Landscape features support natural pest control and farm income when pesticide application is reduced.

Future trajectories of agricultural productivity need to incorporate environmental targets, including the reduction of pesticides use. Landscape features supporting natural pest control (LF-NPC) offer a nature-based solution that can serve as a partial substitute for synthetic pesticides, thereby supporting future productivity levels. Here, we introduce a novel approach to quantify the contribution of LF-NPC to agricultural yields and its associated economic value to crop production in a broad-scale context.

The global and regional air quality impacts of dietary change.

Air pollution increases cardiovascular and respiratory-disease risk, and reduces cognitive and physical performance. Food production, especially of animal products, is a major source of methane and ammonia emissions which contribute to air pollution through the formation of particulate matter and ground-level ozone. Here we show that dietary changes towards more plant-based flexitarian, vegetarian, and vegan diets could lead to meaningful reductions in air pollution with health and economic benefits.

Short- and long-term warming effects of methane may affect the cost-effectiveness of mitigation policies and benefits of low-meat diets.

Methane's short atmospheric life has important implications for the design of global climate change mitigation policies in agriculture. Three different agricultural economic models are used to explore how short- and long-term warming effects of methane can affect the cost-effectiveness of mitigation policies and dietary transitions. Results show that the choice of a particular metric for methane's warming potential is key to determine optimal mitigation options, with metrics based on shorter-term impacts leading to greater overall emission reduction.

Reuse of treated water in European agriculture: Potential to address water scarcity under climate change.

The use of reclaimed or treated water from urban wastewater treatment plants for irrigation has been proposed as an alternative water source to address water scarcity issues in Europe. In this paper using agro-economic modelling, we analyse if treated water available for agriculture has the potential to reduce freshwater abstraction and, consequently, water stress. Implementing exogenous treated water quantities as an additional water supply at NUTS 2 level in the CAPRI model, we found that treated water reuse is a possible alternative supply source to address water shortages with a very negligible effect on farmers' income and food production in the EU.

Major challenges of integrating agriculture into climate change mitigation policy frameworks.

Taking the European Union (EU) as a case study, we simulate the application of non-uniform national mitigation targets to achieve a sectoral reduction in agricultural non-carbon dioxide (CO) greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Scenario results show substantial impacts on EU agricultural production, in particular, the livestock sector. Significant increases in imports and decreases in exports result in rather moderate domestic consumption impacts but induce production increases in non-EU countries that are associated with considerable emission leakage effects.