Sustainable and Smart Agriculture and Rural Areas: Economic, Environmental and Technological Aspects

Dear Colleagues,

Natural resources’ scarcity, an exponentially growing global population, food security and food supply chain disruptions, declining biodiversity, and the adverse effects of agricultural production on the environment are just a small fraction of the mounting challenges and crises contemporary agriculture is exposed to.

Sustainable and smart agricultural practices are regarded as potential solutions for these pressuring challenges and represent a gateway for the prospective future developments of the agricultural industry, science and policies. The definitions of sustainable agriculture and smart agriculture incorporate numerous varieties of economic, environmental and technological aspects and impacts affecting the successful implementation of these theoretical conceptions into real-world agricultural solutions.

All these aspects are reflected to a different extent in the various agricultural policies, practices and research developments, where they are perceived as separate concepts as well as interconnected conceptions with potential linkages, synergies, contradictions, discrepancies, and final trade-offs mitigating the divergences between them. Their impacts on the future agricultural developments could be beneficial or harmful, depending on the contexts, geographies and developmental stages they are implemented in.

Considering the diverse nature of sustainable agriculture and smart agriculture theoretical conceptions and real-world applications, this Special Issue welcomes the submission of original research, reviews, and perspective papers focused on the sustainable and smart development of agriculture and rural areas through the prism of economic, environmental, and technological challenges, implications and solutions.

Dr. Piotr Prus
Dr. Aksana Yarashynskaya
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-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Agriculture 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.