Survey data on livelihoods and inputs and outputs of crop production in Quzhou county on the North China Plain.

Farmers' decisions on crop choice, management practices, and livelihood strategies are essential to agricultural sustainability. This data article describes three datasets on crop production in Quzhou, a county in the central part of North China Plain. The three datasets cover different scales.

A systematic review of the methodology of trade-off analysis in agriculture.

Trade-off analysis (TOA) is central to policy and decision-making aimed at promoting sustainable agricultural landscapes. Yet, a generic methodological framework to assess trade-offs in agriculture is absent, largely due to the wide range of research disciplines and objectives for which TOA is used. In this study, we systematically reviewed 119 studies that have implemented TOAs in landscapes and regions dominated by agricultural systems around the world.

Farmers perceive diminishing ecosystem services, but overlook dis-services in intensively used agricultural landscapes in the North China Plain.

The UN sustainable development goals ask countries to advance sustainable production methods in agriculture. While the need for a transition to sustainable agricultural production is widely felt, there is little insight into local stakeholders' perceptions regarding agroecosystem (dis)services in areas with intensive production methods. The North China Plain is an agricultural production area with intensive production systems and simplified agricultural landscapes.

Socio-cognitive constraints and opportunities for sustainable intensification in South Asia: insights from fuzzy cognitive mapping in coastal Bangladesh.

Unlabelled: Appreciating and dealing with the plurality of farmers' perceptions and their contextual knowledge and perspectives of the functioning and performance of their agroecosystems-in other words, their 'mental models'-is central for appropriate and sustainable agricultural development. In this respect, the sustainable development goals (SDGs) aim to eradicate poverty and food insecurity by 2030 by envisioning social inclusivity that incorporates the preferences and knowledge of key stakeholders, including farmers. Agricultural development interventions and policies directed at sustainable intensification (SI), however, do not sufficiently account for farmers' perceptions, beliefs, priorities, or interests.

Farm typology for planning targeted farming systems interventions for smallholders in Indo-Gangetic Plains of India.

Due to complexity of smallholder farms, many times technologies with great potential fail to achieve the desired impact in leveraging productivity and profitability of the farming community. In the Indo-Gangetic Plains there is an urgent need to understand the diversity of farm households, identifying the main drivers deciding their system thus, classifying them into homogenous groups. In the present study, the diversity of smallholder farms was assessed using crop, livestock and income related characteristics and associated farm mechanization.

Spatial farming systems diversity and micronutrient intakes of rural children in Ethiopia.

Own production contributes much of the food supply in smallholder production systems in low- and middle-income countries like Ethiopia. Understanding the potential as well as constraints of these production systems in terms of nutrient supplies is thus a critical step to design interventions to improve nutrient intakes. The objectives of this study were (1) to assess the usual total intakes of vitamin A, iron and zinc among rural children and (2) to investigate whether the intakes these nutrients are associated with differences in the dominant farming systems between spatial clusters.

Conceptual Links between Landscape Diversity and Diet Diversity: A Roadmap for Transdisciplinary Research.

Malnutrition linked to poor quality diets affects at least 2 billion people. Forests, as well as agricultural systems linked to trees, are key sources of dietary diversity in rural settings. In the present article, we develop conceptual links between diet diversity and forested landscape mosaics within the rural tropics.

A multi-method approach for the integrative assessment of soil functions: Application on a coastal mountainous site of the Philippines.

The projected increase of the world's population and the sustainability challenges the agricultural sector is facing, call for the enhancement of multi-functionality in agriculture in order to simultaneously provide food while meeting environmental targets. Here, we use the Functional Land Management (FLM) framework to assess the supply of and the demand for soil functions to inform agri-environmental policy for Udalo, a mountainous site in the Philippines. As many emerging communities in developing nations, Udalo is on the cusp of rapid development due to the construction of a major road increasing its accessibility and attractiveness for land investment.

The risk posed by Xanthomonas wilt disease of banana: Mapping of disease hotspots, fronts and vulnerable landscapes.

