Abstract
Agricultural intensification is required to feed the growing and increasingly demanding human population. Intensification is associated with increasing use of resources, applied as efficiently as possible, i.e. with a concurrent increase in both resource use and resource use efficiency. Resource use efficiency has agronomic, environmental, economic, social, trans-generational, and global dimensions. Current industrial agriculture privileges economic resource use efficiency over the other dimensions, claiming that that pathway is necessary to feed the world. Current agronomy and the concept of sustainable intensification are contested. Sustainable intensification needs to include clarity about principles and practices for priority setting, an all-inclusive and explicit cost-benefit analysis, and subsequent weighing of trade-offs, based on scientifically acceptable, shared norms, thus making agriculture “green” again. Here, we review different forms of intensification, different principles and concepts underlying them, as well as the norms and values that are needed to guide the search for effective forms of sustainable and ecological intensification. We also address innovations in research and education required to create the necessary knowledge base. We argue that sustainable intensification should be considered as a process of enquiry and analysis for navigating and sorting out the issues and concerns in agronomy. Sustainable intensification is about societal negotiation, institutional innovation, justice, and adaptive management. We also make a plea for at least two alternative framings of sustainable intensification: one referring to the need for “de-intensification” in high-input systems to become more sustainable and one referring to the need to increase inputs and thereby yields where there are currently large yield (and often also efficiency) gaps. Society needs an agriculture that demonstrates resilience under future change, an agronomy that can cope with the diversity of trade-offs across different stakeholders, and a sustainability that is perceived as a dynamic process based on agreed values and shared knowledge, insight, and wisdom.
Highlights
Contents 1 Introduction 2 Agricultural intensification contested 3 Making agriculture green again 4 Demonstrating different routes to “green” agriculture 4.1 Defining sustainability 4.2 Agricultural sustainability is a complex problem 4.3 Intensification contested 4.4 Efficiency contested 4.5 Sustainable intensification 4.6 Ecological intensification 5 Redefining agronomy 5.1 How to cope with contested concepts? 5.2 Why sustainability should go green 5.3 The social dimensions of sustainable intensification
Agroecological intensification according to Wezel et al (2015) addresses social-cultural aspects and includes farmers’ knowledge and a systems approach, but that did not prove to be helpful in developing strong criteria to make a distinction between sustainable, ecological, and agroecological intensification, except perhaps for the intensity with which ecological principles are integrated into farms and systems management (Wezel et al 2015)
Society needs dynamic coalitions and flexible decisions, an agriculture demonstrating flexibility to cope with future change, and a sustainability that is perceived as a moving target
Summary
The planet Earth is in a state of decline, mainly caused by human activity; many planetary boundaries have been transgressed (Rockström et al 2009; Steffen et al 2015) and vulnerability of agricultural and food systems to disturbance has increased (Beroya-Eitner 2016). Fraser et al (2016) identified four perspectives in the debate on global food security, and from these perspectives, they proposed four types of key strategies: (i) technological strategies to increase production, (ii) socio-economic strategies to achieve equitable food distribution, (iii) strategies to promote local food movements, and (iv) economic, political, and regulatory changes to correct current market and food system imperfections and failures. In our view, these strategies are all needed simultaneously and in a coherent and orchestrated way to realize global food security in a sustainable manner. Declining resources necessitate achieving more production with the same amount of (or with less) inputs, i.e. increased resource use efficiency for global food security (Foley et al 2011)
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