agriculture research paper

Submission guidelines

Types of papers, manuscript submission, compliance with ethical requirements, scientific style, artwork and illustrations guidelines, supplementary information (si), ethical responsibilities of authors, authorship principles, compliance with ethical standards, competing interests, research involving human participants, their data or biological material, research involving animals, their data or biological material, informed consent.

Open Choice

Editing Services

Open access publishing.

• Mistakes to avoid during manuscript preparation

Instructions for Authors

• Research: full papers (maximum 5000 words) or brief

reports (maximum 2,500 words) based on original

• Critical Reviews: comprehensive and authoritative on

any subject within the scope of the journal (maximum

7,500 words);

• Case reports: case studies based on technological

success (maximum 2,500 words);

• Hypotheses: short articles based on published results

(maximum 2,000 words);

• Debate articles: present arguments based on scientifi c

basis on debatable issues related to agriculture

• Commentaries, opinions and policy issues: short

and opinionated on any subject within the scope of the

journal (maximum 1,500 words);

Submission of a manuscript implies: that the work described has not been published before; that it is not under consideration for publication anywhere else; that its publication has been approved by all co-authors, if any, as well as by the responsible authorities – tacitly or explicitly – at the institute where the work has been carried out. The publisher will not be held legally responsible should there be any claims for compensation.

Permissions

Authors wishing to include figures, tables, or text passages that have already been published elsewhere are required to obtain permission from the copyright owner(s) for both the print and online format and to include evidence that such permission has been granted when submitting their papers. Any material received without such evidence will be assumed to originate from the authors.

Online Submission

Please follow the hyperlink “Submit manuscript” and upload all of your manuscript files following the instructions given on the screen.

Source Files

Please ensure you provide all relevant editable source files at every submission and revision. Failing to submit a complete set of editable source files will result in your article not being considered for review. For your manuscript text please always submit in common word processing formats such as .docx or LaTeX.

Please ensure to choose one sub-discipline category which is most suitable for your article from the drop down list in the Editorial Manager.

Note: It is mandatory to suggest two or more reviewers (Name, Affiliation, Field of Expertise and Email id) at the time of submission.

Conflict of Interest

Conflicts may be financial, academic, commercial, political or personal. Financial interests may include employment, research funding (received or pending), stock or share ownership, patents, payment for lectures or travel, consultancies, nonfinancial support, or any fiduciary interest in a company.

Authors must declare all such interests (or their absence) in writing upon submission of a manuscript. This conflict declaration includes conflicts or potential conflicts of all listed authors. If any conflicts are declared, the journal will publish them with the paper. In cases of doubt, the circumstance should be disclosed so that the editors may assess its significance.

All the listed authors are requested to click the link mentioned below and fill up the form therein so that the conflict of interest may get generated:

Conflict of Interest disclosure

The statement generated here shall be published in a separated section before the Acknowledgments.

Author Contributions Statement

Authors are expected to provide a short description of the contributions made by each listed author. This too will be published in a separate section after the Conflict of Interest statement.

Please make sure your title page contains the following information.

The title should be concise and informative.

Author information

• The name(s) of the author(s)
• The affiliation(s) of the author(s), i.e. institution, (department), city, (state), country
• A clear indication and an active e-mail address of the corresponding author
• If available, the 16-digit ORCID of the author(s)

If address information is provided with the affiliation(s) it will also be published.

For authors that are (temporarily) unaffiliated we will only capture their city and country of residence, not their e-mail address unless specifically requested.

Large Language Models (LLMs), such as ChatGPT , do not currently satisfy our authorship criteria . Notably an attribution of authorship carries with it accountability for the work, which cannot be effectively applied to LLMs. Use of an LLM should be properly documented in the Methods section (and if a Methods section is not available, in a suitable alternative part) of the manuscript.

Please provide an abstract of 150 to 250 words. The abstract should not contain any undefined abbreviations or unspecified references.

For life science journals only (when applicable)

• Trial registration number and date of registration for prospectively registered trials
• Trial registration number and date of registration, followed by “retrospectively registered”, for retrospectively registered trials

Please provide 4 to 6 keywords which can be used for indexing purposes.

Statements and Declarations

The following statements should be included under the heading "Statements and Declarations" for inclusion in the published paper. Please note that submissions that do not include relevant declarations will be returned as incomplete.

• Competing Interests: Authors are required to disclose financial or non-financial interests that are directly or indirectly related to the work submitted for publication. Please refer to “Competing Interests and Funding” below for more information on how to complete this section.

Please see the relevant sections in the submission guidelines for further information as well as various examples of wording. Please revise/customize the sample statements according to your own needs.

Text Formatting

Manuscripts should be submitted in Word.

• Use a normal, plain font (e.g., 10-point Times Roman) for text.
• Use italics for emphasis.
• Use the automatic page numbering function to number the pages.
• Do not use field functions.
• Use tab stops or other commands for indents, not the space bar.
• Use the table function, not spreadsheets, to make tables.
• Use the equation editor or MathType for equations.
• Save your file in docx format (Word 2007 or higher) or doc format (older Word versions).

Manuscripts with mathematical content can also be submitted in LaTeX. We recommend using Springer Nature’s LaTeX template .

Please use no more than three levels of displayed headings.

Abbreviations

Abbreviations should be defined at first mention and used consistently thereafter.

Footnotes can be used to give additional information, which may include the citation of a reference included in the reference list. They should not consist solely of a reference citation, and they should never include the bibliographic details of a reference. They should also not contain any figures or tables.

Footnotes to the text are numbered consecutively; those to tables should be indicated by superscript lower-case letters (or asterisks for significance values and other statistical data). Footnotes to the title or the authors of the article are not given reference symbols.

Always use footnotes instead of endnotes.

Acknowledgments

Acknowledgments of people, grants, funds, etc. should be placed in a separate section on the title page. The names of funding organizations should be written in full.

• Please always use internationally accepted signs and symbols for units ( SI units ).
• Nomenclature: Insofar as possible, authors should use systematic names similar to those used by IUPAC .
• Genus and species names should be in italics.
• Generic names of drugs and pesticides are preferred; if trade names are used, the generic name should be given at first mention.

Reference citations in the text should be identified by numbers in square brackets. Some examples:

1. Negotiation research spans many disciplines [3].

2. This result was later contradicted by Becker and Seligman [5].

3. This effect has been widely studied [1-3, 7].

Reference list

The list of references should only include works that are cited in the text and that have been published or accepted for publication. Personal communications and unpublished works should only be mentioned in the text.

The entries in the list should be numbered consecutively.

If available, please always include DOIs as full DOI links in your reference list (e.g. “https://doi.org/abc”).

Gamelin FX, Baquet G, Berthoin S, Thevenet D, Nourry C, Nottin S, Bosquet L (2009) Effect of high intensity intermittent training on heart rate variability in prepubescent children. Eur J Appl Physiol 105:731-738. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00421-008-0955-8

Ideally, the names of all authors should be provided, but the usage of “et al” in long author lists will also be accepted:

Smith J, Jones M Jr, Houghton L et al (1999) Future of health insurance. N Engl J Med 965:325–329

Slifka MK, Whitton JL (2000) Clinical implications of dysregulated cytokine production. J Mol Med. https://doi.org/10.1007/s001090000086

South J, Blass B (2001) The future of modern genomics. Blackwell, London

Brown B, Aaron M (2001) The politics of nature. In: Smith J (ed) The rise of modern genomics, 3rd edn. Wiley, New York, pp 230-257

Cartwright J (2007) Big stars have weather too. IOP Publishing PhysicsWeb. http://physicsweb.org/articles/news/11/6/16/1. Accessed 26 June 2007

Trent JW (1975) Experimental acute renal failure. Dissertation, University of California

Always use the standard abbreviation of a journal’s name according to the ISSN List of Title Word Abbreviations, see

ISSN.org LTWA

If you are unsure, please use the full journal title.

Authors preparing their manuscript in LaTeX can use the bibliography style file sn-basic.bst which is included in the Springer Nature Article Template .

• All tables are to be numbered using Arabic numerals.
• Tables should always be cited in text in consecutive numerical order.
• For each table, please supply a table caption (title) explaining the components of the table.
• Identify any previously published material by giving the original source in the form of a reference at the end of the table caption.
• Footnotes to tables should be indicated by superscript lower-case letters (or asterisks for significance values and other statistical data) and included beneath the table body.

Electronic Figure Submission

• Supply all figures electronically.
• Indicate what graphics program was used to create the artwork.
• For vector graphics, the preferred format is EPS; for halftones, please use TIFF format. MSOffice files are also acceptable.
• Vector graphics containing fonts must have the fonts embedded in the files.
• Name your figure files with "Fig" and the figure number, e.g., Fig1.eps.
• Definition: Black and white graphic with no shading.
• Do not use faint lines and/or lettering and check that all lines and lettering within the figures are legible at final size.
• All lines should be at least 0.1 mm (0.3 pt) wide.
• Scanned line drawings and line drawings in bitmap format should have a minimum resolution of 1200 dpi.

Halftone Art

• Definition: Photographs, drawings, or paintings with fine shading, etc.
• If any magnification is used in the photographs, indicate this by using scale bars within the figures themselves.
• Halftones should have a minimum resolution of 300 dpi.

Combination Art

• Definition: a combination of halftone and line art, e.g., halftones containing line drawing, extensive lettering, color diagrams, etc.
• Combination artwork should have a minimum resolution of 600 dpi.
• Color art is free of charge for online publication.
• If black and white will be shown in the print version, make sure that the main information will still be visible. Many colors are not distinguishable from one another when converted to black and white. A simple way to check this is to make a xerographic copy to see if the necessary distinctions between the different colors are still apparent.
• If the figures will be printed in black and white, do not refer to color in the captions.
• Color illustrations should be submitted as RGB (8 bits per channel).

Figure Lettering

• To add lettering, it is best to use Helvetica or Arial (sans serif fonts).
• Keep lettering consistently sized throughout your final-sized artwork, usually about 2–3 mm (8–12 pt).
• Variance of type size within an illustration should be minimal, e.g., do not use 8-pt type on an axis and 20-pt type for the axis label.
• Avoid effects such as shading, outline letters, etc.
• Do not include titles or captions within your illustrations.

Figure Numbering

• All figures are to be numbered using Arabic numerals.
• Figures should always be cited in text in consecutive numerical order.
• Figure parts should be denoted by lowercase letters (a, b, c, etc.).
• If an appendix appears in your article and it contains one or more figures, continue the consecutive numbering of the main text. Do not number the appendix figures,"A1, A2, A3, etc." Figures in online appendices [Supplementary Information (SI)] should, however, be numbered separately.

Figure Captions

• Each figure should have a concise caption describing accurately what the figure depicts. Include the captions in the text file of the manuscript, not in the figure file.
• Figure captions begin with the term Fig. in bold type, followed by the figure number, also in bold type.
• No punctuation is to be included after the number, nor is any punctuation to be placed at the end of the caption.
• Identify all elements found in the figure in the figure caption; and use boxes, circles, etc., as coordinate points in graphs.
• Identify previously published material by giving the original source in the form of a reference citation at the end of the figure caption.

Figure Placement and Size

• Figures should be submitted within the body of the text. Only if the file size of the manuscript causes problems in uploading it, the large figures should be submitted separately from the text.
• When preparing your figures, size figures to fit in the column width.
• For large-sized journals the figures should be 84 mm (for double-column text areas), or 174 mm (for single-column text areas) wide and not higher than 234 mm.
• For small-sized journals, the figures should be 119 mm wide and not higher than 195 mm.

If you include figures that have already been published elsewhere, you must obtain permission from the copyright owner(s) for both the print and online format. Please be aware that some publishers do not grant electronic rights for free and that Springer will not be able to refund any costs that may have occurred to receive these permissions. In such cases, material from other sources should be used.

Accessibility

In order to give people of all abilities and disabilities access to the content of your figures, please make sure that

• All figures have descriptive captions (blind users could then use a text-to-speech software or a text-to-Braille hardware)
• Patterns are used instead of or in addition to colors for conveying information (colorblind users would then be able to distinguish the visual elements)
• Any figure lettering has a contrast ratio of at least 4.5:1

Generative AI Images

Please check Springer’s policy on generative AI images and make sure your work adheres to the principles described therein.

Springer accepts electronic multimedia files (animations, movies, audio, etc.) and other supplementary files to be published online along with an article or a book chapter. This feature can add dimension to the author's article, as certain information cannot be printed or is more convenient in electronic form.

Before submitting research datasets as Supplementary Information, authors should read the journal’s Research data policy. We encourage research data to be archived in data repositories wherever possible.

• Supply all supplementary material in standard file formats.
• Please include in each file the following information: article title, journal name, author names; affiliation and e-mail address of the corresponding author.
• To accommodate user downloads, please keep in mind that larger-sized files may require very long download times and that some users may experience other problems during downloading.
• High resolution (streamable quality) videos can be submitted up to a maximum of 25GB; low resolution videos should not be larger than 5GB.

Audio, Video, and Animations

• Aspect ratio: 16:9 or 4:3
• Maximum file size: 25 GB for high resolution files; 5 GB for low resolution files
• Minimum video duration: 1 sec
• Supported file formats: avi, wmv, mp4, mov, m2p, mp2, mpg, mpeg, flv, mxf, mts, m4v, 3gp

Text and Presentations

• Submit your material in PDF format; .doc or .ppt files are not suitable for long-term viability.
• A collection of figures may also be combined in a PDF file.

Spreadsheets

• Spreadsheets should be submitted as .csv or .xlsx files (MS Excel).

Specialized Formats

• Specialized format such as .pdb (chemical), .wrl (VRML), .nb (Mathematica notebook), and .tex can also be supplied.

Collecting Multiple Files

• It is possible to collect multiple files in a .zip or .gz file.
• If supplying any supplementary material, the text must make specific mention of the material as a citation, similar to that of figures and tables.
• Refer to the supplementary files as “Online Resource”, e.g., "... as shown in the animation (Online Resource 3)", “... additional data are given in Online Resource 4”.
• Name the files consecutively, e.g. “ESM_3.mpg”, “ESM_4.pdf”.
• For each supplementary material, please supply a concise caption describing the content of the file.

Processing of supplementary files

• Supplementary Information (SI) will be published as received from the author without any conversion, editing, or reformatting.

In order to give people of all abilities and disabilities access to the content of your supplementary files, please make sure that

• The manuscript contains a descriptive caption for each supplementary material
• Video files do not contain anything that flashes more than three times per second (so that users prone to seizures caused by such effects are not put at risk)

This journal is committed to upholding the integrity of the scientific record. As a member of the Committee on Publication Ethics ( COPE ) the journal will follow the COPE guidelines on how to deal with potential acts of misconduct.

Authors should refrain from misrepresenting research results which could damage the trust in the journal, the professionalism of scientific authorship, and ultimately the entire scientific endeavour. Maintaining integrity of the research and its presentation is helped by following the rules of good scientific practice, which include*:

• The manuscript should not be submitted to more than one journal for simultaneous consideration.
• The submitted work should be original and should not have been published elsewhere in any form or language (partially or in full), unless the new work concerns an expansion of previous work. (Please provide transparency on the re-use of material to avoid the concerns about text-recycling (‘self-plagiarism’).
• A single study should not be split up into several parts to increase the quantity of submissions and submitted to various journals or to one journal over time (i.e. ‘salami-slicing/publishing’).
• Concurrent or secondary publication is sometimes justifiable, provided certain conditions are met. Examples include: translations or a manuscript that is intended for a different group of readers.
• Results should be presented clearly, honestly, and without fabrication, falsification or inappropriate data manipulation (including image based manipulation). Authors should adhere to discipline-specific rules for acquiring, selecting and processing data.
• No data, text, or theories by others are presented as if they were the author’s own (‘plagiarism’). Proper acknowledgements to other works must be given (this includes material that is closely copied (near verbatim), summarized and/or paraphrased), quotation marks (to indicate words taken from another source) are used for verbatim copying of material, and permissions secured for material that is copyrighted.

Important note: the journal may use software to screen for plagiarism.

