Sustainable development goal 2: improved targets and indicators for agriculture and food security

The pursuit of global food security and agricultural sustainability, the dual aim of the second Sustainable Development Goal (SDG-2), requires urgent and concerted action from developing and developed countries. This, in turn, depends on clear and universally applicable targets and indicators which are partially lacking. The novel and complex nature of the SDGs poses further challenges to their implementation on the ground, especially in the face of interlinkages across SDG objectives and scales. Here we review the existing SDG-2 indicators, propose improvements to facilitate their operationalization and illustrate their practical implementation in Nigeria, Brazil and the Netherlands. This exercise provides insights into the concrete actions needed to achieve SDG-2 across contrasting development contexts and highlights the challenges of addressing the links between targets and indicators within and beyond SDG-2. Ultimately, it underscores the need for integrated policies and reveals opportunities to leverage the fulfillment of SDG-2 worldwide

Biophysical suitability, economic pressure and land-cover change: a global probabilistic approach and insights for REDD+

There has been a concerted effort by the international scientific community to understand the multiple causes and patterns of land-cover change to support sustainable land management. Here, we examined biophysical suitability, and a novel integrated index of “Economic Pressure on Land” (EPL) to explain land cover in the year 2000, and estimated the likelihood of future land-cover change through 2050, including protected area effectiveness. Biophysical suitability and EPL explained almost half of the global pattern of land cover (R 2 = 0.45), increasing to almost two-thirds in areas where a long-term equilibrium is likely to have been reached (e.g. R 2 = 0.64 in Europe). We identify a high likelihood of future land-cover change in vast areas with relatively lower current and past deforestation (e.g. the Congo Basin). Further, we simulated emissions arising from a “business as usual” and two reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (REDD) scenarios by incorporating data on biomass carbon. As our model incorporates all biome types, it highlights a crucial aspect of the ongoing REDD + debate: if restricted to forests, “cross-biome leakage” would severely reduce REDD + effectiveness for climate change mitigation. If forests were protected from deforestation yet without measures to tackle the drivers of land-cover change, REDD + would only reduce 30 % of total emissions from land-cover change. Fifty-five percent of emissions reductions from forests would be compensated by increased emissions in other biomes. These results suggest that, although REDD + remains a very promising mitigation tool, implementation of complementary measures to reduce land demand is necessary to prevent this leakage

A Generic Bio-Economic Farm Model for Environmental and Economic Assessment of Agricultural Systems

Bio-economic farm models are tools to evaluate ex-post or to assess ex-ante the impact of policy and technology change on agriculture, economics and environment. Recently, various BEFMs have been developed, often for one purpose or location, but hardly any of these models are re-used later for other purposes or locations. The Farm System Simulator (FSSIM) provides a generic framework enabling the application of BEFMs under various situations and for different purposes (generating supply response functions and detailed regional or farm type assessments). FSSIM is set up as a component-based framework with components representing farmer objectives, risk, calibration, policies, current activities, alternative activities and different types of activities (e.g., annual and perennial cropping and livestock). The generic nature of FSSIM is evaluated using five criteria by examining its applications. FSSIM has been applied for different climate zones and soil types (criterion 1) and to a range of different farm types (criterion 2) with different specializations, intensities and sizes. In most applications FSSIM has been used to assess the effects of policy changes and in two applications to assess the impact of technological innovations (criterion 3). In the various applications, different data sources, level of detail (e.g., criterion 4) and model configurations have been used. FSSIM has been linked to an economic and several biophysical models (criterion 5). The model is available for applications to other conditions and research issues, and it is open to be further tested and to be extended with new components, indicators or linkages to other models

Mind the (yield) gap(s)

