Search Results (41)

Urban agriculture and farming (UAF) initiatives are recognised for their potential to enhance urban resilience, support local food systems, and deliver ecosystem services. However, current scholarship remains fragmented, treating UAF initiatives as isolated green interventions, rather than integrated components of urban fabric. This study examines how landscape-based approaches (LbAs) and systems thinking (ST) have been applied concurrently to analyse and design these initiatives. We argue that LbA is necessary to provide the spatial logic for physical integration, while ST provides the functional logic for metabolic efficiency. This systematic literature review screened 92 records across Scopus, Web of Science, and Google Scholar, resulting in a refined corpus of 12 peer-reviewed articles published between 2015 and 2025. This reflects the nascent state of an interdisciplinary approach at this intersection. Utilising VOSviewer and Atlas.ti, the study identified four thematic clusters: urban green infrastructure, urban food systems, landscape planning, and socio-ecological systems. A cross-comparative analysis of these clusters and their underlying methodologies led to a new theoretical dual-lens systemic landscape framework to evaluate the sustainability outcomes of UAF. The findings reveal limited integration of spatial analysis with systems thinking across scales. This review contributes a novel multi-scale methodology that emphasises the need for integrated spatial and systemic interdependencies to achieve truly resilient urban food systems. Full article

Rapid urbanization has aggravated challenges in sustaining the peri-urban rice farming sector. Challenges arising from rapid urbanization threaten rice farmers in peri-urban areas because of increasing economic and land pressures. This has caused significant marginalization among rice farmers. In Indonesia, despite contributing 13.28% of the national gross domestic product (GDP) in 2021, the agricultural sector is dominated by marginal farmers who struggle with poverty and lack land ownership. This study aims to identify different pathways for the marginalization of rice farmers by integrating spatiotemporal land use and land cover (LULC) change analysis, landscape fragmentation metrics, and systems thinking (ST) through causal loop diagrams (CLDs). Furthermore, an attempt to reconceptualize the term marginal rice farmers is made by considering the total number of cultivated rice fields and broader factors that contribute to the feedback loop of marginalization. This study shows that rice farmer marginalization in peri-urban areas is caused by small land size or poverty, and the interactions between ecosystem service degradation, productivity decline, economic pressure, and land conversion differ across landscape configurations. Moreover, this study enhances the understanding of peri-urban agricultural transformation and provides landscape-sensitive policy insights to support inclusive and resilient agricultural systems by reconceptualizing the marginalization of rice farmers as a dynamic socio-spatial process. Full article

Children are largely absent from circular economy and bioeconomy research, limiting opportunities for early development of systems thinking, sustainability competencies, and inclusive knowledge production. This paper presents a qualitative case study of the Horizon 2020 AgroCycle project (2016–2019), examining how primary school children were engaged as co-researchers through a transdisciplinary, participatory model. Analysis draws on project deliverables, educational resources, workshop records, internal reports, and dissemination materials. The study shows how children and adult co-researchers explored waste valorisation, bioresource transformation, and biobased material innovation in Irish schools. Valorisation in the context of the bioeconomy is the process of converting residues from farming, food, forestry and marine sources into high-value products such as biofertilisers, biofuels and biochemicals. It situates AgroCycle within European sustainability policy, highlighting its influence on subsequent initiatives, including Horizon Europe BioBeo and BiOrbic, Research Ireland’s Centre for Bioeconomy. By combining qualitative case study methodology with reflective practitioner analysis, the paper demonstrates how child-centred, transdisciplinary research can enhance sustainability education, support SDG-aligned competencies, and promote inclusive approaches to circular economy and bioeconomy transitions. Full article

Modern agriculture faces increasing demands for productivity, sustainability, and real-time operational control, driven by challenges such as input overuse, climate variability, and environmental compliance. Operational monitoring systems have emerged as a critical tool to address these challenges by providing continuous, data-driven insights into field operations like tillage, planting, and spraying. However, the academic and practical understanding of operational monitoring remains fragmented, lacking a unified framework to integrate machine-level sensing, data processing, and decision-making. This paper introduces a classification scheme and conceptual framework for operational monitoring in precision agriculture, aiming to bridge this gap. The framework delineates the data–information flow from data acquisition to the execution of actions resulting from informed decisions, distinguishing between real-time control and strategic analysis. Additionally, the proposed classification categorizes operational monitoring into three functional roles, material accounting, logistics accounting, and predictive maintenance, aligned with the conceptual model of farm ontology. By synthesizing technological advancements in positioning systems, sensors, and data management, this study provides a structured approach for designing and deploying operational monitoring. The findings contribute to systematic thinking in farm information systems, supporting smarter, more responsive agricultural practices. Future research should explore the integration of AI and edge computing to further optimize operational monitoring and decision-making in agriculture. Full article

