Chapter 4 - Spatial analysis, geospatial data and land-change models for modelling agricultural land changes

Food security exists when all people at all times have physical, social and economic access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food. Food security is built on four pillars: availability, access, utilization and stability. Food and nutrition security embraces meeting energy, protein and nutrient needs for healthy life. Food systems overlap with agricultural systems in the area of food production, but also comprise the diverse set of institutions, technologies and practices that govern the way food is marketed, processed, transported, accessed and consumed. The food system activities are grouped into four categories: producing food, processing and packaging food, distributing and retailing food, and consuming food. The review paper aims at highlighting the connections and linkages between food sustainability and food security. There are very strong linkages between food and nutrition security, responsible environmental stewardship and greater fairness in food management. They intersect in agricultural and food systems at the global, national and local levels. Today, the main concern for the food and agricultural sector is to provide simultaneously enough food, in quantity and quality, to meet the nutritional needs of a growing population and to conserve natural resources for future generations. A sustainable food system supports food security, makes optimal use of natural and human resources, is culturally acceptable and accessible, environmentally sound and economically fair and viable, and provides the consumer with nutritionally adequate, safe, healthy and affordable food for present and future generations. Changes in both food consumption and food production are important to ensure more sustainable food systems and to achieve food and nutrition security in the Mediterranean region. Since diets sustainability is of paramount importance for achieving food and nutrition security, there is an urgent need to design and implement appropriate policies to improve the economic, environmental and social sustainability of the current food consumption patterns.

As global food production is projected to double to meet future food demand, reshaping agricultural systems to balance productivity with environmental sustainability is a critical challenge. Cambodia, where smallholder farming dominates and rural communities face increasing socioeconomic and environmental pressures. This study aims to provide empirical evidence on viable intensification strategies for smallholders in Northwest Cambodia which enhance food security, reduce poverty, and promote environmental sustainability, offering practical insights to address these global priorities through locally grounded solutions. This study integrates demographic-socioeconomic data from a census of 997 upland households and farming practices from 46 maize plots to assess trade-offs and to navigate pathways for sustainable and resilient agricultural production. The analysis reveals moderate-investment practices, defined by targeted and efficient input application, were highly effective, achieving yields comparable to high-investment practices (characterised by intensive chemical application), while significantly reducing environmental costs (US$134.79 per hectare) compared to low-investment practices (which applied inputs minimally). If extended, this reduction could translate to annual environmental cost savings of US$700,597 in Cambodia and US$1.16 billion across Southeast Asia. Additionally, these practices reduced production costs by US$116 per hectare and increased profits by US$23 per hectare, resulting in annual profit gains of US$707,200 in Cambodia and US$198 million across Southeast Asia. Both low- and high-investment strategies exhibited inefficiencies and higher environmental costs, underscoring the importance of balanced resource use. The analysis further uncovers critical challenges faced by smallholders, including financial constraints, climate variability, and technical knowledge gaps, which hinder their capacity to adopt sustainable practices. This study contributes to the global discourse on sustainable intensification by demonstrating moderate-investment practices can optimise farm profitability and environmental sustainability. By addressing the triple challenges of climate variability, resource constraints, and technical knowledge gaps, these findings offer actionable strategies for policymakers, practitioners, and researchers aiming to develop sustainable and resilient agricultural systems that align with global sustainability goals. • Environmental, agronomic, and economic stresses threaten to the sustainability and resilience of agricultural systems. • Supporting smallholders in sustainable intensification improves impr food security, income, and environmental sustainability. • Innovative financing mechanisms, climate-resilient infrastructure, and extension services help overcome adoption barriers. • Moderate-investment practices were the most effective, balancing productivity and environmental sustainability.

Modelling regional cropping patterns under scenarios of climate and socio-economic change in Hungary

Key sustainability challenges for the global phosphorus resource, their implications for global food security, and options for mitigation

