Deforestation and declining soil fertility are major obstacles for productive cocoa production in West Africa. To improve sustainability of this production system, countries like Ghana promoted agroforestry technologies and introduced organic certification of cocoa agroforests. However, for West Africa, which produces 70% of the world’s cocoa, studies comparing soil fertility under conventional and organic management, which is an important factor for sustainable cocoa production, are rare. Hence this study aimed at investigating differences in soil physico-chemical and microbial properties at 0–10 cm and 10–30 cm depth of traditional cocoa agroforests under organic versus conventional management in four villages with each three farms in Suhum Municipality, Eastern Region of Ghana. Electrical conductivity, soil organic carbon (SOC), total nitrogen (N), SOC/total N, and extractable potassium (K) in the topsoil were 51%, 35%, 30%, 11%, and 47% respectively, lower (p < 0.05) under conventional than under organic management. On average, topsoil under conventional management recorded 29% higher NH4+-N concentration and 27% lower NO3−-N concentrations than topsoil under organic management. Microbial biomass carbon and nitrogen in the topsoil of farms under organic management were 48% and 57%, respectively, greater than under conventional management. Contrarily, conventional management significantly increased the metabolic quotient (qCO2) in topsoil compared with organic management, indicating a higher demand of soil micro-organisms for maintenance energy due to the use of herbicides and pesticides. In cocoa agroforests, conventional management has adverse effects on soil chemical and microbial properties. Hence transitioning from conventional management to organic management is beneficial to maintain soil fertility.

Removal and disposal of nonnative trees is expensive and time-consuming. Using these nonnative trees as a substrate to produce edible mushrooms could diversify farming operations and provide additional income to small-scale farmers. This research compared the production of shiitake mushrooms (Lentinula edodes) on nonnative tree logs to shiitake mushroom production on native oak (Quercus L.) logs, which are the traditional substrate. In a 2-yr study, we evaluated nonnative tree species as alternate substrates for growing shiitake mushrooms at farms in northern Florida and southern Georgia. A mix of native Quercus spp. and nonnative trees was targeted for removal on participating farms. Five nonnative tree species were initially tested for their ability to produce edible mushrooms, either shiitake or oyster (Pleurotus ostreatus var. florida). Of the nonnative trees we tested: Chinaberry (Melia azedarach L.), Chinese tallowtree [Triadica sebifera (L.) Small], silktree (Albizia julibrissin Durazz.), earleaf acacia (Acacia auriculiformis A. Cunn. ex Benth.), and paperbark tree [Melaleuca quinquenervia (Cav.) S.F. Blake], only T. sebifera produced shiitake mushrooms, and none produced native Florida oyster mushrooms. In on-farm trials, Quercus spp. logs produced more total mushrooms and more mushrooms per log and had a higher total mushroom yield per log. However, mushrooms produced on T. sebifera logs had higher mean weight per mushroom. Edible fungi can be used to recycle invasive, nonnative T. sebifera and transform their biomass from waste into an income-producing resource.

This study examines the grazing management plans (GMPs) adoption and prioritization of environmental and economic objectives among U.S. cow-calf and stocker operations, utilizing 2020–2021 survey data and logistic regression analysis. Findings reveal regional adoption differences, with higher rates in the Midwest. Operations with succession plans, larger grazing lands, and stocker activities are more likely to adopt GMPs. Operations with more privately owned land and smaller herd sizes prefer environmental goals, while those with less grazing land prioritize economic outcomes due to resource concerns. The study provides insights for policies promoting GMP adoption and sustainability in the U.S. beef sector.

Diverse agricultural management practices are critical for agroecosystem sustainability, and cover crops provide opportunity for varied management and increased biodiversity. Understanding how cover crops fill open ecological niches underneath the trees, interact with weeds, and potentially provide ecosystem services to decrease pest pressure is essential for ecological agricultural management. The goal of this study was to test the weed suppression potential of two cover crop treatments with varied functional diversity compared to standard weed management practices in commercial almond orchards in California. Transect plant surveys were used to evaluate orchard plant communities under a functionally diverse seed mix including grasses, legumes, and brassicas, and a relatively uniform cover crop mix that included only brassica species. Winter annual orchard cover crops reduced bare ground from 39.3% of total land area to 15.9 or 11.4%, depending on treatment. Furthermore, winter cover crops displaced weeds with a negative correlation of 0.74. The presence of cover crops did not consistently affect weed community composition for low-richness weed communities found in California orchards. Diverse cover crop mixes more reliably resulted in increased ground cover across site years compared to uniform cover crop mixes, with coefficients of variation for ground cover at 49.6 and 91.5%, respectively. Cover crops with different levels of functional diversity can contribute to orchard weed management programs at commercial scales. Functional diversity supports cover crop establishment, abundance, and competitiveness across varied agroecological conditions, and cover crop mixes could be designed to address an assortment of orchard management concerns.