As cities grow faster and food systems grow more fragile, architects and planners are increasingly challenged to design spaces that not only house people but also support environmental and social well-being. This study investigates how vertical farming can be integrated into residential building facades in Egypt as a strategy to promote local food production and sustainable design. Focusing on a government housing project in Port Said, three façade-based design options were developed and assessed through structured surveys targeting two stakeholder groups: experts and residents. This research revealed a strong interest and awareness across both samples. While users prioritized benefits such as esthetics, air quality, and the ease of use, experts emphasized feasibility concerns, maintenance needs, and policy barriers. Both groups favored the second design option as the most balanced and applicable solution. By foregrounding stakeholder input, this study fills a gap in the existing literature on building-integrated agriculture and provides design and policy recommendations grounded in the local context. It advocates for inclusive design thinking, where technical viability and community values are considered together. While limited to single case and visual assessment methods, this research offers a foundation for further applied studies and broader sustainable design frameworks. Full article

The rubber industry is facing major socio-economic and environmental constraints. Rubber-based agroforestry systems represent a more sustainable solution through the diversification of income and the provision of greater ecosystem services than monoculture plantations. Participative approaches are known for their ability to co-construct solutions with stakeholders and to promote a positive impact on smallholders. This study therefore implemented a participatory research process with stakeholders in the natural rubber sector for the purpose of improving inclusion, relevance and impact. Facilitation training sessions were first organised with academic actors to prepare participatory workshops. A working group of stakeholder representatives was set up and participated in these workshops to share a common representation of the value chain and to identify problems and solutions for the sector in Indonesia. By fostering collective intelligence and systems thinking, the process is aimed at enabling the development of adaptive technical solutions and building capacity across the sector for future government replanting programmes. The resulting adaptive technical packages were then detailed and objectified by the academic consortium and are part of a participatory plant breeding approach adapted to the natural rubber industry. On-station and on-farm experimental plans have been set up to facilitate the drafting of projects for setting up field trials based on these outcomes. Research played a dual role as both knowledge provider and facilitator, guiding a co-learning process rooted in social inclusion, equity and ecological resilience. The initiative highlighted the potential of rubber cultivation to contribute to climate change mitigation and food sovereignty, provided that it can adapt through sustainable practices like agroforestry. Continued political and financial support is essential to sustain and scale these innovations. Full article

Risk management and resilience of agriculture are among the most important issues in the ongoing discussion on the shape of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP). Farming systems face various risks that increase their vulnerability, which necessitates the strengthening of their resilience. This raises critical questions whether CAP policies adequately support the resilience of farming systems in addressing these challenges. The study investigates the resilience of the Polish fruit and vegetable farming system within the context of the CAP. Employing a mixed-methods approach that includes interviews and stakeholder workshops, the research identifies critical risks such as market volatility, climate change, labor shortages, or international competition. The study reveals that while farmers adopt various coping strategies, existing CAP measures predominantly support robustness, often neglecting adaptability and transformability, which are essential for addressing long-term risks. Stakeholder feedback highlights bureaucratic inefficiencies, limited access to resources for innovation, and an overemphasis on short-term interventions. Recommendations emphasize the need for policy adjustments to foster long-term adaptability through enhanced vertical and horizontal integration, support for innovation, and knowledge transfer. Under future scenarios, policy priorities vary but consistently call for resilience-focused reforms. These findings underscore the benefits of integrating resilience-thinking frameworks into agricultural policy to enable sustainable development and competitiveness of farming systems. Full article

Defoliation (leaf removal or pruning) is a common practice in tomato production that makes crops more manageable, prevents conditions conducive to fungal attack and increases the exposure of the fruit to light, especially in winter conditions. The intensity and frequency of leaf removal on commercial farms often vary according to workforce availability criteria, which makes it difficult to determine their effect on tomato crop yields. It would be reasonable to think that a reduction in leaf area influences radiation interception and, therefore, the production of assimilates and biomass. However, in intensive production systems with a high leaf area index (LAI), leaf pruning can increase radiation interception, either by reducing competition between productive and vegetative organs or by increasing radiation use efficiency. This study was therefore designed to assess the effect of different intensities and frequencies of basal leaf removal on dry matter production and partitioning between the different organs of the plant, and thus on tomato crop productivity. A series of trials were conducted over three consecutive seasons, with a trial conducted per season: (a) Trial 1: leaf removal control—LRC (with leaves removed from the base to two leaves below the truss close to harvest, T0) was compared with LR1 (leaf removal from the base to two leaves below the truss above T0, i.e., T1) and LR2 (two trusses above T0 (T2)); (b) Trial 2: LRC compared with LR2 and LR4 (four trusses above T0 (T4)), carried out at two frequencies; and (c) Trial 3: LRC compared with an intense leaf removal treatment (LRI) whereby between 10 and 12 leaves were left on each stem. LAI saturation values under our conditions were found to be around 2.0. No significant differences in yield were found between the control and treatments LR1, LR2 and LR4, with a reduction in the number of leaves of up to 35% and LAI values during harvest above 2.0. The intense leaf removal treatment (LRI), which reduced the number of leaves by 47% and the LAI value from 2.8 to 1.5 compared to the control, resulted in a 15% reduction in dry biomass and a 17% decrease in fruit yield. Full article

