Explaining the emergence of land-use frontiers.

Land-use expansion is linked to major sustainability concerns including climate change, food security and biodiversity loss. This expansion is largely concentrated in so-called 'frontiers', defined here as places experiencing marked transformations owing to rapid resource exploitation. Understanding the mechanisms shaping these frontiers is crucial for sustainability.

The effect of Internet use on nutritional intake and health outcomes: new evidence from rural China.

Introduction: Internet use is changing nutritional intake and health outcomes, but the results are mixed, and less attention is given to the rural developing regions. Based on the China Health and Nutrition Survey (CHNS) data from 2004 to 2015, this study seeks to better understand the effect of Internet use on nutritional intake and health outcomes.

Methods: An instrumental variable estimation is used to address endogeneity problem.

Does internet use benefit the mental health of older adults? Empirical evidence from the China health and retirement longitudinal study.

The mental health (MH) of older adults is a prominent public health concern. However, research regarding the impact of emerging Internet use on MH among older adults remains limited, particularly in transitional economies experiencing a rapidly aging population such as China. Thus, to address this research gap, this study uses data from the 2013-2018 waves of the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study.

Gridded livestock density database and spatial trends for Kazakhstan.

Livestock rearing is a major source of livelihood for food and income in dryland Asia. Increasing livestock density (LSK) affects ecosystem structure and function, amplifies the effects of climate change, and facilitates disease transmission. Significant knowledge and data gaps regarding their density, spatial distribution, and changes over time exist but have not been explored beyond the county level.

Balancing the trade-offs between land productivity, labor productivity and labor intensity.

Agricultural intensification, through increased yields, and raising incomes, through enhanced labor productivity, are two dimensions prioritized for sustainable agricultural development. Prioritizing these two outcomes leaves labor intensity as a hidden adjustment variable. Yet, when agriculture is mainstay and the prospects of labor absorption in other sectors are scarce, the density of agricultural employment is central for livelihoods.

Does forest farm carbon sink projects affect agricultural development? Evidence from a Quasi-experiment in China.

Forest Farm Carbon Sink (FFCS) projects are one of the effective ways to achieve carbon neutrality and mitigate global warming. Though the existing literature has widely discussed the effect of FFCS on the allocation of agricultural factors, such as land, labor employment structure and income structure, little is known about whether FFCS projects could have an effect on agricultural development. Based on the panel data of 140 counties in Sichuan province, China, from 2002 to 2018, we examined the causal effect on agricultural total factor productivity (TFP), and revealed their dynamic effect and underlying mechanisms.

Climate-Related Risk Modeling of Banana Xanthomonas Wilt Disease Incidence in the Cropland Area of Rwanda.

Banana Xanthomonas wilt (BXW) is a major threat to banana production in Rwanda, causing up to 100% yield loss. There are no biological or chemical control measures, and little is known about the potential direction and magnitude of its spread; hence, cultural control efforts are reactive rather than proactive. In this study, we assessed BXW risk under current and projected climates to guide early warning and control by applying the maximum entropy (Maxent) model on 1,022 georeferenced BXW datapoints and 20 environmental variables.

Don't Look Up! Individual Income Comparisons and Subjective Well-Being of Students in Thailand.

Empirical evidence supports the hypothesis that an individual's position in an income stratum-more than the absolute income level-determines subjective well-being. However, studies on subjective well-being suffer from a critical methodological weakness: they use exogenously defined reference groups. Our study addresses this point by applying an innovative new survey instrument.

Mitigating consequence insensitivity for genetically engineered crops.

Many opponents of genetically engineered (GE) food say that it ought to be prohibited regardless of the risks and benefits (Scott et al., 2016). If many people are truly unwilling to consider risks and benefits in evaluating GE technology, this poses serious problems for scientists and policymakers.

Innovation-driven development and urban carbon emission reduction: a quasi-natural experiment in China.

Constructing a quasi-natural experiment based on China's National Independent Innovation Demonstration Zone (NIDZ) pilot, this study applies the time-varying difference-in-differences (DID) model to estimate the impact of innovation-driven development on urban carbon emission reduction. We use panel data on 285 cities which covers 95.96% of Chinese cities during the period of 2003 to 2017.

How digital communications contribute to shaping the career paths of youth: a review study focused on farming as a career option.

Can the power of digital communications create opportunities for overcoming generational renewal problems on farms? This interdisciplinary review explores the reported impacts of digital communication on career initiation into farming from a global perspective via the lens of career theories. Seventy-three papers were synthesized into two domains: (1) the impact of digital communication interactions on farming career initiation, and (2) the dynamics of digital communication initiatives that create opportunities to inspire youth into farming. The finding shows that the mainstream literature primarily aims to support the continuity of farming careers but pay little attention to the potential of digital communication to attract youth into farming.

Research priorities for global food security under extreme events.

Extreme events, such as those caused by climate change, economic or geopolitical shocks, and pest or disease epidemics, threaten global food security. The complexity of causation, as well as the myriad ways that an event, or a sequence of events, creates cascading and systemic impacts, poses significant challenges to food systems research and policy alike. To identify priority food security risks and research opportunities, we asked experts from a range of fields and geographies to describe key threats to global food security over the next two decades and to suggest key research questions and gaps on this topic.

Can e-commerce alleviate agricultural non-point source pollution? - A quasi-natural experiment based on a China's E-Commerce Demonstration City.

Agricultural non-point source pollution is an important driving factor that causes systemic pollution of the ecological environment and directly threatens the sustainable development of agriculture, human health, and safety. As a new engine to reshape the agricultural development model, e-commerce is of great significance to the mitigation of agricultural non-point source pollution. This study regards China's National E-commerce Demonstration Cities (NEDCs) as a quasi-natural experiment and uses the Multi-period difference in difference (DID) method to investigate the impact of urban e-commerce development on agricultural non-point source pollution and its mechanism.