Perennial Lewis flax (Linum lewisii Pursh) has the potential to be grown as a new oilseed crop that could simultaneously meet commodity production, ecosystem service provisioning, and farm resiliency goals. Despite many potential benefits, Lewis flax remains minimally explored as an agronomic crop. Determining agronomic best practices for producing economically relevant stands of Lewis flax is critical to its adoption as an oilseed crop. Several aspects of Lewis flax agronomic production were explored through the lens of adaptive management between 2020 and 2022. Initial field trials aimed at assessing spring-seeded Lewis flax row spacing, plant population density, and intercropping strategies with legumes and grasses failed due to poor establishment. Heavy rains and excessive weed pressure further complicated attempts to reestablish these initial trials. We established additional Lewis flax plots via fall and dormant seeding in response to the failure of our first experiment. This second experiment focused on exploring row spacing, population density, and seeding timing impacts on flax production. Flax yield did not differ among our treatments, averaging 59 kg ha−1. The low yields realized by our field trials may be due to several factors including need for harvest technology optimization, high weed pressure, and need for Lewis flax genetic improvement. Our study is a first step toward developing recommendations for optimal production strategies for Lewis flax in an agronomic context. Continued exploration of methods to improve management and yield of Lewis flax will be critical to its successful development as an agronomic crop.

As organic food increases in popularity, there has been increased interest in the history of organic farming. Previous scholarship has done excellent work documenting the social and political aspects of organic and sustainable agriculture, but less research has been done on the history of organic farming methods. The purpose of this study was to address this deficiency by surveying the organic and sustainable farming community in the midwestern and northeastern United States to identify influential authors, publications and organizations. Information about influences on farming practices was created using an anonymous online survey, distributed through organic and sustainable agriculture organizations in the target region. Out of the 224 respondents who completed the survey, 171 (76%) listed books, 169 (75%) listed organizations and 123 (55%) listed influential individuals. A total of 218 authors were identified, with Eliot Coleman receiving the most mentions, followed by Rodale publications, Wendell Berry, Acres U.S.A. magazine, Masanobu Fukuoka, Joel Salatin and Michael Pollan. 242 organizations were listed, with Marbleseed (MOSES), MOFGA, NOFA, PASA, OEFFA, LSP, SFA-MN and MOFFA most frequently mentioned. These results provide a useful starting point for future research on the development and dissemination of farming methods in this region. Research priorities include conducting oral histories with still-living authors of influential books and archiving organizational records before critical historical information is lost.

The welfare of animals in food-production systems is a cause of concern to the public. Regenerative agriculture was first used by the Rodale Institute and proposes to regenerate degraded components of ecosystems, aiming to be more than just sustainable. However, despite animal welfare being pushed to be part of the SDG agenda for 2030, there is no clarity on how regenerative agriculture impacts animal welfare. It is challenging to determine regenerative agriculture impacts on animal welfare, since it is not entirely defined. One Welfare could help define entry points for future research by studying animal welfare in connection with human welfare and environmental conservation. We aimed to analyse the extent to which positive animal welfare outcomes characterise regenerative agriculture systems in peer-reviewed articles and whether the narratives of such articles support that regenerative agriculture promotes animal welfare directly or indirectly by improving human welfare and environmental conservation. We searched papers including ‘regenerative agriculture’ using PRISMA-P, selecting animal welfare, human welfare, environment conservation terms, developed themes, and carried out analysis using Atlas.Ti8 and Causal Loop Diagram. We found that papers mainly linked animal welfare to animal health, human welfare to financial farm status and farmer’s self-awareness, and environmental conservation to soil improvement. Causal Loop Diagram indicated that regenerative agriculture had the potential to improve the health and nutrition components of animal welfare by enhancing financial farmers’ status/self-awareness (human welfare), and the soil (environmental conservation), reflecting that the processes that affect human welfare and environmental conservation could also affect animal welfare. However, information in papers remains insufficient to determine how regenerative agriculture impacts on animal welfare and research into regenerative agriculture needs to extend its focus on animal welfare and elucidate the regenerative agriculture principles leading to animal welfare.