This paper explores the origin of the notion of “yield gap” and its use as a framing device for agricultural policy in sub-Saharan Africa. The argument is that while the yield gap of policy discourse provides a simple and powerful framing device, it is most often used without the discipline or caveats associated with the best examples of its use in crop production ecology and microeconomics. This argument is developed by examining how yield gap is used in a selection of recent and influential agricultural policy documents. The message for policy makers and others is clear: “mind the (yield) gap(s)”, for they are seldom what they appear

Overlap of cognitive concepts in chronic widespread pain: An exploratory study

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>A wide variety of cognitive concepts have been shown to play an important role in chronic widespread pain (CWP). Although these concepts are generally considered to be distinct entities, some might in fact be highly overlapping. The objectives of this study were to (i) to establish inter-relationships between self-efficacy, cognitive coping styles, fear-avoidance cognitions and illness beliefs in patients with CWP and (ii) to explore the possibility of a reduction of these cognitions into a more limited number of domains.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>Baseline measurement data of a prospective cohort study of 138 patients with CWP were used. Factor analysis was used to study the associations between 16 different cognitive concepts.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Factor analysis resulted in three factors: 1) negative emotional cognitions, 2) active cognitive coping, and 3) control beliefs and expectations of chronicity.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>Negative emotional cognitions, active cognitive coping, control beliefs and expectations of chronicity seem to constitute principal domains of cognitive processes in CWP. These findings contribute to the understanding of overlap and uniqueness of cognitive concepts in chronic widespread pain.</p

Is analysing the nitrogen use at the plant canopy level a matter of choosing the right optimization criterion?

Optimization theory in combination with canopy modeling is potentially a powerful tool for evaluating the adaptive significance of photosynthesis-related plant traits. Yet its successful application has been hampered by a lack of agreement on the appropriate optimization criterion. Here we review how models based on different types of optimization criteria have been used to analyze traits—particularly N reallocation and leaf area indices—that determine photosynthetic nitrogen-use efficiency at the canopy level. By far the most commonly used approach is static-plant simple optimization (SSO). Static-plant simple optimization makes two assumptions: (1) plant traits are considered to be optimal when they maximize whole-stand daily photosynthesis, ignoring competitive interactions between individuals; (2) it assumes static plants, ignoring canopy dynamics (production and loss of leaves, and the reallocation and uptake of nitrogen) and the respiration of nonphotosynthetic tissue. Recent studies have addressed either the former problem through the application of evolutionary game theory (EGT) or the latter by applying dynamic-plant simple optimization (DSO), and have made considerable progress in our understanding of plant photosynthetic traits. However, we argue that future model studies should focus on combining these two approaches. We also point out that field observations can fit predictions from two models based on very different optimization criteria. In order to enhance our understanding of the adaptive significance of photosynthesis-related plant traits, there is thus an urgent need for experiments that test underlying optimization criteria and competing hypotheses about underlying mechanisms of optimization

Increased food production and reduced water use through optimized crop distribution

Growing demand for agricultural commodities for food, fuel and other uses is expected to be met through an intensification of production on lands that are currently under cultivation. Intensification typically entails investments in modern technology - such as irrigation or fertilizers - and increases in cropping frequency in regions suitable for multiple growing seasons. Here we combine a process-based crop water model with maps of spatially interpolated yields for 14 major food crops to identify potential differences in food production and water use between current and optimized crop distributions. We find that the current distribution of crops around the world neither attains maximum production nor minimum water use. We identify possible alternative configurations of the agricultural landscape that, by reshaping the global distribution of crops within current rainfed and irrigated croplands based on total water consumption, would feed an additional 825 million people while reducing the consumptive use of rainwater and irrigation water by 14% and 12%, respectively. Such an optimization process does not entail a loss of crop diversity, cropland expansion or impacts on nutrient and feed availability. It also does not necessarily invoke massive investments in modern technology that in many regions would require a switch from smallholder farming to large-scale commercial agriculture with important impacts on rural livelihoods

Decision support tools for site-specific fertilizer recommendations and agricultural planning in selected countries in sub-Sahara Africa

Peer Revie