• Authors should make sure they have permissions for the use of software, questionnaires/(web) surveys and scales in their studies (if appropriate).
• Research articles and non-research articles (e.g. Opinion, Review, and Commentary articles) must cite appropriate and relevant literature in support of the claims made. Excessive and inappropriate self-citation or coordinated efforts among several authors to collectively self-cite is strongly discouraged.
• Authors should avoid untrue statements about an entity (who can be an individual person or a company) or descriptions of their behavior or actions that could potentially be seen as personal attacks or allegations about that person.
• Research that may be misapplied to pose a threat to public health or national security should be clearly identified in the manuscript (e.g. dual use of research). Examples include creation of harmful consequences of biological agents or toxins, disruption of immunity of vaccines, unusual hazards in the use of chemicals, weaponization of research/technology (amongst others).
• Authors are strongly advised to ensure the author group, the Corresponding Author, and the order of authors are all correct at submission. Adding and/or deleting authors during the revision stages is generally not permitted, but in some cases may be warranted. Reasons for changes in authorship should be explained in detail. Please note that changes to authorship cannot be made after acceptance of a manuscript.

*All of the above are guidelines and authors need to make sure to respect third parties rights such as copyright and/or moral rights.

Upon request authors should be prepared to send relevant documentation or data in order to verify the validity of the results presented. This could be in the form of raw data, samples, records, etc. Sensitive information in the form of confidential or proprietary data is excluded.

If there is suspicion of misbehavior or alleged fraud the Journal and/or Publisher will carry out an investigation following COPE guidelines. If, after investigation, there are valid concerns, the author(s) concerned will be contacted under their given e-mail address and given an opportunity to address the issue. Depending on the situation, this may result in the Journal’s and/or Publisher’s implementation of the following measures, including, but not limited to:

• If the manuscript is still under consideration, it may be rejected and returned to the author.

- an erratum/correction may be placed with the article

- an expression of concern may be placed with the article

- or in severe cases retraction of the article may occur.

The reason will be given in the published erratum/correction, expression of concern or retraction note. Please note that retraction means that the article is maintained on the platform , watermarked “retracted” and the explanation for the retraction is provided in a note linked to the watermarked article.

• The author’s institution may be informed
• A notice of suspected transgression of ethical standards in the peer review system may be included as part of the author’s and article’s bibliographic record.

Fundamental errors

Authors have an obligation to correct mistakes once they discover a significant error or inaccuracy in their published article. The author(s) is/are requested to contact the journal and explain in what sense the error is impacting the article. A decision on how to correct the literature will depend on the nature of the error. This may be a correction or retraction. The retraction note should provide transparency which parts of the article are impacted by the error.

Suggesting / excluding reviewers

Authors are welcome to suggest suitable reviewers and/or request the exclusion of certain individuals when they submit their manuscripts. When suggesting reviewers, authors should make sure they are totally independent and not connected to the work in any way. It is strongly recommended to suggest a mix of reviewers from different countries and different institutions. When suggesting reviewers, the Corresponding Author must provide an institutional email address for each suggested reviewer, or, if this is not possible to include other means of verifying the identity such as a link to a personal homepage, a link to the publication record or a researcher or author ID in the submission letter. Please note that the Journal may not use the suggestions, but suggestions are appreciated and may help facilitate the peer review process.

These guidelines describe authorship principles and good authorship practices to which prospective authors should adhere to.

Authorship clarified

The Journal and Publisher assume all authors agreed with the content and that all gave explicit consent to submit and that they obtained consent from the responsible authorities at the institute/organization where the work has been carried out, before the work is submitted.

The Publisher does not prescribe the kinds of contributions that warrant authorship. It is recommended that authors adhere to the guidelines for authorship that are applicable in their specific research field. In absence of specific guidelines it is recommended to adhere to the following guidelines*:

All authors whose names appear on the submission

1) made substantial contributions to the conception or design of the work; or the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data; or the creation of new software used in the work;

2) drafted the work or revised it critically for important intellectual content;

3) approved the version to be published; and

4) agree to be accountable for all aspects of the work in ensuring that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work are appropriately investigated and resolved.

* Based on/adapted from:

ICMJE, Defining the Role of Authors and Contributors,

Transparency in authors’ contributions and responsibilities to promote integrity in scientific publication, McNutt at all, PNAS February 27, 2018

Disclosures and declarations

All authors are requested to include information regarding sources of funding, financial or non-financial interests, study-specific approval by the appropriate ethics committee for research involving humans and/or animals, informed consent if the research involved human participants, and a statement on welfare of animals if the research involved animals (as appropriate).

The decision whether such information should be included is not only dependent on the scope of the journal, but also the scope of the article. Work submitted for publication may have implications for public health or general welfare and in those cases it is the responsibility of all authors to include the appropriate disclosures and declarations.

Data transparency

All authors are requested to make sure that all data and materials as well as software application or custom code support their published claims and comply with field standards. Please note that journals may have individual policies on (sharing) research data in concordance with disciplinary norms and expectations.

Role of the Corresponding Author

One author is assigned as Corresponding Author and acts on behalf of all co-authors and ensures that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work are appropriately addressed.

The Corresponding Author is responsible for the following requirements:

• ensuring that all listed authors have approved the manuscript before submission, including the names and order of authors;
• managing all communication between the Journal and all co-authors, before and after publication;*
• providing transparency on re-use of material and mention any unpublished material (for example manuscripts in press) included in the manuscript in a cover letter to the Editor;
• making sure disclosures, declarations and transparency on data statements from all authors are included in the manuscript as appropriate (see above).

* The requirement of managing all communication between the journal and all co-authors during submission and proofing may be delegated to a Contact or Submitting Author. In this case please make sure the Corresponding Author is clearly indicated in the manuscript.

Author contributions

In absence of specific instructions and in research fields where it is possible to describe discrete efforts, the Publisher recommends authors to include contribution statements in the work that specifies the contribution of every author in order to promote transparency. These contributions should be listed at the separate title page.

Examples of such statement(s) are shown below:

• Free text:

All authors contributed to the study conception and design. Material preparation, data collection and analysis were performed by [full name], [full name] and [full name]. The first draft of the manuscript was written by [full name] and all authors commented on previous versions of the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

Example: CRediT taxonomy:

• Conceptualization: [full name], …; Methodology: [full name], …; Formal analysis and investigation: [full name], …; Writing - original draft preparation: [full name, …]; Writing - review and editing: [full name], …; Funding acquisition: [full name], …; Resources: [full name], …; Supervision: [full name],….

For review articles where discrete statements are less applicable a statement should be included who had the idea for the article, who performed the literature search and data analysis, and who drafted and/or critically revised the work.

For articles that are based primarily on the student’s dissertation or thesis , it is recommended that the student is usually listed as principal author:

A Graduate Student’s Guide to Determining Authorship Credit and Authorship Order, APA Science Student Council 2006

Affiliation

The primary affiliation for each author should be the institution where the majority of their work was done. If an author has subsequently moved, the current address may additionally be stated. Addresses will not be updated or changed after publication of the article.

Changes to authorship

Authors are strongly advised to ensure the correct author group, the Corresponding Author, and the order of authors at submission. Changes of authorship by adding or deleting authors, and/or changes in Corresponding Author, and/or changes in the sequence of authors are not accepted after acceptance of a manuscript.

• Please note that author names will be published exactly as they appear on the accepted submission!

Please make sure that the names of all authors are present and correctly spelled, and that addresses and affiliations are current.

Adding and/or deleting authors at revision stage are generally not permitted, but in some cases it may be warranted. Reasons for these changes in authorship should be explained. Approval of the change during revision is at the discretion of the Editor-in-Chief. Please note that journals may have individual policies on adding and/or deleting authors during revision stage.

Author identification

Authors are recommended to use their ORCID ID when submitting an article for consideration or acquire an ORCID ID via the submission process.

Deceased or incapacitated authors

For cases in which a co-author dies or is incapacitated during the writing, submission, or peer-review process, and the co-authors feel it is appropriate to include the author, co-authors should obtain approval from a (legal) representative which could be a direct relative.

Authorship issues or disputes

In the case of an authorship dispute during peer review or after acceptance and publication, the Journal will not be in a position to investigate or adjudicate. Authors will be asked to resolve the dispute themselves. If they are unable the Journal reserves the right to withdraw a manuscript from the editorial process or in case of a published paper raise the issue with the authors’ institution(s) and abide by its guidelines.

Confidentiality

Authors should treat all communication with the Journal as confidential which includes correspondence with direct representatives from the Journal such as Editors-in-Chief and/or Handling Editors and reviewers’ reports unless explicit consent has been received to share information.

To ensure objectivity and transparency in research and to ensure that accepted principles of ethical and professional conduct have been followed, authors should include information regarding sources of funding, potential conflicts of interest (financial or non-financial), informed consent if the research involved human participants, and a statement on welfare of animals if the research involved animals.

Authors should include the following statements (if applicable) in a separate section entitled “Compliance with Ethical Standards” when submitting a paper:

• Disclosure of potential conflicts of interest
• Research involving Human Participants and/or Animals

Please note that standards could vary slightly per journal dependent on their peer review policies (i.e. single or double blind peer review) as well as per journal subject discipline. Before submitting your article check the instructions following this section carefully.

The corresponding author should be prepared to collect documentation of compliance with ethical standards and send if requested during peer review or after publication.

The Editors reserve the right to reject manuscripts that do not comply with the above-mentioned guidelines. The author will be held responsible for false statements or failure to fulfill the above-mentioned guidelines.

Authors are requested to disclose interests that are directly or indirectly related to the work submitted for publication. Interests within the last 3 years of beginning the work (conducting the research and preparing the work for submission) should be reported. Interests outside the 3-year time frame must be disclosed if they could reasonably be perceived as influencing the submitted work. Disclosure of interests provides a complete and transparent process and helps readers form their own judgments of potential bias. This is not meant to imply that a financial relationship with an organization that sponsored the research or compensation received for consultancy work is inappropriate.

Editorial Board Members and Editors are required to declare any competing interests and may be excluded from the peer review process if a competing interest exists. In addition, they should exclude themselves from handling manuscripts in cases where there is a competing interest. This may include – but is not limited to – having previously published with one or more of the authors, and sharing the same institution as one or more of the authors. Where an Editor or Editorial Board Member is on the author list we recommend they declare this in the competing interests section on the submitted manuscript. If they are an author or have any other competing interest regarding a specific manuscript, another Editor or member of the Editorial Board will be assigned to assume responsibility for overseeing peer review. These submissions are subject to the exact same review process as any other manuscript. Editorial Board Members are welcome to submit papers to the journal. These submissions are not given any priority over other manuscripts, and Editorial Board Member status has no bearing on editorial consideration.

Interests that should be considered and disclosed but are not limited to the following:

Funding: Research grants from funding agencies (please give the research funder and the grant number) and/or research support (including salaries, equipment, supplies, reimbursement for attending symposia, and other expenses) by organizations that may gain or lose financially through publication of this manuscript.

Employment: Recent (while engaged in the research project), present or anticipated employment by any organization that may gain or lose financially through publication of this manuscript. This includes multiple affiliations (if applicable).

Financial interests: Stocks or shares in companies (including holdings of spouse and/or children) that may gain or lose financially through publication of this manuscript; consultation fees or other forms of remuneration from organizations that may gain or lose financially; patents or patent applications whose value may be affected by publication of this manuscript.

It is difficult to specify a threshold at which a financial interest becomes significant, any such figure is necessarily arbitrary, so one possible practical guideline is the following: "Any undeclared financial interest that could embarrass the author were it to become publicly known after the work was published."

Non-financial interests: In addition, authors are requested to disclose interests that go beyond financial interests that could impart bias on the work submitted for publication such as professional interests, personal relationships or personal beliefs (amongst others). Examples include, but are not limited to: position on editorial board, advisory board or board of directors or other type of management relationships; writing and/or consulting for educational purposes; expert witness; mentoring relations; and so forth.

Primary research articles require a disclosure statement. Review articles present an expert synthesis of evidence and may be treated as an authoritative work on a subject. Review articles therefore require a disclosure statement. Other article types such as editorials, book reviews, comments (amongst others) may, dependent on their content, require a disclosure statement. If you are unclear whether your article type requires a disclosure statement, please contact the Editor-in-Chief.

Please note that, in addition to the above requirements, funding information (given that funding is a potential competing interest (as mentioned above)) needs to be disclosed upon submission of the manuscript in the peer review system. This information will automatically be added to the Record of CrossMark, however it is not added to the manuscript itself. Under ‘summary of requirements’ (see below) funding information should be included in the ‘ Declarations ’ section.

Summary of requirements

The above should be summarized in a statement and placed in a ‘Declarations’ section before the reference list under a heading of ‘Funding’ and/or ‘Competing interests’. Other declarations include Ethics approval, Consent, Data, Material and/or Code availability and Authors’ contribution statements.

Please see the various examples of wording below and revise/customize the sample statements according to your own needs.

When all authors have the same (or no) conflicts and/or funding it is sufficient to use one blanket statement.

Examples of statements to be used when funding has been received:

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Non-financial interests: none.

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Ethics approval

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Retrospective ethics approval

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Ethics approval for case studies

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Organism: Filip1 tm1a(KOMP)Wtsi RRID:MMRRC_055641-UCD

Cell Line: RST307 cell line RRID:CVCL_C321

Antibody: Luciferase antibody DSHB Cat# LUC-3, RRID:AB_2722109

Plasmid: mRuby3 plasmid RRID:Addgene_104005

Software: ImageJ Version 1.2.4 RRID:SCR_003070

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Examples of statements to be used when ethics approval has been obtained:

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Examples of statements to be used for a retrospective study:

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Examples of statements to be used when no ethical approval is required/exemption granted:

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Researchers from countries without any legal requirements or guidelines voluntarily should refer to the following sites for guidance:

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– The International Association of Veterinary Editors’ Consensus Author Guidelines on Animal Ethics provide guidelines for authors on animal ethics and welfare

Researchers may wish to consult the most recent (ethical) guidelines available from relevant taxon-oriented professional societies.

If a study was granted exemption or did not require ethics approval, this should also be detailed in the manuscript.

• All procedures involving animals were in compliance with the European Community Council Directive of 24 November 1986, and ethical approval was granted by the Kocaeli University Ethics Committee (No. 29 12 2014, Kocaeli, Turkey).

• All procedures performed in the study were in accordance with the ARVO Statement for Use of Animals in Ophthalmic Vision and Research. The ethical principles established by the National Institutes of Health Guide for the Care and Use of Laboratory Animals (NIH Publications No. 8523, revised 2011) were followed. The research protocol was approved by the Ethics Committee on Animal Use (Protocol No. 06174/14) of FCAV/Unesp, Jaboticabal.

• This study involved a questionnaire-based survey of farmers as well as blood sampling from their animals. The study protocol was assessed and approved by Haramaya University, research and extension office. Participants provided their verbal informed consent for animal blood sampling as well as for the related survey questions. Collection of blood samples was carried out by veterinarians adhering to the regulations and guidelines on animal husbandry and welfare.

• All brown bear captures and handling were approved by the Ethical Committee on Animal Experiments, Uppsala, Sweden (Application C18/15) and the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency in compliance with Swedish laws and regulations.

• The ethics governing the use and conduct of experiments on animals were strictly observed, and the experimental protocol was approved by the University of Maiduguri Senate committee on Medical Research ethics. Proper permit and consent were obtained from the Maiduguri abattoir management, before the faecal samples of the cattle and camels slaughtered in this abattoir were used for this experiment.

• No approval of research ethics committees was required to accomplish the goals of this study because experimental work was conducted with an unregulated invertebrate species.

• As the trappings of small mammals were conducted as part of regular pest control measures in accordance with the NATO Standardized Agreement 2048 "Deployment Pest and Vector Surveillance and Control ", no approval by an ethics committee was required.

• All experiments have been conducted as per the guidelines of the Institutional Animal Ethics Committee, Department of Zoology, Utkal University, Bhubaneswar, Odisha, India. However, the insect species used in this study is reared for commercial production of raw silk materials, as a part of agro-based industry. Therefore, use of this animal in research does not require ethical clearance. We have obtained permission from the office of Research officer sericulture, Baripada, Orissa, India for the provision of infrastructure and support for rearing of silkworm both in indoor and outdoor conditions related to our study to promote sericulture practices.

All individuals have individual rights that are not to be infringed. Individual participants in studies have, for example, the right to decide what happens to the (identifiable) personal data gathered, to what they have said during a study or an interview, as well as to any photograph that was taken. This is especially true concerning images of vulnerable people (e.g. minors, patients, refugees, etc) or the use of images in sensitive contexts. In many instances authors will need to secure written consent before including images.