Agriculture is pivotal in securing global food security and sustainability, especially in pressing challenges such as climate change, population growth, and resource depletion. This review examines the interconnections between agriculture, food security, and sustainability, focusing on current challenges, innovations, and strategies to address these critical issues. The global demand for food is projected to increase substantially, necessitating agricultural systems that boost productivity and ensure environmental sustainability. However, conventional farming practices have exacerbated soil degradation, water scarcity, and greenhouse gas emissions, posing significant threats to long-term food security. This review aims to evaluate the role of sustainable agricultural practices in enhancing food security while mitigating environmental impacts. It also identifies existing gaps in farming systems and explores innovative solutions to promote resilient and sustainable food systems. A comprehensive review of peer-reviewed literature, policy documents, and global agricultural reports was conducted. The analysis focuses on key themes such as sustainable farming practices, the impacts of climate change on agriculture, advancements in agrotechnology, and the socio-economic dimensions of food security. Synthesized findings provide actionable insights into best practices and emerging trends. Sustainable agriculture offers a viable pathway to address the dual challenges of food security and environmental conservation. Precision farming, agroecology, and regenerative agriculture enhance productivity while preserving resources and reducing ecological footprints. Integrating advanced technologies, including artificial intelligence and genetic innovations, can optimize agricultural efficiency. However, global food security requires coordinated efforts among governments, the private sector, and local communities to implement equitable resource distribution and climate-resilient policies. Future research should prioritize scalable, region-specific solutions that align with sustainability principles to ensure a secure and resilient global food system.

Achieving the goals of global food security and sustainable agricultural land use requires research that understands the processes and mechanisms of change in agricultural land systems. Agricultural land function is a suitable research area. Therefore, this paper collected 1643 papers on agricultural land function from the Web of Science Core Collection as research materials. HistCite, CiteSpace, and VOSviewer were used as the bibliometrics analysis tools to study basic information, research progress, hotspots, and frontiers in agricultural land function. The results showed that over the past 30 years, publications on agricultural land function have increased, and the dominant authors and institutions were located in the United States, China, Europe, etc. Land use, agriculture, and multifunctionality were research hotspots in this field. The research frontier included the interaction analysis between land use pattern and function, the evaluation and valuation of agricultural land function, the interaction and driving factors between agricultural land functions, and the relationship between agricultural land function and sustainability. This study could help researchers further understand the research status on agricultural land function, playing a fundamental role in the sustainable utilization of the agricultural land system and the realization of global food security goals.

Synchronous crop failure among multiple breadbaskets worldwide, a typical spatially compound event, may amplify threats to the global food system and food security and has been a growing concern among the scientific community in recent years. While the risk of simultaneous crop loss across multiple breadbasket regions has been analyzed, to date, little is known about how interdependence among regional crop production affects aggregated crop failure at the global scale. Quantifying the impact of dependencies among breadbasket regions on global food production and assessing how the dynamic of spatially compounding crop failures is simulated by climate and crop models is essential for informing the modeling of global food security risk. In this study, focusing on different crop types, we quantify the influence of dependence between crop production of individual regions on global aggregated crop yield based on the Inter-Sectoral Impact Model Intercomparison Project (ISIMIP) dataset. We find that spatial dependence between regional crop yields may aggravate global crop deficits and identify a characteristic spatial scale beyond which the dependence between crop production in different regions vanishes. Our results provide valuable information for designing risk strategies for food security at the suited scale.

Synergistic conservation approaches for nurturing soil, food security and human health towards sustainable development goals

Food and water security: Analysis of integrated modeling platforms

Acute viral hepatitis remains a persistent global health challenge, with significant morbidity and mortality associated with different hepatitis subtypes. Understanding the spatial distribution and underlying drivers of the acute hepatitis burden is crucial for developing targeted interventions. This study leveraged data from the Global Burden of Diseases, Injuries, and Risk Factors Study to analyze the geographical disparities and temporal trends in the incidence of acute hepatitis A, B, C, and E. A multifaceted approach was employed, including spatial mapping, decomposition analysis, and frontier analysis, to elucidate the key factors shaping the epidemiological landscape. The spatial analysis revealed pronounced global heterogeneity in acute viral hepatitis incidence, with the highest rates concentrated in parts of Africa, while Western Europe and North America exhibited significantly lower incidence levels. Decomposition analysis demonstrated that population growth was the leading driver of the increasing global burden across all hepatitis subtypes, particularly in low-SDI and low-middle SDI countries, whereas epidemiological improvements were more prominent in high-SDI countries for hepatitis B and C. Frontier analysis highlighted that countries such as Japan, South Korea, and Singapore, despite their advanced socioeconomic status, still lag behind optimal incidence thresholds, while low-SDI nations like Nepal and Burundi have made remarkable progress relative to their development level. These findings underscore considerable disparities and untapped potential for burden reduction globally. Our findings confirm substantial spatial variation and development-related disparities in acute viral hepatitis incidence worldwide. The global burden is shaped by a combination of transmission routes, sociodemographic dynamics, and healthcare capacity. Context-specific interventions must be aligned with regional epidemiological profiles-targeting sanitation and vaccination in high-burden areas and optimizing harm reduction and screening in more developed settings. The integration of spatial analysis, decomposition, and frontier benchmarking provides a valuable framework for prioritizing national and global hepatitis control strategies.

