Abstract
The principle role of agriculture is to produce food for the increasing human population. However, the environmental footprint needs to be simultaneously reduced. Data from the Finnish Food Authority (181,108 parcels in the south-western crop production region of Finland) were used to identify the farming system, farm type, farm size, field parcel scale, physical parcel characteristics, cultivated crops, crop rotations and cultivars. Sentinel-2 derived Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) values were used to identify fields with very low productivity. Thereby, the impacts of farm and field characteristics on risks of low NDVI values and their associated means of coping by the farmer were studied. High variations in field parcel characteristics and growth capacity were typical in the studied area. Although it is challenging for farmers, high variation can provide many opportunities for the development of multifunctional and resource-smart production systems, e.g., by optimizing land use: allocating high-quality fields for food production, and poorly performing fields for extensification, i.e., the production of environmental benefits. Many usable policy instruments are available to support such a transition, but more focus should be put onto the most efficient means to enable progress towards environmentally, economically and socially sustainable high-latitude agricultural systems.
Highlights
Even though the primary function of agriculture is and will be to produce food for the increasing human population with increasing standards of living, multifaceted targets are set for agriculture alongside food production and security
The farming system, farm type, farm size and field parcel characteristics including the field size, soil type, distance from farm center and proximity to waterways had an impact on the risks of low Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) values (Table 1)
Field parcels with clay soils had the highest risk of low NDVI values compared to other soil types (p < 0.001)
Summary
Even though the primary function of agriculture is and will be to produce food for the increasing human population with increasing standards of living, multifaceted targets are set for agriculture alongside food production and security. Increasing food production by reducing yield gaps in a changing climate, as well as reducing markedly the environmental footprint of agriculture [2] and otherwise contributing to the Sustainable Development Goals of the United Nations [3,4] means that large-scale transformations and improvements are needed everywhere. Agriculture needs to be redesigned to become more productive, resource- and climate-smart, and environmentally, economically and socially sustainable [5]. Multifunctional agriculture is an apt term to describe the multifaceted role that agriculture needs today to meet all the societal requirements [6]. It aims to produce food, provide benefits for the environment and reciprocally benefit from ecosystem services. Due to many apparent trade-offs in the target setting characterized as “increasing while decreasing”, holistic approaches are needed [7,8] as well as indicators of the current status and progress [4,9]
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