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Consent to Participate

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here. (Download docx, 36 kB)

The above should be summarized in a statement and placed in a ‘Declarations’ section before the reference list under a heading of ‘Consent to participate’ and/or ‘Consent to publish’. Other declarations include Funding, Competing interests, Ethics approval, Consent, Data and/or Code availability and Authors’ contribution statements.

Sample statements for "Consent to participate" :

Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.

Informed consent was obtained from legal guardians.

Written informed consent was obtained from the parents.

Verbal informed consent was obtained prior to the interview.

Sample statements for “Consent to publish” :

The authors affirm that human research participants provided informed consent for publication of the images in Figure(s) 1a, 1b and 1c.

The participant has consented to the submission of the case report to the journal.

Patients signed informed consent regarding publishing their data and photographs.

Sample statements if identifying information about participants is available in the article:

Additional informed consent was obtained from all individual participants for whom identifying information is included in this article.

Images will be removed from publication if authors have not obtained informed consent or the paper may be removed and replaced with a notice explaining the reason for removal.

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Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education in the Field: A Proceedings (1991)

Chapter: introduction, introduction.

Charles M. Benbrook

These proceedings are based on a workshop that brought together scientists, farmer-innovators, policymakers, and interested members of the public for a progress report on sustainable agriculture research and education efforts across the United States. The workshop, which was held on April 3 and 4, 1990, in Washington, D.C., was sponsored by the Office of Science and Education of the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Board on Agriculture of the National Research Council. The encouraging new science discussed there should convince nearly everyone of two facts.

First, the natural resource, economic, and food safety problems facing U.S. agriculture are diverse, dynamic, and often complex. Second, a common set of biological and ecological principles—when systematically embodied in cropping and livestock management systems—can bring improved economic and environmental performance within the reach of innovative farmers. Some people contend that this result is not a realistic expectation for U.S. agriculture. The evidence presented here does not support such a pessimistic assessment.

The report of the Board on Agriculture entitled Alternative Agriculture (National Research Council, 1989a) challenged everyone to rethink key components of conventional wisdom and contemporary scientific dogma. That report has provided encouragement and direction to those individuals and organizations striving toward more sustainable production systems, and it has provoked skeptics to articulate why they feel U.S. agriculture cannot—some even say should not—seriously contemplate the need for such change. The debate has been spirited and generally constructive.

Scholars, activists, professional critics, and analysts have participated in

this debate by writing papers and books, conducting research, and offering opinions about alternative and sustainable agriculture for over 10 years. Over the past decade, many terms and concepts have come and gone. Most people—and unfortunately, many farmers—have not gone very far beyond the confusion, frustration, and occasional demagoguery that swirls around the different definitions of alternative, low-input, organic, and sustainable agriculture.

Fortunately, though, beginning in late 1989, a broad cross-section of people has grown comfortable with the term sustainable agriculture. The May 21, 1990, issue of Time magazine, in an article on sustainable agriculture entitled “It's Ugly, But It Works” includes the following passage:

[A] growing corps of experts [are] urging farmers to adopt a new approach called sustainable agriculture. Once the term was synonymous with the dreaded O word—a farm-belt euphemism for trendy organic farming that uses no synthetic chemicals. But sustainable agriculture has blossomed into an effort to curb erosion by modifying plowing techniques and to protect water supplies by minimizing, if not eliminating, artificial fertilizers and pest controls.

Concern and ridicule in farm publications and during agribusiness meetings over the philosophical roots of low-input, sustainable, or organic farming have given way to more thoughtful appraisals of the ecological and biological foundations of practical, profitable, and sustainable farming systems. While consensus clearly does not yet exist on how to “fix” agriculture's contemporary problems, a constructive dialogue is now under way among a broad cross-section of individuals, both practitioners and technicians involved in a wide variety of specialties.

This new dialogue is powerful because of the people and ideas it is connecting. Change will come slowly, however. Critical comments in some farm magazines will persist, and research and on-farm experimentation will not always lead to the hoped for insights or breakthroughs. Some systems that now appear to be sustainable will encounter unexpected production problems. Nonetheless, progress will be made.

The Board on Agriculture believes that over the next several decades significant progress can and will be made toward more profitable, resource-conserving, and environmentally prudent farming systems. Rural areas of the United States could become safer, more diverse, and aesthetically pleasing places to live. Farming could, as a result, become a more rewarding profession, both economically and through stewardship of the nation's soil and water resources. Change will be made possible; and it will be driven by new scientific knowledge, novel on-farm management tools and approaches, and economic necessity. The policy reforms adopted in the 1990 farm bill, and ongoing efforts to incorporate environmental objectives

into farm policy, may also in time make a significant difference in reshaping the economic environment in which on-farm management decisions are made.

This volume presents an array of new knowledge and insight about the functioning of agricultural systems that will provide the managerial and technological foundations for improved farming practices and systems. Examples of the research projects under way around the country are described. Through exploration of the practical experiences, recent findings, and insights of these researchers, the papers and discussions presented in this volume should demonstrate the value of field- and farm-level systems-based research that is designed and conducted with ongoing input from farmer-innovators.

Some discussion of the basic concepts that guide sustainable agriculture research and education activities may be useful. Definitions of key terms, such as sustainable agriculture, alternative agriculture, and low-input sustainable agriculture, are drawn from Alternative Agriculture and a recent paper (Benbrook and Cook, 1990).

BASIC CONCEPTS AND OPERATIONAL DEFINITIONS

Basic concepts.

Sustainable agriculture, which is a goal rather than a distinct set of practices, is a system of food and fiber production that

improves the underlying productivity of natural resources and cropping systems so that farmers can meet increasing levels of demand in concert with population and economic growth;

produces food that is safe, wholesome, and nutritious and that promotes human well-being;

ensures an adequate net farm income to support an acceptable standard of living for farmers while also underwriting the annual investments needed to improve progressively the productivity of soil, water, and other resources; and

complies with community norms and meets social expectations.

Other similar definitions could be cited, but there is now a general consensus regarding the essential elements of sustainable agriculture. Various definitions place differing degrees of emphasis on certain aspects, but a common set of core features is now found in nearly all definitions.

While sustainable agriculture is an inherently dynamic concept, alternative agriculture is the process of on-farm innovation that strives toward the goal of sustainable agriculture. Alternative agriculture encompasses efforts by farmers to develop more efficient production systems, as well as

efforts by researchers to explore the biological and ecological foundations of agricultural productivity.

The challenges inherent in striving toward sustainability are clearly dynamic. The production of adequate food on a sustainable basis will become more difficult if demographers are correct in their estimates that the global population will not stabilize before it reaches 11 billion or 12 billion in the middle of the twenty-first century. The sustainability challenge and what must be done to meet it range in nature from a single farm field, to the scale of an individual farm as an enterprise, to the food and fiber needs of a region or country, and finally to the world as a whole.

A comprehensive definition of sustainability must include physical, biological, and socioeconomic components. The continued viability of a farming system can be threatened by problems that arise within any one of these components. Farmers are often confronted with choices and sacrifices because of seemingly unavoidable trade-offs—an investment in a conservation system may improve soil and water quality but may sacrifice near-term economic performance. Diversification may increase the efficiency of resource use and bring within reach certain biological benefits, yet it may require additional machinery and a more stable and versatile labor supply. Indeed, agricultural researchers and those who design and administer farm policy must seek ways to alleviate seemingly unwelcome trade-offs by developing new knowledge and technology and, when warranted, new policies.

Operational Definitions

Sustainable agriculture is the production of food and fiber using a system that increases the inherent productive capacity of natural and biological resources in step with demand. At the same time, it must allow farmers to earn adequate profits, provide consumers with wholesome, safe food, and minimize adverse impacts on the environment.

As defined in our report, alternative agriculture is any system of food or fiber production that systematically pursues the following goals (National Research Council, 1989a):

more thorough incorporation of natural processes such as nutrient cycling, nitrogen fixation, and beneficial pest-predator relationships into the agricultural production process;

reduction in the use of off-farm inputs with the greatest potential to harm the environment or the health of farmers and consumers;

productive use of the biological and genetic potential of plant and animal species;

improvement in the match between cropping patterns and the productive potential and physical limitations of agricultural lands; and

profitable and efficient production with emphasis on improved farm management, prevention of animal disease, optimal integration of livestock and cropping enterprises, and conservation of soil, water, energy, and biological resources.

Conventional agriculture is the predominant farming practices, methods, and systems used in a region. Conventional agriculture varies over time and according to soil, climatic, and other environmental factors. Moreover, many conventional practices and methods are fully sustainable when pursued or applied properly and will continue to play integral roles in future farming systems.

Low-input sustainable agriculture (LISA) systems strive to achieve sustainability by incorporating biologically based practices that indirectly result in lessened reliance on purchased agrichemical inputs. The goal of LISA systems is improved profitability and environmental performance through systems that reduce pest pressure, efficiently manage nutrients, and comprehensively conserve resources.

Successful LISA systems are founded on practices that enhance the efficiency of resource use and limit pest pressures in a sustainable way. The operational goal of LISA should not, as a matter of first principles, be viewed as a reduction in the use of pesticides and fertilizers. Higher yields, lower per unit production costs, and lessened reliance on agrichemicals in intensive agricultural systems are, however, often among the positive outcomes of the successful adoption of LISA systems. But in much of the Third World an increased level of certain agrichemical and fertilizer inputs will be very helpful if not essential to achieve sustainability. For example, the phosphorous-starved pastures in the humid tropics will continue to suffer severe erosion and degradation in soil physical properties until soil fertility levels are restored and more vigorous plant growth provides protection from rain and sun.

Farmers are continuously modifying farming systems whenever opportunities arise for increasing productivity or profits. Management decisions are not made just in the context of one goal or concern but in the context of the overall performance of the farm and take into account many variables: prices, policy, available resources, climatic conditions, and implications for risk and uncertainty.

A necessary step in carrying out comparative assessments of conventional and alternative farming systems is to understand the differences between farming practices, farming methods, and farming systems. It is somewhat easier, then, to determine what a conventional practice, method, or system is and how an alternative or sustainable practice, method, or system might or should differ from a conventional one. The following definitions are drawn from the Glossary of Alternative Agriculture (National Research Council, 1989a).

A farming practice is a way of carrying out a discrete farming task such as a tillage operation, particular pesticide application technology, or single conservation practice. Most important farming operations—preparing a seedbed, controlling weeds and erosion, or maintaining soil fertility, for example—require a combination of practices, or a method. Most farming operations can be carried out by different methods, each of which can be accomplished by several unique combinations of different practices. The manner in which a practice is carried out—the speed and depth of a tillage operation, for example—can markedly alter its consequences.

A farming method is a systematic way to accomplish a specific farming objective by integrating a number of practices. A discrete method is needed for each essential farming task, such as preparing a seedbed and planting a crop, sustaining soil fertility, managing irrigation, collecting and disposing of manure, controlling pests, and preventing animal diseases.

A farming system is the overall approach used in crop or livestock production, often derived from a farmer's goals, values, knowledge, available technologies, and economic opportunities. A farming system influences, and is in turn defined by, the choice of methods and practices used to produce a crop or care for animals.

In practice, farmers are constantly adjusting cropping systems in an effort to improve a farm's performance. Changes in management practices generally lead to a complex set of results—some positive, others negative—all of which occur over different time scales.

The transition to more sustainable agriculture systems may, for many farmers, require some short-term sacrifices in economic performance in order to prepare the physical resource and biological ecosystem base needed for long-term improvement in both economic and environmental performance. As a result, some say that practices essential to progress toward sustainable agriculture are not economically viable and are unlikely to take hold on the farm (Marten, 1989). Their contention may prove correct, given current farm policies and the contemporary inclination to accept contemporary, short-term economic challenges as inviolate. Nonetheless, one question lingers: What is the alternative to sustainable agriculture?

PUBLIC POLICY AND RESEARCH IN SUSTAINABLE AGRICULTURE

Farmers, conservationists, consumers, and political leaders share an intense interest in the sustainability of agricultural production systems. This interest is heightened by growing recognition of the successes achieved by innovative farmers across the country who are discovering alternative agriculture practices and methods that improve a farm's economic and environmental performance. Ongoing experimental efforts on the farm, by no

means universally successful, are being subjected to rigorous scientific investigation. New insights should help farmers become even more effective stewards of natural resources and produce food that is consistently free of man-made or natural contaminants that may pose health risks.

The major challenge for U.S. agriculture in the 1990s will be to strike a balance between near-term economic performance and long-term ecological and food safety imperatives. As recommended in Alternative Agriculture (National Research Council, 1989a), public policies in the 1990s should, at a minimum, no longer penalize farmers who are committed to resource protection or those who are trying to make progress toward sustainability. Sustainability will always remain a goal to strive toward, and alternative agriculture systems will continuously evolve as a means to this end. Policy can and must play an integral role in this process.

If sustainability emerges as a principal farm and environmental policy goal, the design and assessment of agricultural policies will become more complex. Trade-offs, and hence choices, will become more explicit between near-term economic performance and enhancement of the long-term biological and physical factors that can contribute to soil and water resource productivity.

Drawing on expertise in several disciplines, policy analysts will be compelled to assess more insightfully the complex interactions that link a farm's economic, ecological, and environmental performance. It is hoped that political leaders will, as a result, recognize the importance of unraveling conflicts among policy goals and more aggressively seizing opportunities to advance the productivity and sustainability of U.S. agriculture.

A few examples may help clarify how adopting the concept of sustainability as a policy goal complicates the identification of cause-and-effect relationships and, hence, the design of remedial policies.

When a farmer is pushed toward bankruptcy by falling crop prices, a farm operation can become financially unsustainable. When crop losses mount because of pest pressure or a lack of soil nutrients, however, the farming system still becomes unsustainable financially, but for a different reason. In the former example, economic forces beyond any individual farmer's control are the clear cause; in the latter case the underlying cause is rooted in the biological management and performance of the farming system.

The biological and economic performance of a farming system can, in turn, unravel for several different reasons. Consider an example involving a particular farm that is enrolled each year in the U.S. Department of Agriculture's commodity price support programs. To maintain eligibility for government subsidies on a continuing basis, the farmer understands the importance of growing a certain minimum (base) acreage of the same crop each year. Hence, the cropping pattern on this farm is likely to lead to a

buildup in soilborne pathogens that attack plant roots and reduce yields. As a result, the farmer might resort to the use of a fumigant to control the pathogens, but the pesticide might become ineffective because of steadily worsening microbial degradation of the fumigant, or a pesticide-resistant pathogen may emerge.

A solution to these new problems might be to speed up the registration of another pesticide that could be used, or relax regulatory standards so more new products can get registered, or both. Consider another possibility. A regulatory agency may cancel use of a fumigant a farmer has been relying upon because of food safety, water quality, or concerns about it effect on wildlife. The farmer might then seek a change in grading standards or an increase in commodity prices or program benefits if alternative pesticides are more costly.

Each of these problems is distinctive when viewed in isolation and could be attacked through a number of changes in policy. The most cost-effective solution, however, will prove elusive unless the biology of the whole system is perceptively evaluated. For this reason, in the policy arena, just as on the farm, it is critical to know what the problem is that warrants intervention and what the root causes of the problem really are.

Research Challenges

In thinking through agricultural research priorities, it should be acknowledged that the crossroads where the sciences of agriculture and ecology meet remain largely undefined, yet clearly promising. There is too little information to specify in detail the features of a truly sustainable agriculture system, yet there is enough information to recognize the merit in striving toward sustainability in a more systematic way.

The capacity of current research programs and institutions to carry out such work is suspect (see Investing in Research [National Research Council, 1989b]). It also remains uncertain whether current policies and programs that were designed in the 1930s or earlier to serve a different set of farmer needs can effectively bring about the types of changes needed to improve ecological management on the modern farm.

In the 1980s, the research community reached consensus on the diagnosis of many of agriculture's contemporary ills; it may take most of the 1990s to agree on cures, and it will take at least another decade to get them into place. Those who are eager for a quick fix or who are just impatient are bound to be chronically frustrated by the slow rate of change.

Another important caution deserves emphasis. The “silver bullet” approach to solving agricultural production problems offers little promise for providing an understanding of the ecological and biological bases of sustainable agriculture. The one-on-one syndrome seeks to discover a new

pesticide for each pest, a new plant variety when a new strain of rust evolves, or a new nitrogen management method when nitrate contamination of drinking water becomes a pressing social concern. This reductionist approach reflects the inclination in the past to focus scientific and technological attention on products and outcomes rather than processes and on overcoming symptoms rather than eliminating causes. This must be changed if research aimed at making agriculture more sustainable is to move ahead at the rate possible given the new tools available to agricultural scientists.