The present work summarizes the results of a 15-week student project addressing the field of sustainable coffee farming. Coffee farmers often lack scientific knowledge concerning the coffee varieties they cultivate, and having grown coffee for generations, they often have limited knowledge concerning the names of their coffee varieties used on the global market. This leads to significant disadvantages in market positioning. Consequently, farmers often receive lower prices for their coffee as they cannot accurately determine its true market value. In addition, the effects of climate change force farmers to reconsider the varieties they cultivate, as they cannot exhibit stable yield performance due to the changed climate. If farmers are unaware of the potential quality advantages of different coffee types, this prevents them from optimizing growing conditions specific to their climate. As part of a design thinking-based project course, a team of four design and computer science students at Hochschule Mannheim searched for a solution on how to overcome the aforementioned disadvantages for local coffee farmers with the support of digital technology. Coffee Consulate helped the team by connecting them to farmers around the world and sharing their domain knowledge. The student team’s main idea is to bridge the aforementioned knowledge gap by collecting globally distributed data about coffee species in one worldwide accessible, digital system, allowing farmers to be globally connected. Their concept proposes a digital Coffee Atlas for mobile phones, showing where on the planet and under which climate conditions coffee varieties are grown and how these species are named on the global market. The app allows one to identify coffee plants based on pictures uploaded from farmers’ phones. The team developed an implementation roadmap that considered how to subsequently extend the database behind the Coffee Atlas and how to accelerate the crowdsourcing process. AI-based image recognition trained with pictures taken from a living collection of coffee cultivars, like in the botanical garden of Wilhelma (Stuttgart, Germany), and DNA sequences could serve as an initial step for creating the database. Farmers should be motivated to upload pictures of their plants by additional services provided by the app. Therefore, information about coffee species can be crowdsourced with the help of farmers around the world. Such services could include the recognition of plant health conditions, as well as the estimation of the actual market price of a species based on the identification of coffee varieties or the recommendation of species that are better adapted to the actual or expected climate. In its final implementation, the Coffee Atlas will enhance agricultural practices and economic outcomes for farmers and provide a valuable source of data for researchers around the world. Full article

We report the results of a survey of farmers and landowners to identify the most likely potential food system disruption scenarios for the UK and compare these with a previous expert elicitation with a much wider set of food system stakeholders. We found that 60% of farmers think a Societal Event in which 1 in 2000 people are injured in the UK is at least 20% likely to occur over the coming decade. Over a timeframe of 50 years, this increased to almost 90% of farmers. These results show that farmers and landowners are considerably more concerned about the vulnerability of the food system in the UK than the wider group of food system experts are. Farmers agreed with experts on the majority of potential causes of such vulnerability, which are climate change, trade policies (import and export), competition for land and ecological collapse (over 50 years). However, they also highlighted the importance of the power structure within the food system, with large corporations supplying to, or buying from, farmers creating lower revenue, making farming an unsustainable business. We conclude that an urgent systematic review of potential interventions that would improve resilience be conducted by the UK Government, in partnership with farmers. Full article

Sprout ginseng extract (ThinkGIN™) manufactured through a smart farm system has been shown to improve memory in preclinical studies. This study conducted a 12-week randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled clinical trial to evaluate the efficacy and safety of ThinkGIN™ for improving memory in subjective memory impairment (SMI). Subjects aged 55 to 75 years with SMI participated in this study. A total of 80 subjects who met the inclusion/exclusion criteria were assigned to the ThinkGIN™ group (n = 40, 450 mg ThinkGIN™/day) or a placebo group (n = 40). Efficacy and safety evaluations were conducted before intervention and at 12 weeks after intervention. As a result of 12 weeks of ThinkGIN™ intake, significant differences in SVLT, RCFT, MoCA-K, PSQI-K, and AChE were observed between the two groups. Safety evaluation (AEs, laboratory tests, vital signs, and electrocardiogram) revealed that ThinkGIN™ was safe with no clinically significant changes. Therefore, ThinkGIN™ has the potential to be used as a functional food to improve memory. Full article

