Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Agriculture
Economic and Environmental Comparison of Open Field and Screenhouse Vegetable Farming in Nigeria
Published: 2025-09-12
Subjects: Agriculture
This study compares screenhouse, rainfed, and irrigated vegetable farming systems in Northwest Nigeria, focusing on their economic and environmental performance. Screenhouse farming demonstrates superior yield, cost-efficiency, and sustainability, producing up to 90% more saleable output than rainfed systems and using over 95% less water per kilogram of produce. Although initial investment is [...]
Strategic crop relocation could substantially mitigate nuclear winter yield losses
Published: 2025-09-11
Subjects: Agriculture, Earth Sciences, Environmental Sciences, Food Science
Nuclear war could inject millions of tonnes of soot into the stratosphere, cooling the Earth and devastating crop yields. We assess crop relocation—switching which crops are grown where—as an adaptation strategy. Using the Mink crop model, we simulate six major crops under three nuclear winter scenarios (16, 47, and 150 Tg of soot). Without adaptation, global caloric production falls 23%, 53%, [...]
Amplified agricultural impacts from more frequent and intense sequential heat events
Published: 2025-09-06
Subjects: Agriculture, Climate
As the climate warms, interacting weather extremes such as sequential heat events pose complex risks to societies. Regarding global agriculture, laboratory experiments suggest that early crop exposure to heat may either confer tolerance or enhance vulnerability to subsequent heat during the critical crop flowering stage. We show that warm early-seasons improve crop yield potential, particularly [...]
The Largest Crop Production Shocks: Magnitude, Causes and Frequency
Published: 2025-09-04
Subjects: Agricultural Science, Agriculture, Earth Sciences, Environmental Sciences, Food Science, Risk Analysis
Food is the foundation of our society. We often take it for granted, but stocks are rarely available for longer than a year, and food production can be disrupted by catastrophic events, both locally and globally. To highlight such major risks to the food system, we analyzed FAO crop production data from 1961 to 2023 to find the largest crop production shock for every country and identify its [...]
An assessment of the agronomic benefits of silicate rock powders in Brazil in the context of a novel classification
Published: 2025-09-03
Subjects: Agriculture, Food Science, Plant Sciences
The sustainable intensification of tropical agriculture requires innovative approaches to restore soil health, reduce dependency on imported fertilizers, and increase crop productivity. Brazil has emerged as a global leader in the use of silicate agrominerals (ASi), silicate rich rock powders that supply plant nutrients and improve soil properties. These materials could advance low-cost soil [...]
Methodological Concerns Regarding RSPO Certification and Plantation Efficiency in Malaysia. A commentary on "Sustainable Palm Oil Certification Inadvertently Affects Production Efficiency in Malaysia" by Zachlod et al. (2025).
Published: 2025-08-21
Subjects: Agriculture, Environmental Studies, Sustainability
This commentary is in response to the recent article by Zachlod et al. (2025), Sustainable palm oil certification inadvertently affects production efficiency in Malaysia published in Communications Earth & Environment, 6(1), 200. https://doi.org/10.1038/s43247-025-02150-2. It concludes that Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) certification leads to reduced plantation efficiency in [...]
Tradeoffs between crop yield, agricultural residue burning, and groundwater depletion in India's wheat belt
Published: 2025-08-15
Subjects: Agriculture
Wheat is a staple crop in India, but yields have stagnated and are projected to further decline due to climate change. One way to increase yields is to ensure timely sowing, which allows the crop to mature prior to damaging heat stress at the end of the growing season. Using novel satellite data products that we developed along with a unique village-level dataset that we collated across India's [...]
Only half of the calories produced on croplands are available for human consumption
Published: 2025-07-24
Subjects: Agriculture, Sustainability
Managing limited agricultural land to feed a growing population with changing diets requires understanding and managing tradeoffs associated with how crops are utilized. Here, we quantify the impact of how 50 crops are used for food, livestock feed, biofuels, and other non-food uses on available calories from 2010 to 2020. We find that, although total calorie production increased by 23.9% from [...]