One area of research in particular—biotechnology—will benefit from a shift in focus toward understanding the biology and ecology underlying agricultural systems. Biotechnology research tools make possible powerful new approaches in unraveling biological interactions and other natural processes at the molecular and cellular levels, thus shedding vital new light on ecological interactions with a degree of precision previously unimagined in the biological sciences. However, rather than using these new tools to advance knowledge about the functioning of systems as a first order of priority, emphasis is increasingly placed on discovering products to solve specific production problems or elucidating the mode of action of specific products.

This is regrettable for several reasons. A chance to decipher the physiological basis of sustainable agriculture systems is being put off. The payoff from focusing on products is also likely to be disappointing. The current widespread pattern of failure and consolidation within the agricultural biotechnology industry suggests that biotechnology is not yet mature enough as a science to reliably discover, refine, and commercialize product-based technologies. Products from biotechnology are inevitable, but a necessary first step must be to generate more in-depth understanding of biological processes, cycles, and interactions.

Perhaps the greatest potential of biotechnology lies in the design and on-farm application of more efficient, stable, and profitable cropping and livestock management systems. For farmers to use such systems successfully, they will need access to a range of new information and diagnostic and analytical techniques that can be used on a real-time basis to make agronomic and animal husbandry judgments about how to optimize the efficiencies of the processes and interactions that underlie plant and animal growth.

Knowledge, in combination with both conventional and novel inputs, will be deployed much more systematically to avoid soil nutrient or animal nutrition-related limits on growth; to ensure that diseases and pests do not become serious enough to warrant the excessive use of costly or hazardous pesticides; to increase the realistically attainable annual level of energy flows independent of purchased inputs within agroecosystems; and to maximize a range of functional symbiotic relationships between soil micro-

and macrofauna, plants, and animals. Discrete goals will include pathogen-suppressive soils, enhanced rotation effects, pest suppression by populations of plant-associated microorganisms, nutrient cycling and renewal, the optimization of general resistance mechanisms in plants by cultural practices, and much more effective soil and water conservation systems that benefit from changes in the stability of soil aggregates and the capacity of soils to absorb and hold moisture.

Because of the profound changes needed to create and instill this new knowledge and skills on the farm, the recommendations in Alternative Agriculture (National Research Council, 1989a) emphasize the need to expand systems-based applied research, on-farm experimentation utilizing farmers as research collaborators, and novel extension education strategies—the very goals of the U.S. Department of Agriculture's LISA program.

Future research efforts—and not just those funded through LISA—should place a premium on the application of ecological principles in the multidisciplinary study of farming system performance. A diversity of approaches in researching and designing innovative farming systems will ensure broad-based progress, particularly if farmers are actively engaged in the research enterprise.

Benbrook, C., and J. Cook. 1990. Striving toward sustainability: A framework to guide on-farm innovation, research, and policy analysis. Speech presented at the 1990 Pacific Northwest Symposium on Sustainable Agriculture, March 2.

Marten, J. 1989. Commentary: Will low-input rotations sustain your income? Farm Journal, Dec. 6.

National Research Council. 1989a. Alternative Agriculture. Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press.

National Research Council. 1989b. Investing in Research: A Proposal to Strengthen the Agricultural, Food, and Environmental System. Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press.

Interest is growing in sustainable agriculture, which involves the use of productive and profitable farming practices that take advantage of natural biological processes to conserve resources, reduce inputs, protect the environment, and enhance public health. Continuing research is helping to demonstrate the ways that many factors—economics, biology, policy, and tradition—interact in sustainable agriculture systems.

This book contains the proceedings of a workshop on the findings of a broad range of research projects funded by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The areas of study, such as integrated pest management, alternative cropping and tillage systems, and comparisons with more conventional approaches, are essential to developing and adopting profitable and sustainable farming systems.

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IEEE/CAA Journal of Automatica Sinica

• JCR Impact Factor: 11.8 , Top 4% (SCI Q1) CiteScore: 17.6 , Top 3% (Q1) Google Scholar h5-index: 77， TOP 5

Internet of Things for the Future of Smart Agriculture: A Comprehensive Survey of Emerging Technologies

Doi:  10.1109/jas.2021.1003925.

• Othmane Friha 1 ,  , 
• Mohamed Amine Ferrag 2 ,  , 
• Lei Shu 3, 4 ,  ,  , 
• Leandros Maglaras 5 ,  , 
• Xiaochan Wang 6 , 

Networks and Systems Laboratory, University of Badji Mokhtar-Annaba, Annaba 23000, Algeria

Department of Computer Science, Guelma University, Gulema 24000, Algeria

College of Engineering, Nanjing Agricultural University, Nanjing 210095, China

School of Engineering, University of Lincoln, Lincoln LN67TS, UK

School of Computer Science and Informatics, De Montfort University, Leicester LE1 9BH, UK

Department of Electrical Engineering, Nanjing Agricultural University, Nanjing 210095, China

Othmane Friha received the master degree in computer science from Badji Mokhtar-Annaba University, Algeria, in 2018. He is currently working toward the Ph.D. degree in the University of Badji Mokhtar-Annaba, Algeria. His current research interests include network and computer security, internet of things (IoT), and applied cryptography

Mohamed Amine Ferrag received the bachelor degree (June, 2008), master degree (June, 2010), Ph.D. degree (June, 2014), HDR degree (April, 2019) from Badji Mokhtar-Annaba University, Algeria, all in computer science. Since October 2014, he is a Senior Lecturer at the Department of Computer Science, Guelma University, Algeria. Since July 2019, he is a Visiting Senior Researcher, NAULincoln Joint Research Center of Intelligent Engineering, Nanjing Agricultural University. His research interests include wireless network security, network coding security, and applied cryptography. He is featured in Stanford University’s list of the world’s Top 2% Scientists for the year 2019. He has been conducting several research projects with international collaborations on these topics. He has published more than 60 papers in international journals and conferences in the above areas. Some of his research findings are published in top-cited journals, such as the IEEE Communications Surveys and Tutorials , IEEE Internet of Things Journal , IEEE Transactions on Engineering Management , IEEE Access , Journal of Information Security and Applications (Elsevier), Transactions on Emerging Telecommunications Technologies (Wiley), Telecommunication Systems (Springer), International Journal of Communication Systems (Wiley), Sustainable Cities and Society (Elsevier), Security and Communication Networks (Wiley), and Journal of Network and Computer Applications (Elsevier). He has participated in many international conferences worldwide, and has been granted short-term research visitor internships to many renowned universities including, De Montfort University, UK, and Istanbul Technical University, Turkey. He is currently serving on various editorial positions such as Editorial Board Member in Journals (Indexed SCI and Scopus) such as, IET Networks and International Journal of Internet Technology and Secured Transactions (Inderscience Publishers)

Lei Shu (M’07–SM’15) received the B.S. degree in computer science from South Central University for Nationalities in 2002, and the M.S. degree in computer engineering from Kyung Hee University, South Korea, in 2005, and the Ph.D. degree from the Digital Enterprise Research Institute, National University of Ireland, Ireland, in 2010. Until 2012, he was a Specially Assigned Researcher with the Department of Multimedia Engineering, Graduate School of Information Science and Technology, Osaka University, Japan. He is currently a Distinguished Professor with Nanjing Agricultural University and a Lincoln Professor with the University of Lincoln, U.K. He is also the Director of the NAU-Lincoln Joint Research Center of Intelligent Engineering. He has published over 400 papers in related conferences, journals, and books in the areas of sensor networks and internet of things (IoT). His current H-index is 54 and i10-index is 197 in Google Scholar Citation. His current research interests include wireless sensor networks and IoT. He has also served as a TPC Member for more than 150 conferences, such as ICDCS, DCOSS, MASS, ICC, GLOBECOM, ICCCN, WCNC, and ISCC. He was a Recipient of the 2014 Top Level Talents in Sailing Plan of Guangdong Province, China, the 2015 Outstanding Young Professor of Guangdong Province, and the GLOBECOM 2010, ICC 2013, ComManTel 2014, WICON 2016, SigTelCom 2017 Best Paper Awards, the 2017 and 2018 IEEE Systems Journal Best Paper Awards, the 2017 Journal of Network and Computer Applications Best Research Paper Award, and the Outstanding Associate Editor Award of 2017, and the 2018 IEEE ACCESS. He has also served over 50 various Co-Chair for international conferences/workshops, such as IWCMC, ICC, ISCC, ICNC, Chinacom, especially the Symposium Co-Chair for IWCMC 2012, ICC 2012, the General Co-Chair for Chinacom 2014, Qshine 2015, Collaboratecom 2017, DependSys 2018, and SCI 2019, the TPC Chair for InisCom 2015, NCCA 2015, WICON 2016, NCCA 2016, Chinacom 2017, InisCom 2017, WMNC 2017, and NCCA 2018

Leandros Maglaras (SM’15) received the B.Sc. degree from Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece, in 1998, M.Sc. in industrial production and management from University of Thessaly in 2004, and M.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees in electrical & computer engineering from University of Volos in 2008 and 2014, respectively. He is the Head of the National Cyber Security Authority of Greece and a Visiting Lecturer in the School of Computer Science and Informatics at the De Montfort University, U.K. He serves on the Editorial Board of several International peer-reviewed journals such as IEEE Access , Wiley Journal on Security & Communication Networks , EAI Transactions on e-Learning and EAI Transactions on Industrial Networks and Intelligent Systems . He is an author of more than 80 papers in scientific magazines and conferences and is a Senior Member of IEEE. His research interests include wireless sensor networks and vehicular ad hoc networks

Xiaochan Wang is currently a Professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering at Nanjing Agricultural University. His main research fields include intelligent equipment for horticulture and intelligent measurement and control. He is an ASABE Member, and the Vice Director of CSAM (Chinese Society for Agricultural Machinery), and also the Senior Member of Chinese Society of Agricultural Engineering. He was awarded the Second Prize of Science and Technology Invention by the Ministry of Education (2016) and the Advanced Worker for Chinese Society of Agricultural Engineering (2012), and he also gotten the “Blue Project” in Jiangsu province young and middle-aged academic leaders (2010)

• Corresponding author: Lei Shu, e-mail: [email protected]
• Revised Date: 2020-11-25
• Accepted Date: 2020-12-30
• Agricultural internet of things (IoT) , 
• internet of things (IoT) , 
• smart agriculture , 
• smart farming , 
• sustainable agriculture

Proportional views

通讯作者: 陈斌, [email protected].

沈阳化工大学材料科学与工程学院 沈阳 110142

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• We review the emerging technologies used by the Internet of Things for the future of smart agriculture.
• We provide a classification of IoT applications for smart agriculture into seven categories, including, smart monitoring, smart water management, agrochemicals applications, disease management, smart harvesting, supply chain management, and smart agricultural practices.
• We provide a taxonomy and a side-by-side comparison of the state-of-the-art methods toward supply chain management based on the blockchain technology for agricultural IoTs.
• We highlight open research challenges and discuss possible future research directions for agricultural IoTs.
• Copyright © 2022 IEEE/CAA Journal of Automatica Sinica
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• Figure 1. The four agricultural revolutions
• Figure 2. Survey structure
• Figure 3. IoT-connected smart agriculture sensors enable the IoT
• Figure 4. The architecture of a typical IoT sensor node
• Figure 5. Fog computing-based agricultural IoT
• Figure 6. SDN/NFV architecture for smart agriculture
• Figure 7. Classification of IoT applications for smart agriculture
• Figure 8. Greenhouse system [ 101 ]
• Figure 9. Aerial-ground robotics system [ 67 ]
• Figure 10. Photovoltaic agri-IoT schematic diagram [ 251 ]
• Figure 11. Smart dairy farming system [ 254 ]
• Figure 12. IoT-based solar insecticidal lamp [ 256 ], [ 257 ]

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Regenerative Agriculture: An agronomic perspective

Ken e giller.

1 Plant Production Systems, Wageningen University, Wageningen, The Netherlands

Renske Hijbeek

Jens a andersson, james sumberg.

2 Institute of Development Studies (IDS), University of Sussex, Brighton, UK

Agriculture is in crisis. Soil health is collapsing. Biodiversity faces the sixth mass extinction. Crop yields are plateauing. Against this crisis narrative swells a clarion call for Regenerative Agriculture. But what is Regenerative Agriculture, and why is it gaining such prominence? Which problems does it solve, and how? Here we address these questions from an agronomic perspective. The term Regenerative Agriculture has actually been in use for some time, but there has been a resurgence of interest over the past 5 years. It is supported from what are often considered opposite poles of the debate on agriculture and food. Regenerative Agriculture has been promoted strongly by civil society and NGOs as well as by many of the major multi-national food companies. Many practices promoted as regenerative, including crop residue retention, cover cropping and reduced tillage are central to the canon of ‘good agricultural practices’, while others are contested and at best niche (e.g. permaculture, holistic grazing). Worryingly, these practices are generally promoted with little regard to context. Practices most often encouraged (such as no tillage, no pesticides or no external nutrient inputs) are unlikely to lead to the benefits claimed in all places. We argue that the resurgence of interest in Regenerative Agriculture represents a re-framing of what have been considered to be two contrasting approaches to agricultural futures, namely agroecology and sustainable intensification, under the same banner. This is more likely to confuse than to clarify the public debate. More importantly, it draws attention away from more fundamental challenges. We conclude by providing guidance for research agronomists who want to engage with Regenerative Agriculture.

Introduction

Claims that the global food system is ‘in crisis’ or ‘broken’ are increasingly common. 1 , 2 Such claims point to a wide variety of ills, from hunger, poverty and obesity; through industrial farming, over dependence on chemical fertilizer and pesticides, poor quality (if not unsafe) food, environmental degradation, biodiversity loss, exploitative labour relations and animal welfare; to corporate dominance and a lack of resilience. It is in this context, where every aspect of farming and food production, distribution and consumption is being questioned, that the current interest in ‘Regenerative Agriculture’ and ‘Regenerative Farming’ 3 has taken root.

While the use of the adjective regenerative is expanding among activists, civil society groups and corporations as they call for renewal, transformation and revitalization of the global food system ( Duncan et al., 2021 ), in this paper we explore the calls for Regenerative Agriculture from an agronomic perspective . By this we mean a perspective steeped in the use of plant, soil, ecological and system sciences to support the production of food, feed and fibre in a sustainable manner. Specifically, we address two questions: 1) What is the agronomic problem analysis that motivates the Regenerative Agriculture movement and what is the evidence base for this analysis? 2) What agronomic solutions are proposed, and how well are these supported by evidence?

Our avowedly agronomic perspective on Regenerative Agriculture means that some important aspects of the ‘food system in crisis’ narrative are beyond the scope of this paper, such as food inequalities and labour relations. However, in addition to agronomic science, our analysis is rooted in historical and political economy perspectives. These suggest that the food system is best viewed as an integral part of the much broader network of economic, social and political relations. It follows that many of the faults ascribed to the food system – including hunger, food poverty, poor labour relations, corporate dominance – will not be successfully addressed by action within the food system, but only through higher level political and economic change.

The paper proceeds as follows. The next section explores the origins of Regenerative Agriculture, and the various ways it has been defined. Following this, the two crises that are central to the rationale for Regenerative Agriculture – soils and biodiversity – are interrogated. The subsequent section looks at the practices most commonly associated with Regenerative Agriculture and assesses their potential to solve the aforementioned crises. The final discussion section presents a series of questions that may be useful for research agronomists as they engage with the Regenerative Agriculture agenda.

The origins of regenerative agriculture

The adjective ‘regenerative’ has been associated with the nouns ‘agriculture’ and ‘farming’ since the late 1970s ( Gabel, 1979 ), but the terms Regenerative Agriculture and Regenerative Farming came into wider circulation in the early 1980s when they were picked up by the US-based Rodale Institute. Through its research and publications (including the magazine Organic Gardening and Farming ), the Rodale Institute has, over decades, been at the forefront of the organic farming movement.

Robert Rodale (1983) defined Regenerative Agriculture as ‘one that, at increasing levels of productivity, increases our land and soil biological production base. It has a high level of built-in economic and biological stability. It has minimal to no impact on the environment beyond the farm or field boundaries. It produces foodstuffs free from biocides. It provides for the productive contribution of increasingly large numbers of people during a transition to minimal reliance on non-renewable resources’.

