Designing Transformational Agricultural Systems Research
A special issue of Agronomy (ISSN 2073-4395). This special issue belongs to the section "Farming Sustainability".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (1 October 2019)
Special Issue Editor
Interests: climate science; climate variability; food security; sustainable agriculture; crop science; agronomy; soil science
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
The recent increase in the number of undernourished and the rise of the conflict-food insecurity-migration nexus (da Silva and Shenggen, 2017) issues a clear warning signal that achieving the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by 2030 will require significant transformations of our agricultural systems, and a new focus on research for- and in- transformational approaches.
Even though significant incremental gains in food production have been made over the last 20 years, protracted conflicts (da Silva and Shenggen, 2017), structural constraints, the limited availability of resources, and the expected increase in food demand (Frelat et al., 2016; Rodriguez et al., 2017) are shedding doubts on our capacity to meet the SDG targets using business-as-usual approaches.
Here, we propose that these are complex problems within our food–social–political systems, which require more transformational research approaches that simultaneously address multiple interlinked drivers (Garnett et al., 2013), and that agriculture has a significant role to play to address some of the underlying causes of these problems (Petersen and Snapp, 2015).
With this Special Issue, we hope to collect a number of articles that (i) analyse and dissect the constraints on the development of more transformational research approaches across the dry, semi-arid, sub-tropical, and tropical regions of the globe; (ii) identify optimum pathways in research for development that are more conducive to meeting the SDG targets; and (iii) develop a negotiated way forward and framework for developing and scaling innovative solutions to complex problems in agriculture through agricultural systems research (ASR).
Prof. Daniel Rodriguez
Guest Editor
Manuscript Submission Information
Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.
Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Agronomy is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.
Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.
Keywords
- Incremental and transformational research
- Climate change
- Climate variability
- Agricultural systems research
- Sustainability
- Sustainable development goals
- Resilience