Satellite Remote Sensing-Based Crop Cover Classification over Europe: Accuracy of Different Methodological Approaches
Published: 2025-07-04
Subjects: Agriculture, Earth Sciences
Crop maps play an important role in a variety of applications, from calculating crop areas and forecasting food production quantities to the analysis of agri-environmental interactions, highlighting the necessity of timely and accurate information on agricultural land use. The availability of remote sensing data has permitted numerous crop classification studies, which have investigated a variety [...]
Food security beyond borders: how crop imports affect drought risk of conflict-affected countries
Published: 2025-06-25
Subjects: Agricultural Science, Agriculture, Climate, Environmental Studies, Hydrology, Meteorology, Natural Resources Management and Policy, Sustainability
Drought events can disrupt food security and increase the risk of violent conflicts. In an interconnected global food system, countries rely on both local food production and imports to meet domestic demand. When assessing the impact of drought risk on national food security, however, imported crops are often overlooked. This study incorporates international crop trade information to understand [...]
Comprehensive quantification of production costs for large-scale kelp aquaculture and cost reduction opportunities
Published: 2025-06-12
Subjects: Agriculture, Earth Sciences, Engineering, Environmental Sciences, Life Sciences, Natural Resource Economics, Other Engineering, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
A highly realistic techno-economic analysis (TEA) was developed to assess the cost of production (COP, US $ per fresh tonne kelp) for large-scale kelp aquaculture. The TEA resolves feedbacks across structural design and response, operational requirements and decisions, site properties, and biological response. We apply the TEA to a Saccharina latissima farming operation at a 100m deep, 405 [...]
Comparative Economic and Environmental Analysis of Open Field (Rainfed and Irrigated) and Environmental Agriculture (Screenhouse) Leafy and Pulpy Vegetables Production Systems in North West Nigeria.
Published: 2025-06-06
Subjects: Agriculture
Screenhouse farming demonstrates remarkable water-use efficiency, requiring only 7.00 liters per kg for cabbage, 3.58 liters/kg for lettuce, and 2.38 liters/kg for spinach, a significant contrast to rainfed cabbage at 10,625 liters/kg and rainfed pumpkin at 17,628 liters/kg. This means screenhouse farming uses just 0.066% of the water consumed by rainfed cabbage and 0.014% of the water used by [...]
Optimisation of Agrivoltaic Systems within the Water-Energy-Food Nexus
Published: 2025-06-01
Subjects: Agriculture, Power and Energy, Systems Engineering
Agrivoltaic (APV) systems, which co-locate photovoltaic (PV) panels with agricultural production, have emerged as a promising strategy to simultaneously address water, energy, and food sustainability challenges. However, the optimal design of such systems remains complex due to competing objectives, site-specific conditions, and increasingly stringent policy constraints. This study presents a [...]
Climate Change Impacts on Inland and Black Sea Marine Fisheries: Risks, Adaptation, and Sustainable Investment Pathways
Published: 2025-05-16
Subjects: Agriculture, Animal Sciences, Other Life Sciences
This paper explores climate adaptation and sustainable investment strategies within the fisheries and aquaculture sectors, with a focus on vulnerable regions such as the Black Sea basin. As climate change intensifies environmental pressures and socioeconomic vulnerabilities, building resilience requires an integrated approach combining localized adaptation, mitigation and strategic investment. [...]
Innovation in environmental sustainability: carbon credits with proof of reserve on rural properties according to the standards of regulated markets
Published: 2025-05-07
Subjects: Agriculture
Farms are increasingly recognized as carbon sinks with significant potential to mitigate climate change. This study documents how farms can become positive climate assets by using portable sensors, satellite imagery, blockchain, and AI to quantify and monetize carbon removal. This technological integration enables the issuance of traceable and secure carbon credits, promoting sustainable land use [...]