Richard Harwood, an agronomist who made his name in the international farming systems research movement ( Escobar et al., 2000 ), was Director of Rodale Research Centre when he published an ‘international overview’ of Regenerative Agriculture ( Harwood, 1983 ). The review goes to great pains to contextualize Regenerative Agriculture in relation to the historical evolution of different schools of organic and biodynamic farming, but it also highlights Rodale’s suggestion that Regenerative Agriculture was beyond organic because it included changes in ‘macro structure’ and ‘social relevancy’, and seeks to increase rather than decrease productive resources ( Rodale, 1983 ). Harwood summarizes the ‘Regenerative Agriculture Philosophy’ in 10 points (Box 1). He further states that this philosophy emphasizes: ‘1) the inter-relatedness of all parts of a farming system, including the farmer and his family; 2) the importance of the innumerable biological balances in the system; and 3) the need to maximise desired biological relationships in the system, and minimise use of materials and practices which disrupt those relationships’.

Box 1. Points summarizing the Regenerative Agriculture Philosophy as presented by Harwood (1983 : 31).

• Agriculture should produce highly nutritional food, free from biocides, at high yields.
• Agriculture should increase rather than decrease soil productivity, by increasing the depth, fertility and physical characteristics of the upper soil layers.
• Nutrient-flow systems which fully integrate soil flora and fauna into the pattern of are more efficient and less destructive of the environment, and ensure better crop nutrition. Such systems accomplish a new upward flow of nutrients in the soil profile, reducing or eliminating adverse environmental impact. Such a process is, by definition, a soil genesis process.
• Crop production should be based on biological interactions for stability, eliminating the need for synthetic biocides.
• Substances which disrupt biological structuring of the farming system (such as present-day synthetic fertilizers) should not be used.
• Regenerative agriculture requires, in its biological structuring, an intimate relationship between manager/participants of the system and the system itself.
• Integrated systems which are largely self-reliant in nitrogen through biological nitrogen fixation should be utilized.
• Animals in agriculture should be fed and housed in such a manner as to preclude the use of hormones and the prophylactic use of antibiotics which are then present in human food.
• Agricultural production should generate increased levels of employment.
• A Regenerative Agriculture requires national-level planning but a high degree of local and regional self-reliance to close nutrient-flow loops.

In what is probably the first journal article on Regenerative Agriculture, Francis et al. (1986) link it closely to organic and ‘low external input agriculture’, and highlight the importance of biological structuring, progressive biological sequencing and integrative farm structuring. They also associate it with a number of ‘specific technologies and systems’ including nitrogen fixation, nutrient cycling, integrated nutrient management, crop rotation, integrated pest management (IPM) and ‘weed cycling’. Figure 1 depicts the Regenerative Agriculture theory of change as articulated by Francis et al. (1986) .

Early theory of Regenerative Agriculture in developing countries. Source: Authors’ interpretation of Francis et al. (1986) .

A shifting timeline of attention

After an initial flurry of interest, Regenerative Agriculture left the scene for almost two decades before regaining momentum. To illustrate this, we look at the extent to which the terms Regenerative Agriculture and Regenerative Farming have been integrated into both the public and academic spheres. For the public sphere we draw from Google Books (Ngram Viewer) and the Nexis Uni database, which searches more than 17,000 news sources. As seen in Figure 2 , the occurrence of these terms in books first peaked in the mid-late 1980s, but by the mid-2000s they had virtually disappeared. The occurrence of Regenerative Agriculture then increased dramatically after 2015. It is important to note that over the period 1972–2018, Regenerative Agriculture appears in books much less frequently than other terms such as sustainable agriculture, organic agriculture, organic farming and agroecology.

The frequency of key terms in books (3-year rolling averages). Source: Google NGram Viewer, Corpus ‘English 2019’ which includes books predominantly in the English language published in any country.

Regenerative Agriculture and Regenerative Farming first appear in the Nexus Uni database of news stories in 1983 and 1986 respectively, both with reference to the Rodale Institute ( Figure 3a ), and neither term occurred in more than 15 news items each year until 2009. Their use increased dramatically after 2016, and since then the combined occurrence of these terms has doubled each year, reaching 6163 news items in 2020. To place this in perspective, in 2020 organic agriculture and organic farming appeared in 6,870 and 18,301 news items respectively.

(a) Occurrence of Regenerative Agriculture or Regenerative Farming in news items and (b) Academic peer-reviewed publications on Regenerative Agriculture or Regenerative Farming. Sources: (a) Nexis Uni database, (b) Web of Science.

Turning to the more academic literature, in the first 30 years following the publication of Francis et al. (1986) , only seven other papers are identified by Web of Science having the terms Regenerative Agriculture or Regenerative Farming in their title or abstract ( Figure 3b ). The year 2016 marked a clear turning point in academic interest, and by 2020 a total of 52 academic papers had been published, and together these have been cited some 250 times.

Thus, while the terms Regenerative Agriculture and Regenerative Farming have been in use since the early 1980s, to date they have not been as widely used as other related terms such as sustainable agriculture or organic agriculture. Since 2016 their occurrence in books, news stories and on the internet has increased dramatically, which reflects the fact that they have now been adopted by a wide range of NGOs (e.g. The Nature Conservancy, 4 the World Wildlife Fund, 5 GreenPeace, 6 Friends of the Earth 7 ), multi-national companies (e.g. Danone, 8 General Mills, 9 Kellogg’s, 10 Patagonia, 11 the World Council for Sustainable Business Development 12 ) and charitable foundations (e.g. IKEA Foundation 13 ). In relation to this newfound popularity, Diana Martin, the Director of Communications of the Rodale Institute, cautioned ‘It’s [Regenerative Agriculture] the new buzzword. There is a danger of it getting greenwashed’. 14

While the academic literature referring to Regenerative Agriculture is growing, the published corpus remains very limited, and only a fraction of this corpus addresses what might be considered agronomic questions. It is likely that additional funding for agronomic research will accompany the public commitments to Regenerative Agriculture being made by NGOs, corporations and foundations. Navigating the rhetoric and potential for greenwash will be a major challenge for research agronomists who seek to work in this area.

Evolving definitions

Within the recent resurgence of interest in Regenerative Agriculture, there is a lack of consensus around any particular definition ( Merfield, 2019 ; Soloviev and Landua, 2016 ). Early (and continuing) efforts have struggled to draw a clear distinction between regenerative, organic and other ‘alternative’ agricultures (for example, Whyte, 1987 : 244): indeed the Rodale Institute continues to refer to ‘regenerative organic agriculture’ ( Rodale Institute, 2014 ).

Since the 1980s, both more broad and more narrow definitions of Regenerative Agriculture have been proposed, with most highlighting or developing one or more of the elements originally identified by Rodale (1983) . For example, some authors have emphasized the idea that regenerative systems are ‘semi-closed’, i.e. ‘those designed to minimize external inputs or external impacts of agronomy outside the farm’ ( Pearson, 2007 ) or ‘those in which inputs of energy, in the form of fertilisers and fuels, are minimised because these key agricultural elements are recycled as far as possible’ ( Rhodes, 2012 ). Regenerative Agriculture as ‘a system of principles and practices’ is central to some definitions, but not all. For Burgess et al. (2019) Regenerative Agriculture ‘generates agricultural products, sequesters carbon, and enhances biodiversity at the farm scale’, and for Terra Genesis International it ‘increases biodiversity, enriches soils, improves watersheds, and enhances ecosystem services’. 15

This raises the question whether Regenerative Agriculture is an end, or a means to an end. As noted by Burgess et al. (2019) a number of definitions of Regenerative Agriculture focus on the notion of ‘enhancement’, e.g. of soil organic matter (SOM) and soil biodiversity (California State University, 2017 16 ); of biodiversity, soils, watersheds, and ecosystem services (Terra Genesis, 2017 17 ); of biodiversity and the quantity of biomass ( Rhodes, 2017 ); and of soil health ( Sherwood and Uphoff, 2000 ). Carbon Underground argues that Regenerative Agriculture should be defined around the outcome, claiming that ‘Consensus is mounting for a single, standardized definition for food grown in a regenerative manner that restores and maintains natural systems, like water and carbon cycles, to enable land to continue to produce food in a manner that is healthier for people and the long-term health of the planet and its climate’. 18 Finally, the Rodale Institute comes back to the idea of a ‘holistic systems approach’, but now with an explicit nod to both innovation and wellbeing, suggesting that ‘regenerative organic agriculture […] encourages continual on-farm innovation for environmental, social, economic and spiritual wellbeing’ ( Rodale Institute, 2014 ). A specific certification scheme, Regenerative Organic Certified was established in 2017 in the USA under the auspices of the Regenerative Organic Alliance within which the Rodale Institute is a key player. 19 Certification is based on three pillars of Soil Health, Animal Welfare and Social Fairness – each of which, it is suggested, can be verified using existing certification standards. A perceived need to move beyond the standards of the USDA Organic Certification scheme has driven the establishment of this new standard. 20

In a review of peer-reviewed articles, the most commonly occurring themes associated with Regenerative Agriculture are improvements to soil health, the broader environment, human health and economic prosperity ( Schreefel et al., 2020 ). The authors go on to define Regenerative Agriculture as ‘an approach to farming that uses soil conservation as the entry point to regenerate and contribute to multiple provisioning, regulating and supporting ecosystem services, with the objective that this will enhance not only the environmental, but also the social and economic dimensions of sustainable food production’.

While for some organizations Regenerative Agriculture is unequivocally a form of organic agriculture, others are open to the judicious use of agrochemicals. Nevertheless, from an agronomic perspective the two challenges most frequently linked to Regenerative Agriculture are:

• Restoration of soil health, including, the capture of carbon (C) to mitigate climate change
• Reversal of biodiversity loss

Figure 4 shows what we understand to be the most common current articulation of the Regenerative Agriculture theory of change. For the purposes of this agronomically oriented paper, the critical question is: How far and in what contexts do the proposed regenerative practices restore soil health and/or reverse biodiversity loss? Given the diversity of understandings of Regenerative Agriculture, and the different contexts within which it is promoted, it should not be surprising that a wide variety of agronomic practices are promoted under the Regenerative Agriculture rubric. We return to these practices later, but first take a closer look at the two crises that Regenerative Agriculture aims to address.

Regenerative Agriculture: Authors’ interpretation of the commonly used theory of change in 2021. Our analysis focuses on the lower blue box: ‘agronomic considerations’.

The crises addressed by Regenerative Agriculture

In this section we briefly review the purported crises of (1) soil health (including C sequestration) and (2) biodiversity, which are central to most articulations of Regenerative Agriculture. In each case we discuss how the crisis is framed and the strength of the evidence to support this framing.

A crisis of soil health

Soil health receives particularly strong attention in narratives surrounding Regenerative Agriculture ( Schreefel et al., 2020 ; Sherwood and Uphoff, 2000 ). Indeed, the idea that soil, and soil life in particular, is under threat underpins most, if not all, calls for Regenerative Agriculture. Nonetheless, the term soil health is inherently problematic ( Powlson, 2020 ). Just like soil quality, soil health is a container concept, which requires disaggregation to be meaningful. While it can be understood as something positive to strive for, underlying soil functions need meaningful indicators which can be measured and monitored over long periods of time. Moreover, agronomic practices which benefit one aspect of soil health (such as soil life) often have negative effects on other functions (such as nitrate leaching, primary production or GHG emissions, ten Berge et al., 2019 ); there is usually not one direction in soil health, but multiple trade-offs.

Many websites and testimonials concerning Regenerative Agriculture highlight the importance of soil biodiversity, and in particular the macro- and micro-organisms which are responsible for the biological cycling of nutrients. Reports of declining soil biodiversity under intensive agriculture and the simplification of soil food webs ( de Vries et al., 2013 ; Tsiafouli et al., 2014 ) have led to widespread alarm concerning soil health. For example, a recent report of an advisory body to the Dutch government was entitled ‘De Bodem Bereikt’ 21  – literally, ‘The bottom has been reached’ – a double entendre based on the word ‘bodem’ that means both bottom and soil. The report argues that soil quality has declined to a critical point – at least partly due to loss of soil biodiversity. Whilst studies clearly reveal differences in soil food webs between cultivated fields, grasslands and (semi-) natural vegetation, the links with soil function are largely established through correlation – there is little evidence for any direct causal link between soil biodiversity and any loss in function (see Kuyper and Giller, 2011 ).

The mantra to ‘feed the soil, not the crop’ has long been central to organic agriculture while the importance of building soil organic matter was highlighted by the proponents of organic or biodynamic agriculture, and in more conventional agricultural discourses in the USA (e.g. USDA, 1938 , 1957 , 1987 ) and elsewhere. Soil takes centuries to form and significant soil loss through erosion is unsustainable. The Dust Bowl in the 1930s in the USA was a foundational experience for both the scientific and public appreciation of soil. It is commonly claimed that a quarter or more of the earth’s soils are degraded, although the precise numbers are contested ( Gibbs and Salmon, 2015 ). Commonly quoted estimates of soil loss through erosion are made using run-off plots which tend to overestimate the rates of loss as they do not account for deposition and transfer of soil across the landscape. Nonetheless, Evans et al. (2020) suggest that the rates of soil loss exceed those of soil formation by an order of magnitude, suggesting a lifespan less than 200 years for a third of the soils for which data were available.

A related long-term trend that draws attention to soils, is the reduction in the global soil C pool and its contribution to global warming. Recent modelling estimates the historic soil C loss due to human land use to be around 116 Pg C ( Sanderman et al., 2017 , 2018 ), comparable to roughly one-fifth of cumulative GHG emissions from industry. Most of these losses are due to changes in land use. Conversion from natural vegetation, especially forests, almost always results in a decrease in SOM content ( Poeplau and Don, 2015 ) due to non-permanent vegetation, export of biomass and consequently, reduced amounts of organic matter inputs. The loss of soil C through land use conversion is however a different matter than the losses or gains which can be made by altering management practices on existing agricultural land. We discuss the impacts of changing management practices below.

A crisis of biodiversity

Those who promote Regenerative Agriculture frame the crisis of biodiversity around the widespread use of monocultures along with strong dependence on external inputs and a lack of ‘biological cycling’ ( Francis et al., 1986 ). No doubt, large areas of genetically uniform crops can be susceptible to rapid spread of pests and diseases and add little value to the quality of rural landscapes.

If we consider biodiversity more broadly, there is little doubt that the earth has entered a sixth mass extinction ( Ceballos et al., 2020 ). The increase in the human population, the clearance of native habitats and the expansion of agriculture over the past century are clearly root causes. How best to arrest this loss of biodiversity is less clear. Optimistic projections suggest that the world’s population will peak at around 9.8 billion in 2060 ( Vollset et al., 2020 ), whereas the United Nations Population Programme projects a population of 11.4 billion by the end of the century. In either case, the increase in population will without doubt require the production of additional nutritious food. Moderating consumption patterns and changing diets can reduce the extent of this demand, as can reducing food loss and waste, but conservative estimates suggest that overall, global food production must increase by at least 25% ( Hunter et al., 2017 ).

In simple terms, there are two ways to meet this future food demand. The first is to increase production from the existing area of agricultural land: here, what is commonly termed a ‘land sparing’ strategy, involves closing yield gaps by increasing land productivity. The second is to increase the area of land under cultivation. But converting land use to agriculture has direct impacts in terms of habitat loss, as well as multiple indirect effects through altering biogeochemical and hydrological cycles ( Baudron and Giller, 2014 ). In many areas an expansion of agricultural lands to increase food production will mean that inherently less productive soils are brought under cultivation, requiring disproportionate land use conversion. Against this backdrop, calls for, and commitments to Zero (Net) Deforestation are changing to calls for Zero (Net) Land Conversion. 22 Both aim specifically to protect areas of high conservation value for biodiversity, with the latter focused on the use of degraded lands for any future expansion of agriculture, while restoring ecosystems with high value for biodiversity conservation.

