Rice production, despite its important role in food security, could bring about environmental problems such as methane emissions and polluting water resources. To decrease such negative environmental impacts, the co-culture of rice with ecologically friendly aquatic animals such as crabs has shown promising results. However, there are still serious concerns about the proper implementation of rice co-culture systems. Having considered rice-crab systems, crab stock density and the amount of crab feed, among others, are two important factors which regulate the performance of the system and the associated environmental pollution. However, their optimal values and their underlying relationship with enviro-economic parameters (e.g. methane emissions, nitrous oxide emissions, ammonia volatilization, yield, N uptake, nitrate in drainage water, and profit) have not been scrutinized yet. Accordingly, a set of farm experiments has been performed to measure enviro-economic parameters under mono- and co-cultivation of rice. Moreover, the attempts were made to explore the underlying correlations between crab stock density and the amount of crab feed as two independent variables and measured parameters such as yield and greenhouse gas emissions. Furthermore, an appropriate optimization model was developed to find the optimal crab density and crab feed in order to minimize the environmental pollution and maximize crab and rice yield as well as net profit. At the end, a farm survey was also conducted to evaluate the shortages in co-culture systems. The results showed that, under optimal rice-crab co-culture system, the improvements in nutrient uptakes ranged from 5.2% to 23.3%, with the lowest for Zn uptake and the highest for N uptake. Under such circumstances, 355% lower global warming impact would be attained compared to rice mono-culture showing a significant contribution to greenhouse gas mitigation. Furthermore, farmers would benefit from 122% higher profit under co-culture systems. The results achieved herein also have policy implications because it would help to decrease national greenhouse gas emissions and avoid deterioration of water resources while help farmers to ensure earning a high profit.

The objective of this study is to evaluate the contributions of ecosystem-based adaptation (EbA) practices to the water–energy–food (WEF) nexus balance, design practical pathways, and analyze barriers towards achievement of EbA-WEF balance. An area case study and descriptive methods were used to analyze data collected from 50 community forests (CFs) spread across three regions in The Gambia. Extensive information from relevant literature sources was also referred to in this study. Fourteen priority EbA practices were established and categorized into four major groups based on their application similarities. Among the anticipated ecosystem services were enhanced water resource conservation, food and feed production, enhanced energy supply, and improved community livelihoods to enhance their resilience. Pathways on how each practice under the broad category contributes to water, energy, and food were developed to demonstrate how they individually and collectively contribute towards the nexus balance. Key enablers identified included a conducive policy framework, institutional support, diverse incentives, information, knowledge, and technology transfer, and climate and non-climate barriers were cited as impediments. The paper concludes by outlining recommendations to overcome the established barriers.

Water, energy and food (WEF) are three basic elements that safeguard human life and socioeconomic development. As the demand for water increases in food and energy production, water scarcity is more prominent globally. WEF Nexus plays an important role in evaluating and alleviating the contradiction between food and energy for water. Based on the water footprint of food and energy in China from 1997 to 2016, this paper used the “Structure-Conduct-Performance” analysis paradigm to evaluate the water competition mechanism. The newly constructed competition mechanism model includes type, conduct and performance. The results showed that the blue water footprint of energy increased from 3.25 Gm³ in 1997 to 12.54 Gm³ in 2016. The blue water footprint of food remained above 200 Gm³ for many years, and competition between food and energy production for water was intensifying. The gray water footprint of energy was increasing yearly, and food reached the maximum value of 181.01 Gm³ in 2014. Through model analysis, the South-to-North Water Diversion has not effectively alleviated water scarcity, and a few provinces were still classified in the water pressure-dominated area. The northern channel of West-to-East Power Transmission only transferred electric energy from water pressure-dominated area, causing the unsustainability coefficients of Inner Mongolia and Yunnan to increase from 0.09 and 0.03 in 1997 to 0.23 and 0.05 in 2016. This paper provides effective policy insights for global challenges facing WEF Nexus from the source, process and end of food and energy production.

