Like most northern settlements, Kluane Lake Research Station (KLRS) in Yukon Territory, Canada, is an islanded microgrid dependent on diesel generation and subject to high fuel costs. To reduce diesel costs, the station has a 48 kW solar photovoltaic (PV) array alongside a 27 kW/171 kWh lead-acid battery system to store solar energy for nighttime use, primarily during summer. However, substantial solar energy is often curtailed when the battery becomes full due to prior charging with diesel-generated electricity. The goal of this analysis is to determine how to best operate the diesel generator to maximize solar PV generation, and thus minimize diesel costs. On a monthly basis, solar PV plus batteries can meet 96% of load during June, but only 3% during December, and 67% year-round. This study also analyzes how demand-side management of new food and water infrastructure can aid this objective while providing a constant source of electricity, locally-grown food, and clean water. Findings demonstrate that optimizing the KLRS diesel generator, battery management, and solar energy conversion may reduce diesel generation by up to 100% during June, 31% during the field season (mid-April to early October), and approximately 31% year-round (due to limited solar PV generation during the winter), compared with past operational data.

The increasing global population, rapid urbanization, and climate change are putting unprecedented pressure on limited water and energy resources for food production. It requires integrated management of the key resources to achieve economic and environmental sustainability. The water-energy-food (WEF) nexus, in conjunction with circular bioeconomy (CBE) principles, offer a promising approach to achieve sustainable agriculture. It provides the integration between interconnectedness and interdependencies of the resources through closing bio-resource loops. Using bio-based materials, renewable energy resources, and implementing energy-efficient practices and technologies can maximize synergistic among the resources and promote sustainable agriculture while minimizing negative environmental impacts. However, there are challenges and limitations, such as economic conditions, proper infrastructure and technology, policy and governance support, public awareness, and potential trade-offs and conflicts. Moreover, it also faces various social and cultural challenges in implementing this approach. Therefore, to overcome these challenges and limitations, the need for innovative and sustainable technologies, significant investments in research and development, infrastructure and training, environmental campaign, innovative financing mechanisms and policies that incentivize sustainable practices, and support from stakeholders and the public are essential.

Recognizing the importance of experiences with water insecurity in the context of food and nutrition is a powerful way to act on the Food and Agriculture Organization’s call to “take water action for food and be the change” on World Food Day.

By constructing a regional water–energy–food interaction model, from the perspectives of supply and demand, this study has revealed both the coupling and synergistic effects of the three major elements of water–energy–food at the regional level and the interaction between internal and external resources in the region, and explored the sustainable development of the region under the association of the three major elements of water–energy–food. In this paper, the energy supply and demand measurement model and the optimal regional total cost measurement model were used to optimize the regional total cost measurement. This paper briefly introduces the concepts, application scope, and limitations of scenario analysis. Because the future development of society is very uncertain, it is a very useful tool for predicting and calculating the future scenario and sustainable development of the region. Agricultural water accounted for 55% of the total water resources, and industrial water accounted for 18%. This paper took the main grain-producing areas as an example and enriched the existing research on the water–energy–food relationship to a certain extent by analyzing the current situation and influencing factors of the synergistic development of water–energy–food systems, offering reference to the subsequent related research. HIGHLIGHTS In this paper, the energy supply and demand measurement model and the optimal regional total cost measurement model were used to optimize the regional total cost measurement.; On this basis, the regional water–energy–food system is empirically analyzed.;

This study introduces the foundational principles behind the water footprint in water and food security for evaluating the managerial strategies of agricultural water management in arid areas. The role of green, grey, blue and white water footprints in yield production has been critically investigated to analyze the climate and economic risks. Therefore, a nonlinear hydro-economic framework, which integrates soil water content, food production and economics has been used for the semi-arid regions of China. Non-dimensional form of net benefit per drop was formulated to analyze the uncertainty of economic parameters. Root zone moisture was simulated to estimate crop yield, transpiration, evaporation, water required for irrigation and increase water quality. Five plants of potato, onion, tomato, eggplant and carrot were selected due to similarity in the plant growth season and market criteria. The results showed that the average effective rainfall contributed less than 15% to food production. The impact of the risk of economic fluctuations in achieving the expected net profit has been more than water. HIGHLIGHTS The impact of the water footprint on food security was considered to improve agricultural water management in arid areas.; A hydro-economic framework, which integrates soil water content, food production and economics has been used.; Non-dimensional form of net benefit per drop was formulated to analyze the uncertainty of economic parameters.;