To promote sustainability, multistakeholder initiatives (MSIs) are an emerging form of private governance that brings together diverse stakeholders across the agrifood system to advance sustainable agriculture practices. Previous research on MSIs focuses on the organization and structure of various MSIs through coordinator and management perspectives. In this paper, we examine farmers' experiences of participating in a leading MSI metrics program for U.S. agriculture, Field to Market. Through survey and interview methodology, this paper examines farmers' motivations, perceived benefits and power dynamics within Field to Market's metrics program. We find that although being open to sharing sustainability metrics with buyers, farmers struggled to gain tangible benefits. The majority of farmers considered themselves ‘already sustainable’ in that they made economically efficient farming decisions. As such, participating in Field to Market resulted in little to no changes in farming practices. Because MSI metrics programs work to assist farmers in becoming aware of inefficiencies and encourage changes, the lack of utilizing data generated from the sustainability metrics highlights a significant shortfall of this MSI metrics program. Farmers also perceived buyers as the primary beneficiaries of sustainability metrics since the buyers could now make claims about the sustainability of their products. Additionally, our findings provide nuance related to economic benefits as farmers broadly conceptualized the primary economic benefits as continuing a relationship with buyers who were now asking farmers to join the metrics program and report data. Although the metrics program appears ‘voluntary,’ farmers perceived few other options when asked to report data since sharing data became an apparent baseline for doing business. This paper contributes an understanding of farmers' experiences of engaging with an MSI metrics program, which helps to illuminate the potential implications of these newly emerging approaches to promoting sustainability. Our findings demonstrate that proponents of this newly emerging approach to promoting sustainability may want to consider the distribution of benefits and the power dynamics embedded in these programs since these programs may carry unintended consequences as they are scaled up. Finally, we posit several additional avenues for future research to further elucidate the potential social implications of MSI metrics programs.

In the Mediterranea area, major effects of climate change are a modification in rainfall patterns, an increase in temperature with an intensify in tropical nights, and an increase in incoming radiations, especially UV-Bs. Despite the various adaptation strategies, grapevines are sensitive to altered climatic conditions. This paper aims to assess the benefits of applying a new sustainable product to the soil that can implement farmers’ resources to adapt to this changing situation. Zeowine was realized by combining the properties of zeolite, which has excellent potential in many sectors such as in agriculture, with the organic substance of a compost obtained on a company scale from the reuse of waste processing grapes, pomace and stalks. The effects of two different soil management (Z – Zeowine, 30 t/ha dose and C – Compost, 20 t/ha dose) on vine physiology and berry compositions in Sanforte grapevines (new plantation) were studied during the 2019–2020–2021 growing seasons in the San Miniato area, Italy. The following physiological parameters of grapevines were measured: leaf gas exchange, leaf temperature, stem water potential and chlorophyll fluorescence. The results showed that Z increased single leaf photosynthesis, reduced leaf temperature and water stress. In addition, phenolic and technological parameters were studied. The Z-treated vines had higher sugar content and total and extractable anthocyanin content as well as berry weight. These results suggested that the application of zeolites added to compost in the vineyard to the soil can be a valid tool to mitigate the effects of climate change.

This paper aims to assess young farmers' willingness to adopt sustainable agriculture (SA) by implementing the expanded theory of planned behavior (TPB) within the northern region of Bangladesh. The outcomes attained specified that attitudes toward SA, perceived behavior control and perceived self-identity have progressive and fundamental impacts on adoption behavior and affect farmers' intentions to adopt SA's particular production mechanism. On the other hand, the social interface view toward SA is not significantly associated with the Bangladeshi farmer's adoption intention. The results also show that interconnections between social and familial pressure are not significant for sustainable farming practice adoption intentions. However, the interconnections among the psychosocial factors have a crucial role in formulating the TPB to forecast the intentional behavior for adopting SA practices. Thus, the government should highlight the advantages of several sustainable agricultural practices and circulate more detailed information regarding SA tactics to improve the knowledge gap of smallholder farmers. Furthermore, training facilities should be extended to improve the attitude and perceived self-identity of young farmers. Moreover, the formulation of structural information sharing platforms and agricultural value chain facilities should also help shape young farmers' interpersonal behavior in adopting SA practices.

Living mulches are cover crops grown simultaneously with and in close proximity to cash crops. Advantages of living mulches over dead cover crops may include increased weed suppression, reduced erosion and leaching, better soil health, and greater resource-use efficiency. Advantages of living mulches over synthetic mulches may include enhanced agroecosystem biodiversity and suitability for a wider range of cropping systems. A major disadvantage of this practice is the potential for competition between living mulches and cash crops. The intensity and outcome of mulch-crop competition depend on agroecosystem management as well as climate and other factors. In this review, we consider the management of living mulches for weed control in field and vegetable cropping systems of temperate environments. More than 50 yr of research have demonstrated that mechanical or chemical suppression of a living mulch can limit mulch-crop competition without killing the mulch and thereby losing its benefits. Such tactics can also contribute to weed suppression. Mechanical and chemical regulation should be combined with cultural practices that give the main crop a competitive advantage over the living mulch, which, in turn, outcompetes the weeds. Promising approaches include crop and mulch cultivar selection; changes to planting time, density, and planting pattern; and changes to fertilization or irrigation regimes. A systems approach to living mulch management, including an increased emphasis on the interactions between management methods, may increase the benefits and lower the risks associated with this practice.