Banana production landscapes in the African Great Lakes Region (AGLR) have been under immense pressure from Xanthomonas wilt (XW) disease over the past two decades. XW, first reported on banana in central Uganda and eastern DR Congo in 2001, has since spread to the entire AGLR. XW is currently spreading westwards from hot spots in eastern DR Congo highlands, putting the plantain (Musa AAB genome) belt of central and west Africa at risk.

Risks Posed by Intercrops and Weeds as Alternative Hosts to pv. in Banana Fields.

Alternative host plants are important in the survival and perpetuation of several crop pathogens and have been suspected to play a role in the survival of pv. (Xcm) and perpetuation of Xanthomonas wilt (XW) disease of banana and enset. This study determined the potential risk posed by two weeds ( spp.

Complex rice systems to improve rice yield and yield stability in the face of variable weather conditions.

Extreme weather events and pest outbreaks decrease rice yields and increase their variability, presenting challenges for the agricultural agenda to increase rice productivity and yield stability in Asia. The integration of azolla, fish and ducks has been shown to create robust systems that maintain high yields under heavy rainfall, but no clear evidence exists that rice yields in these systems are stable across locations and throughout time under divergent weather conditions. We show that the introduction of additional elements into the rice cropping system enhanced the adaptive capacity to extreme weather events across four locations and three cropping cycles.

Capturing farm diversity with hypothesis-based typologies: An innovative methodological framework for farming system typology development.

Creating typologies is a way to summarize the large heterogeneity of smallholder farming systems into a few farm types. Various methods exist, commonly using statistical analysis, to create these typologies. We demonstrate that the methodological decisions on data collection, variable selection, data-reduction and clustering techniques can bear a large impact on the typology results.

Bedding additives reduce ammonia emission and improve crop N uptake after soil application of solid cattle manure.

This study examined the influences of three potential additives, i.e., lava meal, sandy soil top-layer and zeolite (used in animal bedding) amended solid cattle manures on (i) ammonia (NH), dinitrous oxide (NO), carbon dioxide (CO) and methane (CH) emissions and (ii) maize crop or grassland apparent N recovery (ANR).

Simulation of Long-Term Carbon and Nitrogen Dynamics in Grassland-Based Dairy Farming Systems to Evaluate Mitigation Strategies for Nutrient Losses.

Many measures have been proposed to mitigate gaseous emissions and other nutrient losses from agroecosystems, which can have large detrimental effects for the quality of soils, water and air, and contribute to eutrophication and global warming. Due to complexities in farm management, biological interactions and emission measurements, most experiments focus on analysis of short-term effects of isolated mitigation practices. Here we present a model that allows simulating long-term effects at the whole-farm level of combined measures related to grassland management, animal housing and manure handling after excretion, during storage and after field application.

Landscape character assessment using region growing techniques in geographical information systems.

Landscape character can be defined as the presence, variety and arrangement of landscape features, which give a landscape a specific identity and make it stand out from surrounding landscapes. Landscape character contributes to the esthetical and perceptional value of an area, which is important for the development of non-production functions in the countryside as demanded by society. In this paper we present a new methodology for landscape character assessment using the pattern of landscape features as stored in a GIS to delineate, characterize and evaluate landscapes using a region growing algorithm.

Internalization of agri-environmental policies and the role of institutions.

Recent investigations have indicated that environmental and conservation policies frequently fail to reach anticipated aims, which raises concern over the cost-effectiveness of governmental policy-related expenditure. The limited effectiveness of policies is often attributed to methodological aspects of policy implementation. However, an alternative reason can be the limited internalization of policies, so that these are only implemented to a minimum level to attain benefits or avoid penalties.

On the contribution of modelling to multifunctional agriculture: learning from comparisons.

In this paper a set of criteria is proposed for the evaluation of the potential contribution of modelling tools to strengthening the multifunctionality of agriculture. The four main areas of evaluation are (1) policy relevance, (2) the temporal resolution and scope, (3) the degree to which spatial and socio-institutional scales and heterogeneity are addressed and (4) the level of integration in the assessment of scientific dimensions and of the multiple functions of agriculture. The evaluative criteria are applied to the portfolio of modelling approaches developed and applied in a joint project of the French research institute INRA and the Dutch Wageningen University & Research Centre.