Resource frontiers and agglomeration economies: The varied logics of transnational land-based investing in Southern and Eastern Africa.

Actor-level data on large-scale commercial agriculture in Sub-Saharan Africa are scarce. The peculiar choice of transnational investing in African land has, therefore, been subject to conjecture. Addressing this gap, we reconstructed the underlying logics of investment location choices in a Bayesian network, using firm- and actor-level interview and spatial data from 37 transnational agriculture and forestry investments across 121 sites in Mozambique, Zambia, Tanzania, and Ethiopia.

Export Competitiveness of Agri-Food Sector during the EU Integration Process: Evidence from the Western Balkans.

Trade agreements with the European Union (EU) and Central European Free Trade Agreement (CEFTA) significantly influenced the liberalisation of agri-food products in Western Balkan (WB) countries. In all Western Balkan countries, there has been an intensification of the trade of agri-food products and a partial change in the regional and commodity structures of trade. This paper aims to identify comparative advantages of agri-food sectors and consider its tendencies during the EU integration process.

Impact of Covid-19 on farming systems in Europe through the lens of resilience thinking.

Context: Resilience is the ability to deal with shocks and stresses, including the unknown and previously unimaginable, such as the Covid-19 crisis.

Objective: This paper assesses (i) how different farming systems were exposed to the crisis, (ii) which resilience capacities were revealed and (iii) how resilience was enabled or constrained by the farming systems' social and institutional environment.

Methods: The 11 farming systems included have been analysed since 2017.

The hybridity of waste management: An in-depth exploratory case study from the Znojmo municipality.

In the Western hemisphere, the hybridity of public service delivery is widely acknowledged to generate governance challenges arising from the mutual contestation of the competing institutional logics, such as those of the public and the private for-profit sector. The present paper explores these challenges by means of an in-depth qualitative case study of the waste management service delivery in the municipality of Znojmo, Czech Republic. Encompassing structured interviews of stakeholders and desk research, the case study was aimed at understanding the strengths and weaknesses of waste management hybridity, as well as the impact of hybridity on the relationship between innovativeness and accountability.

Nutrition Transition with Accelerating Urbanization? Empirical Evidence from Rural China.

Although rapid urbanization is often considered as one of the most important drivers for changing dietary patterns, little attention has been paid to rural areas despite the profound transformation they have undergone. Using longitudinal data from the China Health and Nutrition Survey (CHNS) for the period from 2004 to 2011, this study seeks to better understand the relationship between the urbanization of rural areas and dietary transition, with the focus on nutrition intake and dietary quality. Our results suggest that with increasing urbanization, rural residents tend to have on average lower calorie intakes but higher dietary quality.

An environment for sustainable research software in Germany and beyond: current state, open challenges, and call for action.

Research software has become a central asset in academic research. It optimizes existing and enables new research methods, implements and embeds research knowledge, and constitutes an essential research product in itself. Research software must be sustainable in order to understand, replicate, reproduce, and build upon existing research or conduct new research effectively.

Pathways linking biodiversity to human health: A conceptual framework.

Biodiversity is a cornerstone of human health and well-being. However, while evidence of the contributions of nature to human health is rapidly building, research into how biodiversity relates to human health remains limited in important respects. In particular, a better mechanistic understanding of the range of pathways through which biodiversity can influence human health is needed.

Does Dietary Diversity Reduce the Risk of Obesity? Empirical Evidence from Rural School Children in China.

Childhood and adolescence overweight and obesity have implications for both health consequences and economic burden. Although it has been an emerging public health problem for primary school children in rural China and the importance of the diet-health link has been stressed for many years, rigorous analysis of the dietary diversity and obesity among children is rare. To clarify this issue, this study provides a better understanding of the functional linkage between dietary diversity and obesity by analyzing data from nearly 8500 rural primary students (aged from 10 to 13 years old) covering three provinces in China.

Cold War spy satellite images reveal long-term declines of a philopatric keystone species in response to cropland expansion.

Agricultural expansion drives biodiversity loss globally, but impact assessments are biased towards recent time periods. This can lead to a gross underestimation of species declines in response to habitat loss, especially when species declines are gradual and occur over long time periods. Using Cold War spy satellite images (Corona), we show that a grassland keystone species, the bobak marmot (), continues to respond to agricultural expansion that happened more than 50 years ago.

Managing nitrogen to restore water quality in China.

The nitrogen cycle has been radically changed by human activities. China consumes nearly one third of the world's nitrogen fertilizers. The excessive application of fertilizers and increased nitrogen discharge from livestock, domestic and industrial sources have resulted in pervasive water pollution.

Modeling the spatial distribution of grazing intensity in Kazakhstan.

With increasing affluence in many developing countries, the demand for livestock products is rising and the increasing feed requirement contributes to pressure on land resources for food and energy production. However, there is currently a knowledge gap in our ability to assess the extent and intensity of the utilization of land by livestock, which is the single largest land use in the world. We developed a spatial model that combines fine-scale livestock numbers with their associated energy requirements to distribute livestock grazing demand onto a map of energy supply, with the aim of estimating where and to what degree pasture is being utilized.

Synthesizing dam-induced land system change.

Dam construction and operation modify land systems. We synthesized 178 observations of dam-induced land system changes from 54 peer-reviewed case studies. Changing extents of forests (23%), agricultural land (21%), and built-up areas (11%) were reported frequently, alongside alterations in land use intensity (23%).