Livestock agriculture must change to meet demand for food production while building soil, reducing flooding, retaining nutrients, enhancing biodiversity, and supporting thriving communities. Technological innovations, including those in digital and precision agriculture, are unlikely by themselves to create the magnitude and directionality of transformation of livestock production systems that are needed. We begin by comparing technological, ecological and social innovations in feedlot-finished and pasture-finished cattle production and propose that what is required is a more integrative 'agroecological innovation' process that intentionally weaves these three forms of innovation to transition livestock agriculture to be genuinely regenerative and multifunctional. This integrated system emphasizes social innovations as essential components of the innovation system because of their capacity to address and influence the social context into which technological and ecological innovations occur. In particular, regional place-making can be especially useful as an interactive process of designing regional identities as people engage with one another and their environments to define landscape futures and the related social standards that normalize particular land management practices. Intentionally developing innovations can help communities engage in relational place-making processes to define desired outcomes for agricultural landscapes and develop ways to collaborate towards achieving them, including the creation of novel supply chains that support regenerative livestock systems. As social norms evolve through place-making they influence individual behaviors and agricultural practices on the ground and offer a pathway for more rapid scaling of regenerative practices in livestock agriculture. Regional place-making also can influence the 'meta' context of agricultural systems by engaging with public and private institutions responsible for management of natural resources, food systems, and the public good, further accelerating the scaling process. Emerging agroecological innovation systems for livestock agriculture must be designed and governed in ways that ensure responsible and diverse outcomes compatible with their social and ecological contexts, and with management approaches and technologies consistent with the values and goals of communities in a region.

India faces significant air quality challenges, contributing to local health and global climate concerns. Despite a national ban on agricultural residue burning and various incentive schemes, farmers in northern India continue to face difficulties in curbing open-field burning. Using data from 1021 farming households in rural Punjab in India, we examine the patterns and drivers of the adoption of no-burn agriculture, particularly for farmers who mulch instead of burning crop residue. We find a growing trend in no-burn farming practices among farmers between 2015 and 2017, with the highest adoption rates among large farmers compared to medium and small farmers. Our findings suggest that access to equipment and learning opportunities may increase the likelihood of farmers using straw as mulch instead of burning it. Specifically, social learning appears to increase the likelihood of farmers embracing no-burn practices relative to learning from extension agencies. Furthermore, the form of learning depends on farm size. While large and medium farmers exhibit a variety of learning strategies, small farmers primarily self-learn. These results underscore the importance of a multiprong policy that provides sufficient access to equipment and a combination of learning platforms that enabling farmers from different land classes to adopt no-burn technologies.

Changing climates are causing agricultural water shortages at unprecedented scales and magnitudes, especially in regions historically reliant on irrigation. Identifying and understanding systems of farming that allow continuity in agricultural operations in times of water scarcity are increasingly urgent needs. Vegetable dry farming relies on winter rains stored in soils to reduce irrigation to 0–2 events per season and has become prevalent on California's Central Coast in recent decades. Until now, this system has been unexplored in scientific literature beyond extension publications, despite its promise as a model for low-water agriculture in arid regions. Dry farm management presents a unique challenge given that low water content restricts nutrient access in surface soils, which farmers typically target for fertility management. Managing soil nutrients at depth, as well as microorganisms that help plants access nutrients and alleviate water stress (e.g. arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi, or AMF) could be crucial to dry farm success. We engaged in a collaborative research design process with farmers managing seven commercial dry farm tomato fields to identify and answer three key management questions: 1. What are the depths at which nutrients influence harvest outcomes given low water content in surface soils?, 2. Are commercially available AMF inoculants effective at improving harvest outcomes?, and 3. How does the broader fungal community change in dry farm soils, and are those changes associated with harvest outcomes? Only soil nutrients below 60 cm depth were correlated with tomato yield and fruit quality. We identified a fungal class, Sordariomycetes, as a 'signature' fungal group in dry farm soils that distinguished them from irrigated management and correlated with positive fruit quality, while commercial AMF inoculation showed little benefit. These findings can inform management practices that optimize fruit yield and quality, and can guide farmers and policymakers alike in efforts to minimize agricultural water use.

