, (4) increasing the efficiency of biogeochemical cycles, and (5) renewing targets for genetic improvement. Cognitive, socio-political, and organizational levers include those for (6) political and institutional action at the national and global level, (7) action at the local level to support producers, (8) political and organizational action at the territorial level, (9) the marketing and the development of new agri-chains, (10) the development of new methods for evaluating production systems, and (11) the recognition of the values of gender and generation within families and other organisational levels. This paper provides an overall orientation for the agroecological transition in tropical agriculture and also considers the socio-political context that underlies this transition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Triggered by such claims, we decided to investigate the fast expanding aquaculture industry, which resulted in the 1989 I Ambio i paper 'The role of ecosystems for a sustainable development of aquaculture' (Folke and Kautsky [5]). We proposed that sustainability leadership by such Keystone Actors could result in cascading effects throughout the entire seafood industry and possible enable a much needed transition towards improved management of marine living resources and ecosystems (Österblom et al. [19]; Jouffray et al. [13]). For the first time, the initiative connects the global seafood business to science, connects wild capture fisheries to aquaculture, and connects European and North American companies to Asian companies. Aquaculture and ocean stewardship: This article belongs to Ambio's 50th Anniversary Collection. [Extracted from the article]

Calls for a reconnection to nature and the biosphere have been growing louder over the last decades. Cultural landscapes are rapidly changing, posing a threat to ecosystems and biodiversity, but also to human–nature connections. Human–nature connectedness may be a potential lever to shift the unsustainable trajectory that we are currently proceeding, but is also negatively influenced by it. To concretize the call for a reconnection to nature, we used the leverage points perspective on five empirical case studies with focus on human–nature connectedness. Based on the synthesis of our yearlong work, in this perspective paper, we propose four leverage points to foster a sustainability transformation: (1) maintain and enhance the structural diversity of landscapes, (2) maintain and enhance economically and ecologically sustainable small-scale agriculture, (3) strengthen sense of place and (4) strengthen sense of agency in actors. Intervening in these leverage points could be effective to foster human–nature connectedness and ultimately contribute towards a sustainable trajectory. We further argue that the interconnection between leverage points is equally important as their systemic depth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Stakeholders decisions often are based on the construction of an indicative quantity (a composite indicator), which can be obtained by an aggregation process of a series of single indicators. This aggregation process combines single indicators to one quantity, the composite indicator. In the most simple aggregation technique a weighted sum is applied. Unfortunately, stakeholders often have different opinions concerning the individual weights that should be associated with single indicators. The resulting composite indicator applied for an eventual ranking may consequently be different from stakeholder to stakeholder. The present study focuses on a partial order based methodology for evaluating stakeholders' opinions based on the food sustainability index for 2017 as an exemplary case. The paper presents the methodological background for the use of composite indicators under different weighting schemes. The food sustainability index (FSI) is composed through an aggregation of three main indicators, i.e., food loss and waste, sustainable agriculture and nutritional challenges. In the present case four fictitious 'stakeholders', represented by four different weighting schemes, expert-based, political, outcome-based and uniform are included. The study shows that differences between the four weighting schemes are present. Furthermore it is shown that within certain limits the overall ranking of 34 countries based on the FSI leads to a linear ranking of 4 specific groups of countries, virtually summarizing the different stakeholders' opinions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]