Another major concern for impacts on biodiversity relates to the effects of the chemicals used for plant protection, and in particular insecticides. Despite increasingly stringent controls since Rachel Carson published ‘Silent Spring’ in 1962, concerns remain. Attention has been focused on impacts on non-target organisms, with considerable alarm at the loss of bees and other pollinators ( Hall and Martins, 2020 ). A recent report that attracted considerable attention in the media indicated a 75% decline in flying insect biomass in Germany in only 27 years ( Hallmann et al., 2017 ). A global meta-analysis painted a more complex picture, suggesting (still alarming) average declines of ∼9% per decade in terrestrial insect abundance, but ∼11% per decade increases in freshwater insect abundance, and strong regional differences ( van Klink et al., 2020 ). Echoing the concerns about DDT raised by Carson, declines in populations of insectivorous birds were found to be associated with higher concentrations of neonicotinoids in the environment ( Hallmann et al., 2014 ). Further, neonicotinoids have been implicated in a new pesticide treadmill, where pesticide resistance and reduced populations of natural enemies lead to increased dependence on chemical control ( Bakker et al., 2020b ). With respect to weed control, the introduction of glyphosate was widely lauded as it was seen as environmentally benign compared with alternative herbicides. However, its widespread use combined with ‘Round-up Ready’ varieties of maize, oilseed rape and soybean, and reduced tillage, has led to the proliferation of herbicide-resistant weeds ( Mortensen et al., 2012 ). With increasing concerns over human toxicity, glyphosate use has become highly controversial, leading to an earlier re-assessment of its license in the EU. 23

Regenerative Agriculture practices

The practices.

McGuire (2018) , Burgess et al. (2019) and Merfield (2019) provide lists of practices associated with different variants of Regenerative Agriculture which we order in Table 1 around agronomic principles. It should be noted, that to qualify as Regenerative Organic Agriculture, no chemical fertilizers or synthetic pesticides can be used and ‘soil-less’ cultivation methods are prohibited.

Agronomic principles and practices considered to be part of Regenerative Agriculture and their potential impacts on restoration of soil health and reversal of biodiversity loss.

Based on McGuire (2018) , Burgess et al. (2019) and Merfield (2019) .

Many practices associated with Regenerative Agriculture, such as crop rotations, cover crops, livestock integration, are (or in some contexts were) generally considered to be ‘Good Agricultural Practice’ and remain integral to conventional farming. Some are more problematic: conservation agriculture, for example, can be practiced within an organic framework or as GMO-based, herbicide and fertilizer intensive ( Giller et al., 2015 ). Others, such as permaculture, have rather limited applicability for the production of many agricultural commodities. Still others, such as holistic grazing are highly contentious in terms of the claims made for their broad applicability and ecological benefits in terms of soil C accumulation and reduction of greenhouse gas emissions ( Briske et al., 2014 ; Garnett et al., 2017 ). The potential of perennial grains has aroused substantial interest in relation to Regenerative Agriculture. Deep rooting perennial grasses such as intermediate wheatgrass ( Thinopyrum intermedium ), cereals (e.g. sorghum) or legumes (e.g. pigeonpea) have the advantage of supplying multiple products such as fodder as well as grain, and provide continuous soil cover that can arrest soil erosion and reduce nitrate leaching ( Glover et al., 2010 ). On the down side, perennial grains tend to yield less than annual varieties and share constraints with monocultures in terms of pest and disease build up. They may also encounter difficulties with weed control. Snapp et al. (2019) provide a nuanced analysis of the potential of perennial grains.

Regenerative Agriculture practices, the soil crisis and climate change

A majority of the Regenerative Agriculture practices focus on soil management, with a particular emphasis on increasing soil C, under the premise that it will increase crop yields and mitigate climate change. SOM is an important indicator of soil fertility ( Reeves, 1997 ) as it serves many functions within the soil, for example in the supply of nutrients, soil structure, water holding capacity, and supporting soil life ( Johnston et al., 2009 ; Watts and Dexter, 1997 ).

The amount of C stored in soil is largely a function of the amount of organic matter added to the soil and soil texture: clay soils can store much more C than sandy soils ( Chivenge et al., 2007 ). Soil tillage has only a minor effect ( Giller et al., 2009 ). The degree to which the amount of C stored in the soil can be increased depends on the starting conditions. A continuously cultivated, degraded clay soil, heavily depleted of soil C, can store much more extra C than a degraded sandy soil. A fertile soil may already be close to what is called its C ‘saturation potential’ ( Six et al., 2002 ). Thus under continuous cultivation, soil C can only be increased marginally by changing management practices, such as the use of animal manure, cultivation of green manures or return of crop residues ( Poulton et al., 2018 ). The greatest opportunities to increase soil C are found in low yielding regions, where increasing crop yields increase the available biomass stock and inputs of organic matter to the soil ( van der Esch et al., 2017 ). But even if SOM increases due to improved management, the rate of annual increase in soil C is temporary. As a new equilibrium is reached the rate of C accumulation attenuates ( Baveye et al., 2018 ) and this new equilibrium is reached at a lower level under cultivation than under natural vegetation cover. Limiting the conversion of forest and natural grasslands to agriculture is therefore essential to protect soil C stocks. Among the practices associated with Regenerative Agriculture, agroforestry in its many shapes and forms perhaps has the greatest potential to contribute to climate change mitigation through C capture both above- and below-ground ( Feliciano et al., 2018 ; Rosenstock et al., 2019 ).

A synthesis of 14 meta-analyses across the globe indicates that crop yields mainly benefit from increased SOM due to the nutrients, in particular N, which it supplies ( Hijbeek et al., 2018 ). Nevertheless, the global N budget over the last 50 years, suggests that half of the N taken up by cereals came from mineral fertilizers ( Ladha et al., 2016 ), indicating that global food production would collapse without external nutrients. If a field is used for crop production without any external source of nutrients, as espoused by some proponents of Regenerative Agriculture, this will degrade the soil resource base and lead to a decline in yields. Symbiotic nitrogen fixation through legumes can provide a truly renewable source of some N, but to sustain production in the long term, external sources of other nutrients are required to compensate for the nutrient offtake through harvested crops.

As with the external nutrient supply, other technical options can mimic, supplement or substitute for some of the contributions that SOM makes to soil fertility. Irrigation and tillage, for example, can have positive effects on soil water availability and soil structure respectively ( van Noordwijk et al., 1997 ). This is one of the reasons why increasing SOM does not always directly benefit soil fertility or crop yields ( Hijbeek, 2017 ). Additional SOM only increases crop yields in the short term if it alleviates an immediate constraint to crop growth. In the longer term it would be expected that increased SOM leads to crop yields that are more resilient to abiotic stresses due to improved soil physical structure, but evidence on this is scarce.

With current trends in greenhouse gas emissions, most IPCC scenarios include net negative emission technologies to limit global warming to a maximum of 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels ( Rogelj et al., 2018 ). These technologies include carbon capture and storage, but also reforestation and soil C sequestration ( Rogelj et al., 2018 ). In this light, Regenerative Agriculture is said to hold a promise of ‘zero carbon farming’ or even offsetting GHG emissions from other sectors ( Hawken, 2017 ). The most recent offering from the Rodale Institute ‘confidently declares that global adoption of regenerative practices across both grasslands and arable acreage could sequester more than 100% of current anthropogenic emissions of CO 2 ’ ( Moyer et al., 2020 ). The confidence in this claim was rapidly dented by other protagonists of Regenerative Agriculture, who concluded the figure was probably closer to 10–15%. 24

A recent study in China investigated potential soil C sequestration across a range of different cropping systems. The results show that – for a wide range of crop rotations and management practices – soil C sequestration compensated on average for 10% of the total GHG emissions (N 2 O, CH 4 , CO 2 ), with a maximum of 30% ( Gao et al., 2018 ). Although there were many examples of soil C increasing in response to increased crop yields, the climate change benefits (expressed as CO 2 -equivalent) were considerably outweighed by the greenhouse gas emissions associated with the practices themselves, especially N fertilizer and irrigation. In the UK, Powlson et al. (2011) reported similar outcomes using data from the Broadbalk experiment: associated GHG emissions of crop management (tillage, fertilizers, irrigation, crop protection, etc.) were four-fold greater than the carbon sequestered. Of course, in Regenerative Agriculture the use of some of these GHG emitting crop management practices and external nutrient inputs, such as mineral fertilizers are abandoned. But while organic fertilizers such as manure can increase SOM and have additional yield benefits beyond nutrient supply, they are also more prone to nutrient losses. A recent global meta-analysis showed that manure application significantly increased N 2 O emissions by an average 32.7% (95% confidence interval: 5.1–58.2%) compared with mineral fertilizers ( Zhou et al., 2017 ), thereby offsetting the mitigation gains of soil C sequestration.

The exclusion of external inputs is even more problematic, considering that nutrients are needed to build SOM and sequester soil C ( Kirkby et al., 2011 ; Richardson et al., 2014 ). This phenomenon can be explained by stoichiometric arguments and has been coined ‘the nitrogen dilemma’ of soil C sequestration ( van Groenigen et al., 2017 ). As shown by Rice and MacCarthy (1991) , the elemental composition of SOM (ratios of C, H, O, N and S) has a narrow range. If C is added to a soil in which there is no surplus N, P or S, there will be no increase in SOM and the carbon will be lost to the atmosphere as CO 2 . Besides the associated energy requirements to build SOM, this also raises the question whether those nutrients are most useful to human society when stored in the soil, or when available for plant growth ( Janzen, 2006 ).

Regenerative Agriculture practices and the biodiversity crisis

Although reversing loss of biodiversity is a central tenet of Regenerative Agriculture, it receives surprisingly little attention in discussions of recommended practices. The principle ‘foster plant diversity’ is of course central, and is one means to address the principle to ‘avoid pesticides’. Yet little attention is paid to approaches such as integrated pest and disease management (IPM). The principles of IPM – to minimize chemical use and maximize the efficiency when used – are well established. Genetic resistance is key, and regular crop scouting is used to trigger responsive spraying when a particular threshold of the pest and disease is observed, rather than preventative spraying at particular times in the cropping calendar. Recommended practices such as rotations and (multi-species) cover crops fit within IPM, as do approaches such as intercropping and strip cropping which are largely ignored in discussions of Regenerative Agriculture. IPM is knowledge intensive, requires regular crop monitoring and the skill to identify early signs of outbreaks of multiple pests and diseases. The reasons for the lack of uptake of IPM approaches are complex, but include the perceived risk of crop damage ( Bakker et al., 2020a ). Alongside IPM, integrated weed control (IWM) combines the use of mechanical weeding through tillage and cover cropping with a much more strategic use of herbicides ( Mortensen et al., 2012 ). IWM is promoted as an environmentally friendly approach that can harness diversity to manage deleterious effects of weeds ( Adeux et al., 2019 ), but again, is highly knowledge intensive.

Whether it is possible to continue intensive forms of agriculture which will meet global demands for agricultural produce without the use of chemicals for plant protection is the subject of much debate. There is a danger that bans on the use of some products could lead to wider use of even more toxic ones, at least for a period before environmental controls catch up. Few could disagree with the aspiration to limit the use of chemicals in agriculture: in addition to biodiversity concerns, the misuse of pesticides in developing countries has serious negative effects on human health ( Boedeker et al., 2020 ; Jepson et al., 2014 ).

Finally, much of the discussion of Regenerative Agriculture, pesticides and biodiversity concerns biodiversity on-farm, rather than biodiversity across landscapes, or enhancing yields to spare land for biodiversity conservation and prevent the need for further land conversion to agriculture. This is a theme we return to when considering the broader implications of Regenerative Agriculture below.

Agriculture all over the world faces serious challenges, as governments, corporations, research agronomists, farmers and consumers seek to negotiate a critical but dynamic balance between human welfare (or the ‘right to food’), productivity, profitability, and environmental sustainability. However, given the high degree of diversity of agro-ecosystems, farm systems and policy contexts, the nature of these challenges can vary dramatically over time and space. This fact undermines any proposition that it is possible to identify one meaningful and widely relevant problem definition, or specific agronomic practices which could alleviate pressures on the food system everywhere.

Neither the ‘soil crisis’ nor the ‘biodiversity crisis’, both of which are central to the rationale for Regenerative Agriculture, is universal; and across those contexts where one, the other or both can be observed, their root causes and manifestations are not necessarily the same. This tension between, on the one hand, a compelling, high-level narrative that identifies a problem, its causes and how it should be addressed, and on the other, the complexity of divergent local realities, arises with all universalist schemes to ‘fix’ agriculture and the ‘failing’ food system. In this sense, Regenerative Agriculture, while using new language, is no different than sustainable agriculture, sustainable intensification, climate-smart agriculture, organic farming, agroecology and so on.

To date the discussion around Regenerative Agriculture has taken little account of the wide variety of initial starting points defined by the variation in local contexts and farming systems and the scales at which they operate. For example, the problems caused by over-use of fertilizer or manure in parts of North America, Europe and China may well allow for reductions in input use and result in significant environmental benefits, without necessarily compromising crop yields or farmer incomes. In contrast, in many developing countries, and especially in Africa, crop productivity, and thus the food security and/or incomes of farming households, is tightly constrained by nutrient availability (i.e. because of highly weathered soils, and the limited availability of fertilizer, manure and compostable organic matter) (e.g. Rufino et al., 2011 ). Under such circumstances continued cultivation inevitably leads to soil degradation, and the use of external inputs, including fertilizer, is essential to increase crop yields, sustain soils and build soil C ( Vanlauwe et al., 2014 , 2015 ).

Although not all interpretations of Regenerative Agriculture preclude the use of agrochemicals, all argue to reduce and minimize their use. In writings on Regenerative Agriculture, surprising little attention is paid to alternative methods of pest and disease control, although this appears to be one of the major challenges that farmers will face in order to reduce or phase out chemical control methods. Some interpretations of Regenerative Agriculture are uncompromisingly anti-GMO, despite the potential genetic engineering has to confer plant resistance and reduce the need for chemical sprays ( Giller et al., 2017 ; Lotz et al., 2020 ). Further, all types of agrochemicals are lumped into the same basket, whereas the concerns for both human and environmental health associated with pesticides and fertilizers are vastly different.

As academic and other research agronomists now seek to engage constructively with the individuals, organizations and corporations championing Regenerative Agriculture, we argue that for any given context there are five questions that must be addressed:

• What is the problem to which Regenerative Agriculture is meant to be the solution?
• What is to be regenerated?
• What agronomic mechanism will enable or facilitate this regeneration?
• Can this mechanism be integrated into an agronomic practice that is likely to be economically and socially viable in the specific context?
• What political, social and/or economic forces will drive use of the new agronomic practice?

These questions are meant to stimulate critical reflection on the agronomic aspects of the mechanisms and dynamics of regeneration, given that it is the conceptual core of Regenerative Agriculture. Without reflection along these lines, Regenerative Agriculture will continue to struggle to differentiate itself from other forms of ‘alternative’ agriculture, while the practices with which it is associated will (continue to) vary little if at all from those in the established canon of ‘Good Agricultural Practices’. The questions will also help to separate the philosophical baggage and some of the extraordinary claims that are linked to Regenerative Agriculture, from the areas and problems where agronomic research might make a significant contribution.

The growing enthusiasm for Regenerative Agriculture highlights the need for agronomists to be more explicit about the fact that many of the categories and dichotomies that frame public, and to some degree the scientific debates about agriculture, have little if any analytical purchase. These include e.g. alternative/conventional; family/industrial; regenerative/degenerative; and sustainable/unsustainable. Regardless of their currency in public discourse, these categories are far too broad and undefinable to have any place in guiding agronomic research (although the politics behind their use and abuse in discourse remains of considerable interest).

It is clear from many farmer’s testimonials on the Internet that their moves towards Regenerative Agriculture are underpinned by a philosophy that seeks to protect and enhance the environment. The core argument is most often around soil health, and in particular soil biological health, which is seen as being under threat and is attributed somewhat mythical properties. In much of the promotional material available in the public domain, exaggerated claims are made for the potency and functioning of soil microorganisms in particular. By contrast, for many campaigning NGOs, the locking up or sequestration of carbon in the soil is paramount, with a vision of an agriculture free of external inputs or GMOs, that mimics nature and contributes to solving the climate crisis. Not surprisingly the claimed potential of Regenerative Agriculture has attracted considerable critique – as McGuire (2018) aptly captures in his blog entitled ‘ Regenerative Agriculture: Solid Principles, Extraordinary Claims ’. It seems unlikely that Regenerative Agriculture can deliver all of the positive environmental benefits as well as the increase in global food production that is required. Reflective engagement by research agronomists is now critically important.

Acknowledgement

We thank David Powlson and Matthew Kessler for their critical reviews of an earlier version of this manuscript. All errors or omissions remain our responsibility.

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3. Hereon we use the term Regenerative Agriculture to encompass Regenerative Farming.

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22. https://accountability-framework.org/core-principles/1-protection-of-forests-and-other-natural-ecosystems/ .