Industrial food production systems depend on inputs such as fertilisers, pesticides, and commercial animal feeds that are highly traded commodities in global markets. Disturbances in international trade can threaten the local food production if the imports of the key agricultural inputs were drastically reduced. However, despite the importance of the topic, a comprehensive analysis focusing on the import dependency of multiple agricultural inputs at the global level and thus revealing the vulnerability of regions and individual countries does not exist. Here, we analyse the temporal trends of agricultural input trade globally at the national scale from 1991 to 2020 by applying statistics of the use and trade of synthetic fertilisers (N, P, and K), pesticides and livestock and aquaculture feeds (grouped into oilseed feeds and other feed crops). The results show that the import dependency of agricultural inputs has increased over the past 30 years, but there is high variation between countries. Countries with high import dependency combined with high use of these inputs, such as many industrial agricultural producers in South America, Asia as well as Europe, show high vulnerability to trade shocks. Also, our findings highlight that potential agricultural intensification in Sub-Saharan African countries—currently with low use of the inputs per cropland area but high import dependency—can lead to higher dependency on imported agricultural inputs. Therefore, understanding of the past trends and current risks associated with the dependency on imported agricultural inputs should be highlighted to mitigate the risks and build more resilient and sustainable food systems.

Over the next three decades rising population and changing dietary preferences are expected to increase food demand by 25%–75%. At the same time climate is also changing—with potentially drastic impacts on food production. Breeding new crop characteristics and adjusting management practices are critical avenues to mitigate yield loss and sustain yield stability under a changing climate. In this study, we use a mechanistic crop model (MAIZSIM) to identify high-performing trait and management combinations that maximize yield and yield stability for different agroclimate regions in the US under present and future climate conditions. We show that morphological traits such as total leaf area and phenological traits such as grain-filling start time and duration are key properties that impact yield and yield stability; different combinations of these properties can lead to multiple high-performing strategies under present-day climate conditions. We also demonstrate that high performance under present day climate does not guarantee high performance under future climate. Weakened trade-offs between canopy leaf area and reproductive start time under a warmer future climate led to shifts in high-performing strategies, allowing strategies with higher total leaf area and later grain-filling start time to better buffer yield loss and out-compete strategies with a smaller canopy leaf area and earlier reproduction. These results demonstrate that focused effort is needed to breed plant varieties to buffer yield loss under future climate conditions as these varieties may not currently exist, and showcase how information from process-based models can complement breeding efforts and targeted management to increase agriculture resilience.

Smallholder, rain-fed agriculture has been practiced in Tigray, Ethiopia for thousands of years, so farmers have experience with natural disturbances. However, civil war began in November 2020 and disrupted the agricultural system through theft and destruction of farming implements, livestock, and crops, and threats towards human activity, impacting farmers' ability to work their land. To investigate effects on agricultural activity we used remote sensing data and machine learning methods to map cropped area across Tigray from 2017 to 2022. Specifically, spectral mixture analysis was applied to Sentinel-2 data to produce green vegetation, non-photosynthetic vegetation, soil, and shade endmember fractions. Monthly medians of these fractions, along with reference data generated by manual interpretation of very high spatial resolution data, were used to drive random forests-based classifications of crop/no-crop for each year. Initially we used a greenness threshold to distinguish between active and abandoned fields for a given year, but when rainfall is adequate, fields abandoned due to conflict can green up with weeds rather than crops, leading to false positive crop detections. In the spring, abandoned fields have a bright soil crust due to a lack of plowing, so these fields were removed from the crop reference data if the March soil endmember fraction anomaly was greater than 0.15. Overall accuracies of the crop/no-crop maps ranged from 80% to 90% for the different districts. Producer's/user's accuracies for the crop class ranged from 55%–80%/69%–90%. In 2021, crop area declined by 29% and 20% in West and Northwest Tigray, respectively, corresponding with reports of intense conflict there. The rest of Tigray showed a mix of smaller increases and decreases, indicating more resilience to the regional conflict. Finally, in 2022 we found increases in cropped area relative to 2021, for all districts except West Tigray, indicating recovery except for the areas where conflict was most severe.

Global grain trade plays a key role in food security. Many nations rely on imported grain to meet their dietary requirements. Grain imports may be at risk due to weather shocks, economic crises, or international conflicts. Countries aim to balance import risk with the expected return of their grain supplies. This research brings these dual objectives together in an innovative modern portfolio theory framework. Modern portfolio theory provides a set of concepts to formulate the trade-off between risk and expected return in national grain imports. Using Markowitz's mean-variance optimization model, we identify opportunities to reduce risk in existing national grain import accounts, without increasing costs under realistic supply mass constraints of trade partners. Several major grain importers may be able to reduce risk in their grain imports without increasing cost, such as wheat imports in Egypt, maize imports in Vietnam, and rice imports in Saudi Arabia. However, some countries would indeed have to pay more to achieve more stable grain supplies, such as wheat imports in Turkey. This study provides a framework to quantify the different costs, benefits, and levels of risk in grain trade that can inform future research and decision-making.