Social-Ecologically More Sustainable Agricultural Production

Dear Colleagues,

This Special Issue aims to provide a platform for presenting and discussing new findings or approaches on relevant topics of social-ecologically more sustainable agricultural production. Making significant progress in developing and implementing more sustainable agricultural production is one of the most important challenges that humanity faces in climate change era farming and involves considering both economic and social–ecological aspects in the long term. Social-ecologically more sustainable agricultural production is intended to (i) meet the increasing demand for food, (ii) reduce environmental degradation, and (iii) improve many other ecosystem services, such as the provision of medicinal resources, climate regulation, air quality, disturbance modulation, nutrient cycling, pollination, nursery service, and aesthetic information.

The conventional view is that organic farming and regenerative agriculture, as opposed to conventional agricultural production, are in line with social–ecological principles. Individual processes and approaches may be social-ecologically more sustainable, but comparisons are inherently difficult with the manifold components in agricultural systems, which cannot be held constant to compare individual factors.

Many of the promising social-ecologically more sustainable agricultural practices of diverse origins, such as traditional agriculture and precision farming, are also being used around the world because of their comparative advantages, such as efficient use of environmental resources (circular economy), nutrient exchange, weed control, reduction of pathogens and pests, reduction or replacement of synthetic non-biobased pesticides, reduction of nitrate leaching, remediation of contaminated groundwater and soils, improvement of soil fertility through nitrogen fixation, increase in quantitative and qualitative yield of crops, and biodiversity conservation. Given the predominantly unpredictable dynamics of climate change and societal developments, social-ecologically more sustainable agricultural production therefore aims to continuously improve productivity, efficiency, stability, and flexibility while safeguarding the overall living conditions for humans and animals in the long term. The question is: How can this be realized? What are the opportunities? What are the obstacles, and how to overcome them?

We look forward to receiving your contributions on the broad topic of this Special Issue on “Social–Ecologically More Sustainable Agricultural Production”. In addition to the usual article types, such as research article and review, many other article types are also accepted, such as communication, opinion, mini review, and technical note.

Dr. Moritz von Cossel
Dr. Joaquín Castro-Montoya
Dr. Yasir Iqbal
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-anonymized peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Agronomy is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.