The goal of this study is to perform a comparative analysis of agroecological and conventional small coffee farms. We investigated 15 coffee farms in the East region of Minas Gerais, a Brazilian rural region, based on coffee production using a multicriteria analysis with economic, social and environmental factors. The results suggest that agroecological farms perform better than conventional farms in terms of sustainability, reduce labor intensity and improve income stability and the environmental impact, such as agro-biodiversity and forest cover. In particular, the results reveal that agroecological farms, though they have lower levels of coffee productivity than conventional farms, perform better in terms of income stabilization. This result depends on product diversification (such as agri-food products, vegetables or fruits) for local markets, which reduces farmer risks associated with coffee price volatility, improving both the local economy and local food security. Moreover, agroecological farms rely more on labor than capital. Overall, the results of this study reveal that agroecological systems support the socio-economic sustainability of the rural areas under study and suggest the potential of agroecology to boost sustainable development in the East Region of Minas Gerais. In short, the spread of agroecological systems could improve local employment conditions, reducing migration toward large cities and shanty towns in other parts of Brazil. Hence, agroecology systems can represent the main alternative to conventional production systems to improve the well-being and wealth of rural populations in developing countries. The analysis presented in this study is based on a specific case study, but the rural area under study has many similarities with other areas in Latin America regarding all aspects of economic, social and environmental sustainability. Finally, some agricultural policy implications are discussed.

Until the past half-century, all agriculture and land management was framed by local institutions strong in social capital. But neoliberal forms of development came to undermine existing structures, thus reducing sustainability and equity. The past 20 years, though, have seen the deliberate establishment of more than 8 million new social groups across the world. This restructuring and growth of rural social capital within specific territories is leading to increased productivity of agricultural and land management systems, with particular benefits for those previously excluded. Further growth would occur with more national and regional policy support.

The emerging large-scale production units (LSPUs) have become increasingly important in Chinese agricultural production and rural transformation due to rapid industrialization and urbanization. Based on household and plot-level data from Jiangsu and Jiangxi Provinces in China, this study provides insights into the farming systems of these LSPUs and examines how contract type, as a proxy for land tenure security, impacts on the production unit's soil-improving investments. Results from the two-stage control function approach show that the written nature of contracts positively affects the application of organic fertilizer and green manure on rented-in plots. Descriptive analysis also confirms the collateralization effect of contract type by showing that plots that are used as collateral for credit are characterized by written contracts. Policies facilitating LSPUs' access to farmland with more formal contracts may therefore play an important role in improving soil quality and land productivity.

Kernza® intermediate wheatgrass (Thinopyrum intermedium) is a novel perennial grain and forage crop with the potential to provide multiple ecosystem services, which recently became commercially available to farmers in the USA. The viability and further expansion of this promising crop require understanding how it may fit the needs of farmers’ livelihoods and the structure of their farming systems. However, no prior research has studied the perceptions and experiences of Kernza growers. The goals of this research were to understand why farmers grow Kernza, how Kernza fits into their systems and identify challenges for future research. We conducted in-depth interviews with ten growers in the North Central USA during the summer of 2017, who accounted for a third of the Kernza farmers in the USA at the time. All farmers had a positive attitude toward experimentation and trying new practices, and they were interested in Kernza for its simultaneous ecological and economic benefits. Kernza was marginal in terms of area, quality of fields and resources allocated in the farm systems, which also meant that farmers maintained low costs and risks. Growers utilized and valued Kernza as a dual-use crop (grain and forage), sometimes not harvesting grain but almost always grazing or harvesting hay and straw for bedding. Weeds were perceived as a challenge in some cases, but Kernza was valued as a highly weed-suppressive crop in others. Farmers requested information on optimal establishment practices, assessment of forage nutritive value, how to maintain grain yields over years, weed management, markets and economic assessment of Kernza systems. These results agree with other cases on sustainable practices adoption showing that engaging farmers in the research process from the beginning, identifying knowledge gaps and testing management alternatives are critical for the success and expansion of novel agricultural technologies.