Food unites the world, and powers us forward. Today a powerful and unified global effort is needed to equip food systems to advance human and planetary health to their full potential. The climate crisis is at the forefront of threats to our ability to provide good nutrition for all people while staying within environmental limits. Interlocked with climate change are land degradation, deforestation, loss of biodiversity, depletion of water resources, and pollution. These threats to our planetary life support systems in turn propel poor health, economic inequality, social upheaval, and conflict. Food systems are both a driver and a victim of these challenges. Yet — if managed and governed differently — food systems could be a champion of change, at the vanguard of sustainable living for all, leading other sectors with solutions and inspiration. A radical realignment of food systems around the world could accomplish not only an end to hunger and malnutrition in all its forms, but also gender equality, job creation, prosperous livelihoods, opportunities for youth, climate solutions, and environmental health. Multiple like-minded partners are now working towards this vision at all levels from local to global — with practical ideas on how to catalyze systems transformation with breakthroughs both small and large. Science and innovation are a critical part of the mix, providing new evidence, insights, and solutions that feed into strategic alliances for change. CGIAR, as the world leader in agricultural science and innovation for development, must now step up to be a key player in global food systems transformation. The intertwined health, environment, and social inclusion challenges of the 21st century create an urgent impetus to sharpen the focus of CGIAR research. A refreshed, more ambitious strategy from CGIAR provides an opportunity to accelerate achievement of systems resilience and equal opportunities. A new transition to One CGIAR — the integration of CGIAR's capabilities, knowledge, assets, people, and global presence for a new era of interconnected and partnership-driven research towards achieving the SDGs — provides the opportunity for a fresh 10-year strategy that can shape a stronger and more relevant science agenda for today's dynamic world. One CGIAR enables us to operate as a cohesive organization with a single mission, seamlessly leveraging all of our capabilities and assets to deliver real benefits to people and our planet. This 2030 Research and Innovation Strategy situates CGIAR in the evolving global context that demands a systems transformation approach for food, land, and water systems. It builds on our track record of collaborating with partners to deliver impacts for more than 50 years, lifting hundreds of millions of people out of hunger and poverty and supporting low-income producers and consumers. Through integrated systems research, One CGIAR and country partners will strive for impact to create sustainable and resilient food, land, and water systems, and meet SDG targets. This Strategy presents CGIAR's ambitious high-level approach for making a significant and meaningful contribution to the transformation of the world's food, land and water systems — both towards and beyond the SDGs, providing science of relevance within and beyond the Strategy's 2030 horizon. It provides an overview of how CGIAR will develop and deploy its capacities, assets, and skills to address priority global and regional challenges with partners. The strategy covers all research for development programming across CGIAR. This CGIAR 2030 Strategy will be delivered through 3-year Investment Plans, which will frame CGIAR work supported by pooled funding of large CGIAR Initiatives. These Investment Plans will provide a much greater level of detail on the objectives, targets, activities, deliverables, and budgets of CGIAR Initiatives based on detailed co-analysis and co-design together with global, regional, and national partners, and investors.

Salmonella contamination of low-water activity (aw) foods poses a serious concern worldwide. The present study was conducted to assess the effects of drying conditions, food composition, and water activity on the desiccation tolerance and thermal resistance of S. Enteritidis FUA1946, S. Senftenberg ATCC43845 and S. Typhimurium ATCC13311 in pet food, binder formulation, and skim milk powder. The samples were wet inoculated with the individual Salmonella strains and were equilibrated to aw 0.33 and 0.75, followed by an isothermal treatment at 70 °C. The thermal inactivation data was fitted to the Weibull model. Irrespective of the aw, food composition and physical structure of the selected foods, strain S. Enteritidis FUA1946 displayed the highest desiccation and thermal resistance, followed by S. Senftenberg ATCC43845 and S. Typhimurium ATCC13311. The food matrix and strain type significantly (p < 0.05) influenced the thermal resistance of microorganisms in foods along with aw change during thermal treatments. To further study the effect of food composition, an additional set of experiments using dry inoculation of the resistant Salmonella strain in the low-aw foods was designed. Significant (p < 0.05) matrix-dependent interaction on Salmonella reduction was observed. The water adsorption isotherms of selected low-aw foods were measured at 20 and 70 °C to relate the thermal inactivation kinetics with the change in the aw. The characterization of thermal resistance of the Salmonella serovars in low-aw products with different compositions and aw in this study may be used for the validation of thermal challenge studies.

