Special issues

 

The objective of this special issue is to bring together papers that explore whether and how diversity and diversification can contribute to more sustainable and resilient agricultural landscape systems worldwide. Diversification is understood to have agro-ecological, technological, environmental and socio-economic elements and impacts.

Promising approaches to diversification include

1. new and neglected field arrangements e.g. diverse rotations, integration of legumes, intercropping, patch or pixel cropping, agroforestry,
2. diversified farming systems e.g. mixed crop-livestock systems, and alternative social models e.g. care farming,
3. digitalized and traditional technologies, and
4. diversified value chains.

These systems aim to reduce trade-offs between high productivity and sustainable use of external resources especially reducing pesticide use, improving soil health and the provisioning of ecosystem services, including social and cultural values and economic perspectives. We call for papers that address diversification for providing sustainable solutions at different scales from cropping and grassland to food systems. We especially welcome papers investigating processes at the landscape or territorial scale where synergies and trade-offs between social and environmental objectives become most tangible. Contributions can include research from natural and social sciences, while inter- and transdisciplinary approaches are particularly welcome.

Editors:
Moritz Reckling, Leibniz Centre for Agricultural Landscape Research (ZALF), Germany
Christine Watson, SRUC (Scotland's Rural College), UK & Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (SLU), Sweden
Anthony Whitbread, International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT), Tanzania
Katharina Helming, Leibniz Centre for Agricultural Landscape Research (ZALF), Germany