Climate Change and Agriculture: Impact and Adaptation

The world’s population is currently growing at an exponential rate, which is estimated to be over 8 billion inhabitants as reported by United Nations on November 15, 2022. According to FAO, 870 million people out of this population do not have enough food to eat, with the vast majority of hungry people (98%) living in developing countries, where almost 15% of the population is undernourished. Furthermore, the world’s population is estimated to come to 9 billion by 2050, which would incur severe food scarcity and would seriously hamper global food security. Food losses, especially post-harvest loss as a result of poor agricultural practices have also been reported to greatly impact the economy, the environment, and the livelihoods of low and medium countries and Sub-Saharan-African. Therefore, realistic options should be established for promoting sustainable agriculture systems, improving nutrition, and achieving food security to end hunger in our nations. This paper elucidates the drivers of food insecurity including food losses, escalating population growth, hunger, and food production, among others, and provided some transformation approaches such as value addition through appropriate and emerging food processing and preservation techniques, application of biotechnological options through genetically modified foods and functional foods consumption and integration of indigenous underutilized nutrient-dense food crops which could serve as all-inclusive and sustainable transformation options for enhanced food and nutrition security, especially in developing countries, which is where the hunger burden and the prevalence of malnutrition and non-communicable diseases are high.

Food security refers not only to an adequate aggregate supply of food, but also means that people at all times have both physical and economic access to basic food. Population growth is probably the single most important global factor influencing food secutiy because of its rapid rate of increase. This paper aims to review the concept of global food security and investigate its relationship among different factors that must be taken into consideration for a nation to be food secure. The theoretical foundation of this paper was formed by conducting a comprehensive literature review on global food security. A new model was presented to illustrate the relationship between global food security and four specific factors that are essential for a nation to attain the level of global food security. The proposed model clearly shows how government and individuals must collaborate to attain the level of food security desired taking into consideration the many factors discussed. The paper demonstrates that global food security is a unique and complicated concept which requires the utilization of a specialized cross-functional team to tackle the various obstacles along the way.

Reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and increasing the size of carbon sinks are closely related to food security in agricultural systems. This study conducted an in-depth data analysis of previous studies to explore the dynamic causal relationships among the reduction of emissions, carbon sink increases, and food security in agricultural systems. The fixed-effect regression model, causality tests, PVAR model, impulse response functions, and variance decomposition were used to explore correlations among the three variables. The results show that the national average carbon sinks surged from 2662.194 Mg in 2000 to 4010.613 Mg in 2020, with the food security index concurrently climbing from 0.198 to 0.308. Moreover, GHG emissions exhibited a negative growth rate from 2016 onwards, yet the 2020 mean remained 142.625 Mg above the 2000 baseline. The agricultural “three subsidies” reform has not directly promoted food security, but significantly inhibited GHG emissions. However, conflicts exist between emissions reduction and carbon sinks increase in agricultural systems and food security. At the whole level, changes in carbon sinks only have a positive effect on the increase in GHG emissions, whereas changes in GHG emissions have a positive effect on both carbon sinks and food security. Changes in food security strongly inhibit the increase in carbon sinks. This relationship varies among distinct grain functional zones. Policy objectives should be coordinated, target thresholds set, and policies classified according to different functional orientations, to achieve a win–win situation for food supply and low-carbon development.

Through a brief review of the literature in which the concept of food security has developed since the first use of the term in 1974, this paper suggests that the ‘food security’ appearing extensively in governmental, official and academic analysis is a social construct that acts to conceal the reality of corporate food production mechanisms dominating global food systems. Since the date of the first World Food Summit in Rome in 1996, representations of both food security and insecurity have increasingly become a meme, a vehicle for conveying and performing a set of socio‐cultural beliefs relating to a neoliberal view of global food production that excludes the biopolitics of corporate, systemic global food production. The analysis focuses particularly on a range of forms of waste produced by global food systems, to suggest that in a world over‐producing food of which over a third is wasted and in which waste has become a mechanism for profit, no presentation of food security that fails to take into account this systemic reality can produce valid or effective policy. The food security meme that has evolved over nearly 40 years portrays at best a partial analysis, which as a consequence continues to proffer a range of market‐based solutions, ignoring issues of dominance and control. In considering the memetic representation of food security, the paper also examines briefly the biopolitics presented by corporate systems of dominance and control in global food production, as well as the systems of waste (vastogenic systems) that they produce. In conclusion, the development of what are effectively empires of waste has fuelled an urgent need for a radical re‐think of food security issues, based on proposals for food regime and food systems analysis that have begun to emerge in the literature.