23. https://www.ctgb.nl/onderwerpen/glyfosaat , https://ec.europa.eu/food/plant/pesticides/glyphosate/assessment-group_en .

24. https://civileats.com/2020/10/01/does-overselling-regenerative-ags-climate-benefits-undercut-its-potential/ .

Declaration of conflicting interests: The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding: The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: The NWO-WOTRO Strategic Partnership NL-CGIAR and the CGIAR Research Program on Maize through the CIMMYT grant ‘Rural livelihood-oriented research methodologies for social impact analyses of Sustainable Intensification interventions’.

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• Published: 28 February 2022

Effect of COVID-19 on agricultural production and food security: A scientometric analysis

• Collins C. Okolie   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-6633-6717 1 &
• Abiodun A. Ogundeji   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0001-7356-5668 1  

Humanities and Social Sciences Communications volume  9 , Article number:  64 ( 2022 ) Cite this article

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Coronavirus disease has created an unexpected negative situation globally, impacting the agricultural sector, economy, human health, and food security. This study examined research on COVID-19 in relation to agricultural production and food security. Research articles published in Web of Science and Scopus were sourced, considering critical situations and circumstance posed by COVID-19 pandemic with regards to the shortage of agricultural production activities and threat to food security systems. In total, 174 published papers in BibTeX format were downloaded for further study. To assess the relevant documents, authors used “effects of COVID-19 on agricultural production and food security (ECAP-FS) as a search keyword for research published between 2016 and April 2021 utilising bibliometric innovative methods. The findings indicated an annual growth rate of about 56.64%, indicating that research on ECAP-FS increased over time within the study period. Nevertheless, the research output on ECAP-FS varied with 2020 accounting for 38.5%, followed by 2021 with 37.9% as at April 2021. The proposed four stage processes for merging two databases for bibliometric analyses clearly showed that one can run collaboration network analyses, authors coupling among other analyses by following our procedure and finally using net2VOSviewer, which is embedded in Rstudio software package. The study concluded that interruptions in agricultural food supply as a result of the pandemic impacted supply and demand shocks with negative impacts on all the four pillars of food security.

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Introduction.

The coronavirus disease (COVID-19) has created an unusual situation globally (Alam and Khatun, 2021 ). Barely a year ago early in the year 2020, the unusual nature of coronavirus caused most governments to implement stringent steps in their countries to restrain the virus’s spread. The novel coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) disease impacted economies throughout the world, disproportionately impacting individuals who were already susceptible to poverty and hunger (Laborde et al., 2020a ; Ceballos et al., 2020 ). In late December 2019, the virus was discovered in Wuhan City, Hubei Province, China. The pandemic caused by COVID-19 presented a major danger to human health, the economy, and food security in both industrialised and emerging nations (Mottaleb et al., 2020 ; Carroll et al., 2020 ; Alam and Khatun, 2021 ). Lessons learned from China revealed that various COVID-19 countermeasures such as lockdown in the country hampered production. This poses a significant risk to the long-term food supply (FAO, 2020 ), and has a negative impact on the economy, resulting in economic decline and crisis (Bai, 2020 ). It is important to understand that certain precautional and control efforts compromise agricultural production (Singh et al., 2021 ).

The virus wreaked havoc on the agricultural production sector, which is at the heart of the food chain (Pu and Zhong, 2020 ). The global spread of coronavirus resulted in the greatest economic downturn since World War Two (Hanna et al., 2020 ; Xu et al., 2021 ). The epidemic’s major impact on agricultural labour input was the restriction of labour mobility. Farmers were not permitted to just go out and gather in any way except to purchase essentials. This resulted in a manpower scarcity and reduced mass production efficiency. For instance, due to a scarcity of migrant experts, producers from Sichuan, Hunan, and Hubei in the grain-producing districts in China (south-eastern coastal district) were not able to sow their crops in good time (Pu and Zhong, 2020 ). Furthermore, wheat and pulse harvesting in northwest India was hampered due to a lack of migrant labour (Dev, 2020 ). Vegetable farmers in Ethiopia incurred not just financial loss as a result of overstocked items, but also from a lack of vital inputs (Tamru et al., 2020 ). Before the pandemic, suppliers may have planted six hectares in a single day, but due to the difficulties in finding tractor drivers during the pandemic, they were only able to cover three hectares a day (Pu and Zhong, 2020 ). Any interruptions in agricultural food supply will indeed result in supply and demand shocks, which will have an immediate effect on the agricultural sector of the economy with long-term economic performance and food security implications (Gregorio and Ancog, 2020 ).

Food security refers to a situation where all individuals at all time have continuous physical and economic access to sufficient, safe, and nutritious food to fulfil their dietary needs and food choices for an active and healthy lifestyle (Elsahoryi et al., 2020 ). Food security has been jeopardised both directly and indirectly as a result of the virus’s destabilisation of food systems and the effects of lockdowns on family revenue and physical access to food (Devereux et al., 2020 ). The presence of coronavirus disease has a negative impact on all the four pillars of food security, viz. availability of food, accessibility of food, utilisation of food, and stability of food (Nechifor et al., 2021 ; Laborde et al., 2020b ). According to Genkin and Mikheev ( 2020 ), the report by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), World Trade Organization, and World Health Organization (WHO) note the threat of a food catastrophe triggered by the current coronavirus pandemic, with a risk of a global “food shortage” owing to interruptions in the trade industry’s supply chain. According to the report, global commerce contracted by roughly 20% in 2020, with 90–120 million human beings falling into severe destitution and over 300 million facing food security issues in emerging nations. To combat the COVID-19 pandemic, world leaders implemented steps to decrease the number of commodities carried by sea, air and land, as well as labour migration at national and global levels. These variables contributed to a widespread disturbance in agricultural output and food distribution systems, posing challenges to the transportation of food and agricultural resources (Genkin and Mikheev, 2020 ).

Present literature centred on the effect of coronavirus on food security or effect of coronavirus on agricultural production (Elsahoryi et al., 2020 ; Nchanji and Lutomia, 2021 ). Despite the growing body of research on coronavirus, agricultural production, and food security, few studies have attempted to conduct a thorough assessment of the literature and map the present level of scientific knowledge on the effect of coronavirus on agricultural production and food security (ECAP-FS). Hence, the goal of this research was to examine the effect of coronavirus on agricultural production and food security by employing bibliometric analyses techniques to recognise keywords in connection to two core aspects, namely the most prolific or productive writers and the most collaborative nations, and then to examine the strength of their association over the study period. The study characterised intellectual processes further by visualising and recognising the advancement of the co-citation network, cooperation network, and trends in ECAP-FS research. This research will not only aid in the identification of present research on ECAP-FS, but also contributes to an improved comprehension of the scientific knowledge of coronavirus and its impact on agricultural production, food security, and the investigation of its evolution via published papers included in the Web of Science (WoS) and Scopus databases. Because one database is unlikely to provide a comprehensive picture of knowledge and trends in a field, the authors recommend a four stage processes to achieve a merged database that integrates WoS and Scopus and then deletes identical publications using RStudio or R-package to perform author coupling, keywords co-occurrence network visualisation, university collaboration networks, and others using net2VOSviewer. This study will be among the few that explains how to integrate two datasets and utilise them to conduct different network associations in bibliometrix R-package (RStudio v.4.0.3 software).

Method and data collection

The scientometric technique was used to retrieve articles relating to the effect of coronavirus on agricultural production and food security. This method used resources from two different databases, WoS and Scopus, for the systematic reviews. Table 1 shows the eligibility and exclusion criteria that was used to access the relevant documents. The various steps employed in the review process were (databases, identification, screening, eligibility, merging, duplicate removal and included documents) (see Fig. 1 ). Processing and analysis of the data were then applied to the remaining documents. Scientometrics is defined as the research approach utilised in analysing and assessing science, innovation, and technology by applying statistics and quantitative analysis to explain the distribution and visualisation patterns of research within a specific nation, issue, field or institution (Orimoloye and Ololade, 2021 ). Scientometric evaluations have been used to analyse scientific trends and outputs, as well as the evolution of research, author productivity, journals, and nations, as well as to discover and measure international collaboration (Orimoloye and Ololade, 2021 ).

WoS: Web of Science.

WoS and Scopus were the two-database used for this study. WoS is a database collection administered by Thomson Reuters Institute of Scientific Information (ISI) that contains databases on humanities, social sciences, biology (i.e., Biosis), science (i.e., Core Collection) and computers (i.e., Inspec). WoS was previously the only and biggest accessible database for bibliometric analysis. However, Scopus that was launched by Elsevier, with ease of use in universities throughout the globe emerged as a key rival for doing such studies (Echchakoui, 2020 ). Scopus has the largest abstract and citation databases with over 22,800 journals from 5000 publishers worldwide was used in the review (Shaffril et al., 2018 ). Moreover, It is the most comprehensive interdisciplinary database of peer-reviewed literature in the social sciences, and is generally acknowledged and utilised for quantitative analyses (Guerrero-Baena et al., 2014 ).

Criteria for eligibility and exclusion

Various qualifying and exclusion criteria were considered. Title-based search for rapid visibility and retrieval was used. According to Ekundayo and Okoh ( 2018 ), a title-specific search offers the advantages of low loss, considerable retrieval, and sensitivity when compared to other types of searches such as a topic, field, or author search. First, concerning literature type, only journals and final articles were selected, which meant Article in Press, etc., were excluded. Secondly, non-English articles were excluded. Thirdly, a period of 6 years was used followed by the subject area, which focused on Environmental, Social, Agricultural, and Biological Sciences (Table 1 ) (Shaffril et al., 2018 ).

Systematic review process

To explore the current literature on ECAP-FS, we conducted a comprehensive literature review according to the rules provided by Tranfield et al. ( 2003 ). The systematic review process for this study involved four stages. The review process was performed in April 2021. The first stage was the selection of databases (WoS and Scopus). The second stage pinpointed keywords utilised for the search process. Based on prior research, keywords similar and related to the effect of COVID-19 on agricultural output and food security were used with a total of ( n  = 9, 421) published records found on WoS and Scopus, respectively (Table 2 ). The third stage was screening. Out of ( n  = 9, 421) papers eligible for evaluation at this stage, a total of ( n  = 7, 203) papers were excluded. The fourth stage was eligibility where the complete articles were accessible. Following a thorough review, a total of ( n  = 1, 46) publications were eliminated since some did not focus on the effect of coronavirus on agricultural production and food security. The fifth stage was merging the two documents ( n  = 6, 172 = 178). The sixth stage was the removal of duplicates ( n  = 4). The last round of evaluation yielded a total of ( n  = 174) papers for qualitative analysis (Fig. 1 ).

Processing and analysis of data

The research assessed data obtained for scientometric investigation utilising RStudio v.4.0.3 software with bibliometrix R-package and net2VOSviewer after reading the articles relevant to the study. The data were imported into RStudio, transformed to a bibliographic data frame, and normalised for duplicate matches (Aria and Cuccurullo, 2017 ; Ekundayo and Okoh, 2018 ). Net2VOSviewer (net,vos.path = NULL) embedded in RStudio v.4.0.3 software were used for visualisation. The VOSviewer programme created by Van Eck and Waltman ( 2009 ) is often used to visualise and evaluate a bibliometric network. Hamidah et al. ( 2021 ) and Zhang and Yuan ( 2019 ) made use of VOSviewer to analyse a bibliographic map on energy performance. Park and Nagy ( 2018 ) used VOSviewer to examine building control bibliographic data, and Van Eck and Waltman ( 2017 ) analysed citation-based clustering in the field of astronomy and astrophysics using VOSviewer. The research made use of Net2VOSviewer embedded in R studio to make visualisation maps, such as authors coupling, keyword co-occurrence network, and university collaboration network, based on bibliographic data. Each circle on the VOSviewer visual map represents a word. The term activity is represented by the circle and text size. The big circle and text show the chosen terms in a field. The distance between the two words reflects the degree of their association. In this case, the relationship between two words will be greater if the distance between them is small (Hamidah et al., 2021 ).

Web of Science and Scopus database merging for bibliometric analysis

The authors suggest the following four stage approach to combine the two databases shown in Fig. 1 and Table 3 .

As soon as required articles were sourced, we downloaded the documents separately from WoS and Scopus databases. For WoS, we clicked on export, which redirected us to another window where we selected “other file formats” under record content, and “BiTeX” under file format before we clicked export. For Scopus, we went to export document setting where we ticked all relevant boxes including “BibTeX” before clicking export. The second step was to transform (WoS.bib and Scopus.bib) to “bibtex” files. Here we used R or Rstudio software by loading the bibliometrix package “install.packages” (“bibliometrix”), and “library(bibliometrix)”, After that we specified the pathway using the command file1<- “path/savedrecs.bib” and file2 < - “path/scopus.bib” for WoS and Scopus files, respectively. After that we converted file (1&2) using command “f1<-convert2df(file1, dbsource = “isi”, format = “bibtex”)” and “f2<-convert2df(file2, dbsource = “scopus”, format = “bibtex”)” for WoS and Scopus respectively. We merged the two databases in R/Rstudio. For this operation to be successful, we used the command “j <-mergeDbSources(f1, f2, remove.duplicated = FALSE)”. Finally, the duplicate documents were removed using the command “M < -duplicatedMatching(j, Field = “TI”,tol = 0.95)”. We performed a bibliometric analysis for bibtex file in Rstudio, using Aria and Cuccurullo’s ( 2017 ) techniques and scripts in R, and utilising the net2VOSviewer for keywords co-occurrence network, collaboration networks of universities, authors coupling, amongst others.

Bibliometric analyses results

During the survey period, 174 papers were published on ECAP-FS; their characteristics are shown in Table 4 . The research had 851 authors, with a cooperation index of 5.1 and a document/author ratio of 0.20 (4.89 authors/document). Except for nine authors who published alone, all 842 authors were part of multi-author publications.

During the research period, an average of 6.0 citations per document were recorded. Lotka’s law scientific output for ECAP-FS study revealed a constant of 0.70 and beta coefficient of 3.88, with a Kolmogorov–Smirnoff goodness-of-fit of 0.94. Table 5 and Fig. 2 displays published research on ECAP-FS from 2016 to April 2021 in conjunction with the total citation of papers on average by year. The yearly pace of development was 56.64, with a mean overall of 12 ± 6, indicating that ECAP-FS research increased over time. This outcome agrees with the work of El Mohadebe et al. ( 2020 ) who stated that the number of published articles increased exponentially since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. The rise in COVID-19 research reflects that it is a major danger to human health, the economy, and food security in industrialised and emerging nations (Carroll et al., 2020 ; Mottaleb et al., 2020 ; Alam and Khatun, 2021 ).

ATC/Y average total citations of articles published per year. NB: The yearly percentage rate of increase was 56.64.

During the survey period, research production varied, peaking in 2020 with 38.5% (67/174) of the total research output, followed by 2021 with 66 research articles accounting for 37.9% (66/174) during the same time. This result is liable to change when additional papers pertaining to ECAP-FS are published in 2021. The average total number of citations for published papers changed over time, peaking in 2016 (average = 11.8). Furthermore, the findings of this analysis identified the top 20 most prolific authors from 2016 to April 2021. Table 6 shows Gong B as the most productive author over the time, with six papers accounting for 3.45% of the total research publications on ECAP-FS. The following were placed second on the list: Baudron F, Peng W, and Zhang S who published three research articles each accounting for 1.7% of the total published research articles within the study period. The rest of the 17 authors published two articles within the same year. The quantity of a researcher’s academic output demonstrates their efficacy and propensity for conducting quality research (Orimoloye et al., 2021a )

Citation analysis reveals how many times a specific research article has been cited in other scientific articles. More cited research articles are considered significantly more influential than articles with fewer citations (Mishra et al., 2017 ; Nyam et al., 2020 ). Table 7 shows the top 20 papers on ECAP-FS in terms of citations in the field throughout the time. The list was compiled using the publications with the most citations (Echchakoui, 2020 ). In this research on ECAP-FS, Foyer et al. 2016 “Nature Plants” placed first with a total of 244 citations. Hart et al. 2018 “Functional Ecology” took second place with 60 citations, followed by Smiraglia D. 2016 “Environmental Research” with 52 citations during the same time period. Millar NS 2016 “Oecologia” and Tesfahunegn GB 2016 “Applied Geography” rated fourth and fifth with 43 and 42 citations, respectively. With 39, 23 and 21 citations, respectively, KC et al. 2018 “Plos One,” Pu and Zhong, 2020 “Global Food Security,” and Provenza FD 2019 “Frontiers in Nutrition” placed sixth, seventh, and eighth. As shown in Table 8 , the leading active writers were connected with institutions in both emerging and developed countries, including China (28), the United States (19), the United Kingdom (12), Italy (9), Spain (8), Australia (5), India (5), and Mexico (5). With the exception of China, the majority of the articles were from developed countries. China, the United States of America, United Kingdom, Italy, and Spain, among other countries, contributed the most articles in ECAP-FS, which is line with the work of Mottaleb et al. ( 2020 ). According to Orimoloye et al. ( 2021b ), research funding and scholarships have had a significant impact on the research output of many countries. As a result, this study indicates that economic assistance could help in the advancement of research in the area of ECAP-FS. Furthermore, during the research period, the total citation of published papers on average by each nation differed from one nation to another. Table 9 shows the top 20 citations by nation for ECAP-FS research papers. The data indicated that the most mentioned nations were industrialised ones, while China, a developing country, placed second among the most often referenced nations. The exceptional success of China research suggests that the nation performs well in sponsoring field research, possibly because the coronavirus originated in Wuhan City of China (Mottalab et al., 2020). Italy leads the way with 112 total citations and an average article citation of 12.44 for research papers published during the study duration, China was second with 107 citations and an average article citation of 3.82. During the same time period, the United States, the United Kingdom, Ethiopia, and Canada were placed third, fourth, fifth, and sixth, with total number of citations (average article citations) of 81 (4.26), 76 (6.33), 47 (23.50), and 40 (13.33), respectively.

