2017/10/30 by Adrian Müller, Christian Schader, Nadia El‐Hage Scialabba +8 · 777 citations
Agricultural and Biological Sciences · Engineering · Environmental Science · #Agriculture #Agriculture Sustainability and Environmental Impact #Arable land #Business #Ecology #Economics #Engineering #Environmental science #Food Waste Reduction and Sustainability #Food processing #Food security #Food systems #Food waste #Geography #Greenhouse gas #Integrated farming #Livestock #Natural resource economics #Organic Food and Agriculture #Organic farming #Production (economics) #Sustainability #Sustainable Agriculture Innovation Network #Sustainable agriculture #Waste management
paper · pdf · doi:10.1038/s41467-017-01410-w
published in Nature Communications 8(1), 1290 (Nature Portfolio)
openalex publication_date 2017/10/30 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/04
Organic agriculture is proposed as a promising approach to achieving sustainable food systems, but its feasibility is also contested. We use a food systems model that addresses agronomic characteristics of organic agriculture to analyze the role that organic agriculture could play in sustainable food systems. Here we show that a 100% conversion to organic agriculture needs more land than conventional agriculture but reduces N-surplus and pesticide use. However, in combination with reductions of food wastage and food-competing feed from arable land, with correspondingly reduced production and consumption of animal products, land use under organic agriculture remains below the reference scenario. Other indicators such as greenhouse gas emissions also improve, but adequate nitrogen supply is challenging. Besides focusing on production, sustainable food systems need to address waste, crop-grass-livestock interdependencies and human consumption. None of the corresponding strategies needs full implementation and their combined partial implementation delivers a more sustainable food future.