Community-supported agriculture has gained a significant amount of prominence in recent years by offering a more sustainable and morally acceptable alternative to conventional food systems. Their organization offers a modern take on how to manage production by supporting the usage and exchange of knowledge between all stakeholders involved. The leverage points concept argues that re-thinking how knowledge is produced and used in systems is one of the key realms of leverage in which transformation towards sustainability can be achieved. Current sustainability research lacks a focus on deep leverage points that bear great potential for transformational change. This concept, however, revolves around these deep realms of leverage and has not been applied to CSA yet. Thus, a qualitative study with semi-structured interviews has been performed at 22 CSA farms in Germany in order to gather detailed insights on the production and flow of knowledge and analyze if and to what degree these CSAs have the potential to leverage transformational change towards sustainability. This analysis helps to understand how certain mechanisms can influence sustainability in a positive manner and promote the usage of these mechanisms in the agricultural landscape. Ultimately, the data indicates that CSAs do bear great potential to leverage sustainability transformation in regard to re-thinking agriculture. Characteristics that lead to this cognition are a highly cooperative, participatory and transparent structure, characteristics that allow for the creation and exchange of information to flourish. Full article

Herbicide resistance is increasingly recognised as a challenge for agricultural producers worldwide. International scholarship and practical experiences suggest that collective efforts by diverse agricultural stakeholders are crucial for effective resistance management. In New Zealand, such sector-wide initiatives and strategies remain fragmented, partly due to a lack of state coordination and national extension services. This article synthesises insights from three complementary social research methods involving actors across the country’s arable-crop-growing sector (focus groups, semi-structured interviews, and an industry workshop) to identify pathways to foster collaboration and more strategic resistance management. The presented findings detail challenges, opportunities, and potential actions across four domains: strengths and weaknesses of New Zealand’s farming context, better information and knowledge exchange, improved collaboration and coordination, and targeted education and training. Our analysis highlights that most opportunities described within these domains involve purposely strengthening existing, or forming new, social and institutional relationships as part of establishing resistance management as a shared sector responsibility. A portfolio of multipronged initiatives and programmes is then required for effective whole-industry strategies. We discuss potential next steps to collectively realise identified opportunities, from more immediately feasible steps to long-term activities. These insights conceptually contribute to the international scholarship on herbicide resistance by reinforcing the notion that industry leadership and meaningful farmer involvement are indispensable for more collaborative approaches aimed at strategically managing resistance. Full article

As the System of Rice Intensification (SRI) has evolved in many ways and in several directions over the past two decades, this review follows the software-naming convention of labeling SRI’s different and subsequent versions as SRI 2.0, 3.0, 4.0, etc. In agroecology as with software, variants are not necessarily linear and can establish new directions as well as the further evolution of existing ones. This overview reviews how rainfed SRI, direct-seeded SRI, mechanized SRI, and other modifications of the initial SRI methodology have emerged since 2000, and how versions of SRI have been improvised to improve the production of other crops beyond rice, like wheat, finger millet, maize, and sugar cane. SRI thinking and practices are also being incorporated into diversified farming systems, broadening the logic and impact of SRI beyond monoculture rice cultivation, and SRI methods are also being used to achieve broader objectives like the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions and the conservation of biodiversity. SRI observations and research have been contributing to the crop and soil sciences by focusing attention on plant roots and soil ecology and by showing how crop management can elicit more desirable phenotypes from a given genotype. Cooperation regarding SRI among farmers, civil-society actors, scientists, private sector agents, governments, and funding agencies has begun introducing noteworthy changes within the agricultural sector, and this collaboration is expected to deepen and expand. Full article

Grasslands and ecosystem services are under threat due to common practices adopted by modern livestock farming systems. Design theory has been an alternative to promote changes and develop more sustainable strategies that allow pastoral livestock production systems to evolve continually within grasslands by enhancing their health and enabling the continuous delivery of multiple ecosystem services. To create a design framework to design alternative and more sustainable pastoral livestock production systems, a better comprehension of grassland complexity and dynamism for a diagnostic assessment of its health is needed, from which the systems thinking theory could be an important approach. By using systems thinking theory, the key components of grasslands—soil, plant, ruminant—can be reviewed and better understood from a holistic perspective. The description of soil, plant and ruminant individually is already complex itself, so understanding these components, their interactions, their response to grazing management and herbivory and how they contribute to grassland health under different climatic and topographic conditions is paramount to designing more sustainable pastoral livestock production systems. Therefore, by taking a systems thinking approach, we aim to review the literature to better understand the role of soil, plant, and ruminant on grassland health to build a design framework to diagnose and enhance grassland health under pastoral livestock production systems. Full article