Socio-Economic Functions Across Sustainable Farming Systems

Dear Colleagues,

Climate change, natural disasters, and food insecurity are some of the main challenges to agricultural production and supply chains that affect producers, processors, and consumers. Across the world, a shift to more sustainable farmland systems is increasingly regarded as a solution to these challenges. Under the umbrella of ‘shift to more sustainable farming systems’, several actions have been taken, including changes in agricultural land use which can contribute to economic and environmental sustainability and can ensure the livelihood of the producers. Accordingly, successful reforms and execution of policies, plans, and programs on farmlands seem highly important. As intuitive as these aspects might be, the socio-economic functions of these actions are contextual, leaving space academically for further exploration and analysis of effectiveness in terms of practices on the ground and in the arena of policy formulation and implementation. Such analyses can be conducted from theoretical and practical standpoints. The effect of events of a global scale such as, but not exclusively, the current COVID-19 pandemic, increases the need for further scrutiny of the relationships that exist between sustainable farming systems and pandemics, economic and political crises including regional conflicts and the many aspects of globalization, and hazards related to, for example, anthropogenic climate change. These events are not restricted to any one continent nor to developing, emerging, or developed economies.

This Special Issue aims to accommodate research on socio-economic functions across sustainable farmland systems, with a focus on, but not restricted to, practices, policies, and planning for environmental conservation in agriculture, climate-smart agriculture, conventional and biotechonological agriculture which not only mitigate and/or adapt to the challenges of climate change, natural disasters, food insecurity, and conflict but also boost nature-positive production, stabilizes production, and improve the welfare of the producers; processing and marketing of farm produce which ensure the livelihood of the producers, processors, and consumers, and access to safe and nutritious food; integration of nonfarming with farming activities; and building of a society resilient to all kinds of crises and hazards/conflicts.

Academics and researchers from all parts of the world are invited to contribute to this issue on the broad topics outlined above. All types of articles that Sustainability normally accepts (see the Sustainability webpage) will be considered for peer review. I look forward to receiving papers that enhance our understanding of the theme.

Prof. Dr. Keshav Lall Maharjan
Guest Editor

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