Sustainable Agriculture and Food Supply: Scientific, Economic and Policy Analysis

Dear Colleagues,

Agriculture, food industry, and food distribution are of key importance to each economy for a wide range of reasons, including the essential role in ensuring food security, balancing the labor market, improving the population’s income level, as well as boosting international trade and economic growth. According to the FAO report “The future of food and agriculture – Alternative pathways to 2050”, the world’s population will be 9.7 billion by 2050, 10.8 billion by 2080, and 11.2 billion by 2100. The expected population growth together with an increase in per capita income and rapid urbanization continue to increase the demand for food. Due to this, the area of concern is enhancing productivity and eradicating hunger. On the other hand, intensive and industrialized food production practices, which have been developed over the past few decades, have been increasingly bringing about severe resource degradation and GHG emissions.

In the light of the above, one of the most important challenges faced by the global agri-food system is feeding the world population sustainably, which requires a simultaneous promotion of agricultural productivity and preservation of available natural resources. It should also be noted here that the effectiveness of actions taken to reduce GHG emissions in agriculture is linked to the economy-wide efforts to increase efficiency in energy production and consumption. Moreover, extreme poverty and unemployment, unequal distribution of income and resources, insufficient investments, inadequate technological changes, inequitable domestic and international markets for inputs and outputs, lack of well-designed trade policies, climate change, as well as food losses and waste hamper sustainable productivity improvement. Strong institutions and policies tailored toward agriculture-based industries, rural areas, and environmental protection also play a strategic role when searching for sustainable agriculture and food supply.

The aim of this Special Issue of Energies is to open the floor for a scientific discussion around the trends, drivers, and challenges for sustainable agriculture and food supply at the local, regional, national or global level. Original research papers presenting theoretical insights and/or empirical and policy-oriented analyses related to social, economic or environmental dimensions of a sustainable agri-food system and rural areas are welcome. Submissions employing various quantitative methods or qualitative analyses, as well as review articles are strongly encouraged.

Dr. Karolina Pawlak
Guest Editor

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. Energies 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.