Climate-smart planting for potato to balance economic return and environmental impact across China

Localized nutrient management practices enhance the environmental-economic sustainability in potato production of China

Potatoes, as the fourth most important staple crop in China, play a crucial role in ensuring national food security. However, potato production is heavily reliant on inputs such as fertilizers and pesticides, leading to significant environmental challenges that compromise the sustainability of this production. A systematic evaluation of the current state of potato production sustainability in China and its potential for improvement is an urgent scientific issue that needs to be addressed. This study employs emergy sustainability index (ESI), energy return on investment (EROI), energy efficiency cost (EEC), and energy exchange ratio (EnER) methods to assess the environmental and economic aspects of potato production at the county level in China. Results indicate that, in 2015, the average ESI, EROI, EEC, and EnER for potato production in China were 1.37 (0.1-5.4), 2.21 (0.18-7.44), 0.06 (0.01-0.48) $/MJ, and 13.52 (2.68-112.40) MJ/$, respectively, with considerable spatial heterogeneity at the county level. Regions with higher sustainability in potato production are primarily concentrated in the northwest, which is also China's main potato-growing area. The random forest analysis identified yield, phosphorus, and nitrogen fertilizers as key factors influencing the sustainability of potato production. Regionally differentiated fertilizer management strategies led to a 43% and 35% increase in ESI and EROI, respectively, while EEC and EnER decreased by 50% and 47%. This study systematically explores the relationship between the environmental and economic dimensions of potato production from an energy perspective and proposes optimized management strategies for synergistic environmental-economic development. It provides methodological support and scientific guidance for promoting sustainable potato production and offers insights for global potato sustainability systems.

Sustainable crop production: Highlights on economic, environmental and social life cycle thinking

Seeking multi-dimensional inclusion is one of the most global concerns of the crop production sector worldwide. Socio-eco-effectiveness or socio-eco-efficiency optimization plays a crucial role in future strategy establishment. Life cycle is a widely used approach examining economic, environmental, and social impacts. Recently, life cycle thinking approaches have been increasingly utilized to bring to light useful perceptions of the crop production processes. This study aims to apply a systematic review and prescriptive analytics to critically investigate the life cycle thinking approaches application according to sustainability pyramid aspects, life cycle thinking unicity, goal and scope variability, functional units' causality, system boundary' diversity, involved aspect' concentration, indicators, impacts categories and influencing variables distribution, as well as to define a first datasheet model and directive axis to apply per aspect and family for socio-eco-effectiveness or socio-eco-efficiency evaluation. Over 295 peer-reviewed studies from 2019 to the middle of 2023, 52 reviews and articles gathered from Web of Science and Scopus meet the criteria to be analyzed. Our inspection revealed that related reviews are few, approximately 2 %. Moving from the traditional life cycle perspective to the sustainability pyramid approach, the indicators applied by researchers were classified per aspect and family belonging. A deductive analysis was carried out to narrow the impact categories, and the influencing factors to the population's main interests: four economic (input status, resources consumption, waste, and Costs of Life Cycle), eight environmental (Climate Change, Global Warming, Ozone, Acidification, Eutrophication, Photochemical Oxidation, Abiotic Depletion, and Toxicity), and three social families (Human Toxicity, employment, and Ionizing Radiation). The results combination highlights the construction need for a directive datasheet model to address the optimizing problem under the identified families and aspects constraints, as well as to envisage the units and methods worldwide standardization's necessity for spatial-temporal studies comparison in the present, the past, and the future.

Economic, environmental and social efficiency and effectiveness development in the sustainable crop agricultural sector: A systematic in-depth analysis review

Multi-dimensional inclusion of economic, environmental, and social sustainability spheres together are the most global concerns of the agricultural crop sector. Therefore, optimizing waste and natural resources guides researchers and policymakers to structure actions and strategies to attain sustainability. Several studies have been published around the world to choose between focusing on eco-efficiency or eco-effectiveness in different aspects. This work aims to systematically apply an updated review to critically assess the agricultural research articles' contributions among the assessment of those methods, models or tools, as well as a quantitative and qualitative in-depth analysis review to classify them, according to their mapping, functions, strengths, weaknesses, and logical relationships for the evaluation in the crop agricultural sector, which is expected to be needed in future to better understand the research gaps and select the appropriate methods for sustainability evaluation from different spheres (ecology, economy, and sociology). Of 242 peer-reviewed records from 2018 to the beginning of 2023, 135 reviews and articles gathered from Web of Science and Scopus meet the criteria to be examined. Our analysis revealed that the number of reviews is limited to approximately 4.5 %; most of the case studies were carried out in countries, such as China (36 %) and Brazil (6 %), and continents such as Europe (16 %). Depending on considered aspects, most studies evaluate the efficiency, effectiveness and derivatives using a set of tools, varying between the managerial tools applied for the macro-level structuration (DPSIR, EMA, and LCA) and mathematical tools applied for the micro-level quantification, subdivided into the visualization methods (GIS), and the optimization methods (DEA, SFA, MILP, FO). Thanks to their multifunctionality in considering different aspects of input, output and influence factors variables, the in-depth analysis study suggests the application of data envelopment and stochastic analysis to carry out a multidisciplinary evaluation for the socio-eco-efficiency or the socio-eco-effectiveness.