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Title: Evaluating agricultural trade-offs in the age of sustainable development

Journal Article · · Agricultural Systems
 [1];  [2];  [3];  [4];  [5];  [6]; ORCiD logo [7];  [8]; ORCiD logo [7];  [9];  [10];  [11];  [12]
  1. New York Univ. (NYU), New York, NY (United States); Columbia Univ., Lamont Campus, NY (United States)
  2. Columbia Univ., Lamont Campus, NY (United States)
  3. Columbia Univ., Lamont Campus, NY (United States); Bioversity International, Montpellier Cedex (France)
  4. Columbia Univ., Lamont Campus, NY (United States); Univ. of Florida, Gainesville, FL (United States)
  5. Oregon State Univ., Corvallis, OR (United States)
  6. Univ. Nacional Autonoma de Mexico, Morelia (Mexico)
  7. Oak Ridge National Lab. (ORNL), Oak Ridge, TN (United States)
  8. International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis, Laxenburg (Austria)
  9. Univ. of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg (South Africa)
  10. International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), Nairobi (Kenya)
  11. Instituto Nacional de Tecnologia Agropecuaria, Buenos Aires (Argentina); Wageningen Univ., Wageningen (The Netherlands)
  12. Conservation International, Arlington, VA (United States)

Here, a vibrant, resilient and productive agricultural sector is fundamental to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals. Bringing about such a transformation requires optimizing a range of agronomic, environmental and socioeconomic outcomes from agricultural systems – from crop yields, to biodiversity, to human nutrition. However, these outcomes are not independent of each other – they interact in both positive and negative ways, creating the potential for synergies and trade-offs. Consequently, transforming the agricultural sector for the age of sustainable development requires tracking these interactions, assessing if objectives are being achieved and allowing for adaptive management within the diverse agricultural systems that make up global agriculture. This paper reviews the field of agricultural trade-off analysis, which has emerged to better understand these interactions – from field to farm, region to continent. Taking a “cradle-to-grave” approach, we distill agricultural trade-off analysis into four steps: characterizing the decision setting and identifying the context-specific indicators needed to assess agricultural sustainability, selecting the methods for generating indicator values across different scales, deciding on the means of evaluating and communicating the trade-off options with stakeholders and decision-makers, and improving uptake of trade-off analysis outputs by decision-makers. Given the breadth of the Sustainable Development Goals and the importance of agriculture to many of them, we assess notions of human well-being beyond income or direct health concerns (e.g. related to gender, equality, nutrition), as well as diverse environmental indicators ranging from soil health to biodiversity to climate forcing. Looking forward, areas of future work include integrating the four steps into a single modeling platform and connecting tools across scales and disciplines to facilitate trade-off analysis. Likewise, enhancing the policy relevance of agricultural trade-off analysis requires improving scientist-stakeholder engagement in the research process. Only then can this field proactively address trade-off issues that are integral to sustainably intensifying local and global agriculture – a critical step toward successfully implementing the Sustainable Development Goals.

Research Organization:
Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), Oak Ridge, TN (United States)
Sponsoring Organization:
USDOE
Grant/Contract Number:
AC05-00OR22725
OSTI ID:
1468290
Alternate ID(s):
OSTI ID: 1601037
Journal Information:
Agricultural Systems, Vol. 163, Issue C; ISSN 0308-521X
Publisher:
ElsevierCopyright Statement
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English
Citation Metrics:
Cited by: 116 works
Citation information provided by
Web of Science

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Assessing sustainability in agricultural landscapes: a review of approaches 1,2 journal September 2018
Women farmers’ participation in the agricultural research process: implications for agricultural sustainability in Ethiopia journal January 2019
Representing agriculture in Earth System Models: Approaches and priorities for development: AGRICULTURE IN ESMS journal September 2017
Role and exploitation of underground chemical signaling in plants journal July 2019
Conversion to organic farming decreases the vulnerability of dairy farms journal March 2019
The Effects of Greenhouse Gas Emissions on Cereal Production in the European Union journal June 2019
Engaging stakeholders to assess landscape sustainability journal June 2019
Aligning research with policy and practice for sustainable agricultural land systems in Europe journal February 2019
Balancing tradeoffs: Reconciling multiple environmental goals when ecosystem services vary regionally journal May 2018
Forest, Agriculture, and Environmental Protection as Path to Sustainable Development journal May 2019
Reducing agro-environmental trade-offs through sustainable livestock intensification across smallholder systems in Northern Tanzania journal December 2019
Role of Modelling in International Crop Research: Overview and Some Case Studies journal December 2018
Agricultural intensification scenarios, household food availability and greenhouse gas emissions in Rwanda: Ex-ante impacts and trade-offs journal June 2018