This analysis also uncovered the most relevant sources for published academic research on ECAP-FS between 2016 and April 2021, as shown in Table 10 . Sustainability (Switzerland) was first with a total of 23 scientific papers on ECAP-FS. Agricultural Systems and Journal of Cleaner Production were ranked second and third with a total of 13 and 10 articles respectively. Global Food Security and Science of The Total Environment were rated fourth with eight articles each. Land was ranked fifth with five articles while Food Security, International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, Plos One were ranked sixth with four published articles each. Environmental Research and Journal of Integrative Agriculture rated seventh with three published articles on ECAP-FS throughout the review period.

Concerns are growing about the influence of COVID-19 on agricultural production, which could pose a significant threat to long-term food security and food supply (Pu and Zhong, 2020 ). Table 11 summarises the top 20 academics’ most relevant terms. In addition, Table 11 displays the most important keywords linked to ECAP-FS research, including keywords-plus (ID) as well as author keywords (DE). COVID-19, Food Security, Agriculture, Climate Change, Sustainable Development, Agricultural Production, Biodiversity, China, and Sustainability were among the nine keywords shared by keywords-plus (ID) and author keywords (DE). Eleven keywords were peculiar to authors’ keywords (Resilience, Ecosystem Services, Food Systems, COVID-19 Pandemic, Food Supply Chain, India, Land Take, Life Cycle Assessment, Nutrition, Conservation, and Dietary Diversity), and nine keywords were unique to keywords-Plus (Food Supply, Human, Article, Food Production, Land Use, Agricultural Robots, Agricultural Land, Controlled Study, and Cultivation). The distinct author keywords explicitly defined what COVID-19 affected as well as the means or elements engaged in the process (Nutrition, Dietary Diversity, Ecosystem Services, Resilience, Conservation, Food Systems, and Food Supply Chain of People). COVID-19 ( n  = 27, 15.5%), Food Security ( n  = 25, 14.4%), Agriculture ( n  = 18, 10.3%), Climate Change ( n  = 9, 5.2%), Sustainable Development ( n  = 5, 2.9%), Agricultural Production ( n  = 4, 2.3%), Biodiversity ( n  = 4, 2.3%), China ( n  = 4, 2.3%), COVID-19 Pandemic ( n  = 4, 2.3%) were author keyword phrases related with the detection of ECAP-FS.

The keyword analysis identified Food Security in 35 (20.1%) and 25 (14.4%) published papers by keyword-plus and author keyword, respectively, while Agricultural was found in 28 (16.1%) and 18 (10.3%) published papers by keyword-plus and author keyword, respectively. By author keyword and keyword-plus, Agricultural Production was detected in 4 (2.3%) and 28 (16.1%) publications, respectively. In the ECAP-FS study field, Climate Change was detected in 26 (14.9%) and 9 (5.2%) papers by keyword-plus and author keyword, respectively. The review indicates that research on ECAP-FS emphasised these agricultural-related issues several times, implying that COVID-19 has an effect on agriculture, agricultural production, sustainable development, food security, and food supply of the general public, which is exacerbated by climate change, and is a major danger to food security, economy and human health (Mottaleb et al., 2020 ).

The connection between influential authors, keywords, journals, and trending topics was investigated using co-citation network analysis (Leydesdorff, 2009 ). Articles are said to be co-cited when they are cited and appear in other publications’ reference lists (Nyam et al., 2020 ). The top 20 authors coupling in Fig. 3 explains the authors coupling on ECAP-FS-related research. Every node in the network symbolises a distinct author who is linked to others. Connecting lines reflect author-to-author linking routes. The number of lines from each node correlates to the number of published papers that referenced the writer. The cluster of authors network, which comprises 20 nodes (authors), has no less than 18 interconnections. Other indicators of often expressed ideas and frameworks linked to ECAP-FS include nation collaboration (Fig. 4 ) and university collaboration network (Fig. 5 ).

The top 20 authors coupling on agricultural production and food security published articles. (Every node in the network symbolises a distinct author who is linked to others. Connecting lines reflect author-to author linking routes).

The top 27 nation collaboration networks on agricultural production and food security. (Each node represents a country, and the lines represent their collaboration).

The top 20 university collaboration networks on agricultural production and food security research.

Authors with multiple affiliations have made significant contributions to nation and university collaborative networks (Figs. 4 and 5 ). Our findings indicated that studies on ECAP-FS were conducted at institutions in both advanced and developing nations between 2016 and April 2021. The Wageningen University (Netherland), the China Agricultural University (China), the Zhejiang University (Asia), and University of Pretoria (South Africa) had the greatest collaboration network on ECAP-FS studies followed by the University of Western Australia (Australia), University of Leeds (UK), University of Alberta (Canada), University of Sydney (Australia), Case Western Reserve University (USA), Chinese University of Hong Kong (China) and the International Crop Research Institute. The University of Oxford was the only university that did not collaborate with any of the universities during the study period. Figure 4 depicts the networks of collaboration on ECAP-FS for 27 countries. The number of collaboration paths varied from one to 17. The number of partnerships was highest in the USA ( n  = 17), followed by China (n = 10), Australia ( n  = 8), the United Kingdom ( n  = 8), Canada ( n  = 5), the Netherlands ( n  = 4), Germany ( n  = 4), South Africa ( n  = 4), Uganda ( n  = 3), India ( n  = 3), Malaysia ( n  = 2), Denmark ( n  = 2), France ( n  = 2), Spain ( n  = 2), and New Zealand ( n  = 2). The remaining nations had one collaboration network. This outcome is consistent with El Mohadab et al. ( 2020 ) as the analysis of a nation’s collaboration is a vital type of analysis, because it allows for the visualisation of the most influential nations in a given field of research, revealing the level of scientific cooperation between the countries. The following network colour codes were prominent: light green for the USA network; light blue for the China network; purple for the Australia network; orange for the United Kingdom network; and brown for the Spain network.

Figure 6 depicts the top 30 keywords of co-occurrence network, the related visualisation and the association strength of ECAP-FS. The co-occurrence of author keywords was examined to illustrate the research hotspots in ECAP-FS. The threshold for keyword co-occurrence was set at 10, and 30 keywords out of 708 were categorised as visualisation elements. The distance between the components of each pairings indicated topic similarity and relative strength. Individual term clusters were allocated different colours of circles. The network in Fig. 6 depicts three different clusters, each reflecting a branch of research in the ECAP-FS literature. The number of publications in which the keywords co-occurred was shown by the connections between specific keywords. The main themes with the highest overall connection strength in the ECAP-FS literature were COVID-19, Food Security, Agriculture, and Climate Change.

The co-occurrence network visualisation of 30 keywords and their relationship strength of agricultural production and food security research.

The ECAP-FS scientific field has three subfields (clusters of author keywords), which are as follows:

The blue cluster includes terms such as COVID-19, Food Supply, Food Production, China, Food Security, and Agricultural Production.’

The red cluster grouped the keywords Agricultural Land, Catering Services, Environmental Protection, Humans, Meat, Human, Food Industry, Article, Female, Priority Journal, Procedures, Controlled Study, and Environmental Sustainability.

The green cluster grouped the keywords Economic and Social Effects, Agriculture, Agricultural Robots, Sustainable Development, Climate Change, Land Use, Greenhouse Gases, Ecosystem, and Biodiversity. The findings revealed a significant variation in the co-occurrence of author keywords in individual articles in the ECAP-FS literature. This demonstrated the scientific field’s multifaceted and multidimensional nature. This result is agreement with the work of Orimoloye et al. ( 2021b ).

Figure 7 depicts the frequency of word occurrence of the top 70 most utilised title keywords in ECAP-FS studies. During the research, a word cloud was generated using the titles of published articles that contained the most frequently used keywords in ECAP-FS research. This revealed the most commonly used word or phrase in ECAP-FS research. Within the word cloud on ECAP-FS research, various regions of connections and the most significant words used were determined. For example, COVID-19, food security, agriculture, climate change, ecosystem services, resilience, agricultural production, sustainable development, food system, and China were recognised as the most prevalent or prominent themes in ECAP-FS studies.

Word cloud or frequency of word occurrence of the top 70 most often used title keywords in agricultural production and food security research.

The COVID-19 pandemic has received significant recognition since the outbreak, and serious effort has been expended by researchers around the world in various fields. The present bibliometric analysis of COVID-19 examined the resulting effects on agricultural production and food security research trends from 2016 to April 2021 by means of data acquired from WoS and Scopus. According to our findings in ECAP-FS, there has been an exponential rise in research publications. This indicates that studies on ECAP-FS received increasing attention during last few years especially in 2020 and 2021, most likely due to COVID-19 pandemic related research by authors from different counties of the world like China, USA and the United Kingdom. Furthermore, most of the productive authors in ECAP-FS at the time of this research were from China, possibly because the pandemic was first discovered in Wuhan City.

The findings of this analysis revealed that few articles came from Africa. In terms of country and institution collaboration networks, few of the countries and institutions collaborated with the countries in Africa except for the University of Pretoria, which had a strong collaboration network on ECAP-FS research during the period of study. According to the word cloud analysis and frequency analysis of the frequently used keywords and keyword-plus demonstrated that the most topical issues in ECAP-FS are COVID-19, food security, agriculture, climate change, agricultural production, sustainable development, biodiversity and sustainability. These results demonstrated the most persistent issues related to ECAP-FS; this was buttressed by another conceptual framework indicator such as keyword co-occurrence networks.

The bibliometric survey performed in this study has some limitations, such as the use of two databases (Scopus and WoS), the strictness of the search keywords and search approach employed, as well as the exclusion of other document types (e.g., conference papers, books chapters, reviews, abstracts, meetings and notes, etc.) and published articles in languages other than English (French, Dutch, Chinese). Despite the limitations, this research seems to be the first bibliometric analysis on ECAP-FS-related studies, which adds to the evidence base and will drive further studies. Furthermore, WoS and Scopus have greater coverage than other databases, dependable indexing technology that reduces the “indexer effect,” and are highly regarded by scientific communities. Other databases, such as ScienceDirect, Education Resource Information Center (ERIC), and Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ), should be evaluated in future studies.

Data availability

All data analysed are contained in the paper.

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Okolie, C.C., Ogundeji, A.A. Effect of COVID-19 on agricultural production and food security: A scientometric analysis. Humanit Soc Sci Commun 9 , 64 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-022-01080-0

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Environmental and social benefits from diversified agriculture found in global study

Food security and biodiversity are both helped by diversified farming techniques, with little negative impact, according to a new paper that includes research from two Washington State University professors.

The study, published in the journal Science , involved 58  co-authors located at institutions on five continents.

“The results are overwhelmingly strong for all diversification strategies,” said David Crowder, a professor in WSU’s Department of Entomology. “The working theory is that diversity is good in agriculture, but I was surprised that the benefits were so strong.”

Crowder and his colleague Jeb Owen, an WSU associate professor in entomology, both contributed data to the paper, which was a meta-analysis of 28 global studies. In fact, neither Owen nor Crowder knew the other was involved in the paper until it was nearly published.

Owen’s contribution centered on wild birds and their impact on organic farms. His lab conducted surveys at 30 different locations in four states, including Washington, to look at costs and benefits from wild birds as well as each farm’s crop diversification.

“We found that the more complex and diverse a farm, the wider the diversity of wild birds it supported, and that the birds were a net positive for the farms,” Owen said.

Owen’s former graduate student, Olivia Smith, led his wild bird research and was another co-author on the new paper.

Wild, native birds fed on insect pests that damage crops, decreasing the need for pest-control measures, while not increasing pathogen spread or destroying crops, he said.

Crowder’s contribution included his lab’s research on canola and different tillage processes used by growers.

“There’s a lot of research at WSU looking at diversified farming and ways we can improve the sustainability of farms,” Crowder said. “This paper shows that WSU is plugged into global issues, and I hope we see more of this out of the university.”

There’s a lot of research at WSU looking at diversified farming and ways we can improve the sustainability of farms. This paper shows that WSU is plugged into global issues, and I hope we see more of this out of the university. David Crowder, professor WSU Department of Entomology

Laura Vang Rasmussen of the University of Copenhagen is lead author on the new study and worked for nearly four years to coordinate and synthesize data from around the world.

“Our results from this comprehensive study are surprisingly clear,” Vang Rasmussen said. “While we see very few negative effects from agricultural diversification, there are many significant benefits. This is particularly the case when two, three, or more measures are combined. The more, the better, especially when it comes to biodiversity and food security.”

The researchers saw the greatest positive effects on food security, followed closely by biodiversity. Furthermore, social outcomes in the form of well-being also improved significantly.

Among the many strategies adopted, livestock diversification and soil conservation had the most positive outcomes.

Yields not hampered — with clearly improved food security

According to the researchers, previous studies investigated either the socioeconomic or environmental effects of agricultural diversification. This study investigates effects across the board, with surprisingly positive results.

“Agricultural diversification has been accused of perhaps being good for biodiversity, but having a few negative aspects too — especially with regards to not being able to achieve sufficiently high yields,” said Ingo Grass of the University of Hohenheim. “What we actually see is that there is no reduction in yield from diversified agriculture — not even when we include data from large-scale European agriculture.”

In fact, the figures demonstrate that in the case of small farms and farms surrounded by lots of cultivated land, more diversified agriculture can significantly promote food security. This, according to the researchers, could be due to a number of factors.

“One example is fruit trees planted in maize fields in Malawi, which can help farming families improve their food security through improved diet and nutrition,” Vang Rasmussen said. “Partly because they eat the fruits themselves, and also because the trees generate extra income when their fruits are sold at market — income that provides small-scale farmers with purchasing power for other foods.”

All 58 of the study’s authors participated actively in its design to attempt a robust and credible interweaving of the many data sets spread across the world — from maize production in Malawi, to rubber trees in Indonesia, to silvopastoral cattle farming in Colombia and winter wheat in Germany.

“The study unites many different situations from the many data sets that we used,” Vang Rasmussen said. “In Malawi, we have data on food security expressed, for example, in the number of hungry months for small-scale farmers where they have been short of food. Such metrics are not used for, for example, large European farms, where we have yield data instead, such as winter-wheat yields in Germany.

“But the point is that when we look across all data sets, our results show that applying more diversification strategies improved both biodiversity and food security, and didn’t have a negative effect on yields,” she added.

The researchers also investigated which diversification strategies result in “pairs” of favorable “ win-win ” outcomes. Their data showed that strategies beneficial for biodiversity also improved food security.

They also witnessed win-wins for biodiversity and people’s well-being.

“It’s a simple message to be able to pass on to different types of farms — whether it is small farms in South America or Africa or advanced European agriculture, there are lots of positive effects to be gained by introducing these various strategies — and very little to fear,” Grass said. “It is very positive that so many different things can be addressed, and that, in general, positive biodiversity outcomes seem to go hand in hand with well-being and food security.”

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