Livestock feed production is one of the primary users of freshwater and arable land, and it is also in competition with human food production. Therefore, we require reconsideration of the way we use freshwater in livestock feed production. The objective of this study is to assess the impact on freshwater use of pork production by using alternative pig diets based on local feed ingredients, or by-products. We used a lifecycle approach to analyse the freshwater use associated with feed production to produce one kg of pork. We explored three feeding scenarios (STANDARD: diets commercially used in Ireland; LOCAL: diets based on ingredients grown in Ireland; and BY-PRODUCT: diets based on by-products only). We calculated the freshwater use, using the water footprint (WFP) method, and the competition for water use between food and feed production using the water use ratio (WUR) for each scenario. The WUR quantifies the maximum amount of human digestible protein (HDP) derived from food crops that could be produced on the same land, and using the same water resources, that were used to grow the feed ingredients needed to produce 1 kg of pork. The WFP of the scenarios was 2,470 L/kg pork for STANDARD, 2,492 L/kg pork for LOCAL, and 2,205 L/kg pork for BY-PRODUCT. When we considered the WUR, none of the scenarios had a value < 1 (i.e. in all scenarios, more HDP can be produced from direct cultivation of food crops rather than pork). However, the BY-PRODUCT scenario (1.4) performed better than STANDARD (1.9) and LOCAL (2.9). Beet pulp and bakery by-products had zero WFP and no edibility and were thus considered promising ingredients. Moreover, rapeseed meal had a low WFP and rapeseed meal and sunflower seed meal are not considered human edible and were considered fit for future inclusion in diets. We also concluded that both the WFP and WUR methods have separate strengths and limitations, and should thus be used in conjunction; the ideal diet is one with the minimum WFP and WUR. Consideration of human edibility of feed ingredients is an important approach which should be included in future studies. Moreover, the entire food system including dairy, beef, poultry and other competitive uses should be taken into account when considering which feed ingredients to use in pig diets.

A Knowledge Graph (KG) is based on a graph model to encode the description of entities. As defined by Hogan and his collaborators in 2022, a knowledge graph is “a graph of data intended to accumulate and convey knowledge of the real world, whose nodes represent entities of interest and whose edges represent relations between these entities.” For Knowledge Graph using Semantic Web technologies, entities (people, events, concepts, etc.) are identified by a Uniform Resource Identifier (URI). This URI is the source of a graph description, the edge specifies the nature of the link (person name or brotherhood relationship) and the destination of the edge could be a simple literal (the person name) or a URI that identifies another entity (the URI of the brother). The main advantage of these technologies is to link entities that are described differently in several knowledge graphs provided by various organizations. Thus, computer scientists may analyze all those graph descriptions to derive new information (detect incoherencies, complete data, etc.). During the last decade, considerable progress has been made in the construction and enrichment of KGs, including ontology matching, data integration, fact prediction, and validation. This happened largely thanks to the use of techniques developed in the fields of knowledge representation, reasoning, and machine learning. With these advances, more and more applications are now able to produce and process KGs in domains such as life sciences, Galleries/Libraries/Archives/Museums (GLAMs), and health care. The subjects of interest within the Food, Agriculture, and Water domains are often complex phenomena where entities evolve through time and space. Those phenomena may be transformed by different processes and influenced by both human and natural systems. The scientific disciplines that study these phenomena are diverse and do not necessarily share the same vocabularies, the same techniques of observation, the same analyses, and so on. Indeed, each discipline often has its own point of view to describe the complexity of the studied phenomena. KG technologies provide one possible approach to express this diversity of representations and align or combine them. This Research Topic has received 13 abstracts, from which 8 articles were accepted. Three articles present a method, 4 articles are original research, and 1 is a conceptual analysis. Overall they cover three broad Research Topics often discussed in the KG research communities: ontologies design, data architectures, reasoning.

Due to severe water pollution, gradual shortage of energy resources, and increasing demand for food, the environment related to the water,food, and energy nexus has caused serious damage and pollution and has had a significant impact on economic development.“ to ”The intensification of water pollution, the gradual shortage of energy resources, and the increasing demand for food have caused serious damage and pollution to the natural environment and also had a significant impact on economic development. HIGHLIGHTS The intensification of water pollution, the gradual shortage of energy resources, and the increasing demand for food have caused serious damage and pollution to the natural environment, and have also had a significant impact on economic development.; This article constructs an innovative technology model based on studying the relationship between the natural environment and economic development, and analyzes the role of innovative technology in the integrated development of environment and economy.; Research shows that compared with high-matching areas, the variance contribution rate of innovative technology to the integrated development of environment and economy in low-matching areas is significantly lower.;