Water and land are vital resources essential to ensuring sustainable and productive rural economies. They are also essential for safeguarding food security and socio-economic development. In spite of this, the concept of water-land-food (WLF) security nexus has generally been examined from a top-down manner with women mostly disenfranchised in the access and management of water and land in particular. Concurrently, risks linked with climate crisis aggravate gender inequalities. The limited access to resources, restricted formal rights through top-down management exacerbates the vulnerability of poor rural women. Furthermore, policy development procedures follow a sectoral approach with no account of interrelationship and interdependence between the sectors. This, directly and indirectly limits the stewardship of natural resources and mitigation of the effects of climate change. This study, therefore, examines gender roles and their implications for water, land, and food security in a changing climate through an integrative systematic review of literature in Sub-Saharan Africa. It further explains the importance to consider the nexus in adaptation. Food security and sustainable livelihoods could be ensured if women can freely and adequately access land and participate in decision-making processes.

Role-playing simulations have gained in popularity in recent years as a novel method of engaging researchers and stakeholders in a variety of social and environmental issues. While academic interest has grown on this topic, knowledge remains sparse on the underlying theories that may guide the design of such games. Thsi article introduces a new game design framework - Com­pleC­Sus (Com­plex­ity-Col­lab­o­ra­tion-Sus­tain­abil­ity) - built on the concepts of social learning and procedural rhetoric. We describe and discuss the conceptual basis for our framework, giving a detailed account of its application through the recently developed the Water–Food–Energy Nexus Game (Nexus Game) as an example. We illustrate the process involved in designing the Nexus Game through initial scoping, prototyping, and design decisions, and how game structure and debriefing have been crafted to foster social learning focused on the understanding of the underlying social-ecological system as well as fostering collaboration between stakeholders. We also provide the analysis of qualitative data collected during recent gaming sessions across three continents to evaluate the Nexus Game’s potential learning effects.

Natural resources are a boon for human beings, and their conservation for future uses is indispensable. Most importantly, energy-food-water security (EFWS) nexus management is the utmost need of our time. An effective managerial policy for the current distribution and conservation to meet future demand is necessary and challenging. Thus, this paper investigates an interconnected and dynamic EFWS nexus optimization model by considering the socio-economic and environmental objectives with the optimal energy supply, electricity conversion, food production, water resources allocation, and CO2 emissions control in the multi-period time horizons. Due to real-life complexity, various parameters are taken as intuitionistic fuzzy numbers. A novel method called interactive neutrosophic programming approach (INPA) is suggested to solve the EFWS nexus model. To verify and validate the proposed EFWS model, a synthetic computational study is performed. The obtained solution results are compared with other optimization approaches, and the outcomes are also evaluated with significant practical implications. The study reveals that the food production processes require more water resources than electricity production, although recycled water has not been used for food production purposes. The use of a coal-fired plant is not a prominent electricity conversion source. However, natural gas power plants’ service is also optimally executed with a marginal rate of production. Finally, conclusions and future research are addressed. This current study emphasizes how the proposed EFWS nexus model would be reliable and beneficial in real-world applications and help policy-makers identify, modify, and implement the optimal EFWS nexus policy and strategies for the future conservation of these resources.

Rapid changes in food habits, climate, and population size are expected to substantially challenge the sustainable use of China’s agricultural water supply, undoubtedly increasing the uncertainty of China’s food security. This study analyzes the change characteristics of China’s food habits during 1981–2017, and the amount agricultural water for food production during peak population period (2029–2033) has also projected based on different food habits and climate scenarios. The results show that China’s food habits changed dramatically from mainly vegetable-dominated to animal-dominated during 1981–2017. Compared to the historical period (2013–2017), the decrease in precipitation and the increase in evapotranspiration in the peak population period will increase the drought degree in China’s thirteen main food producing provinces. During peak population period, the irrigation water demand will increase to 298.0–314.7 billion m³ under current food habits and 319.4–337.8 billion m³ under recommended food habits in different climate scenarios, respectively; these values are much higher than those of the historical period (e.g., 195.7 billion m³ in 2017). Moreover, compared with 2017, China’s future per capita irrigation water demand is expected to increase by 63.3–74.8 m³ due to climate change; if food habit changes are further adopted, then per capita irrigation water demand is expected to increase even more, by 77.9–90.5 m³. This study also proposes various measures to ensure China’s agricultural water security based on the presented findings.

Managing the use of water and energy for food production is the main challenge for agriculture in underdeveloped countries. Therefore, a change in farmers’ insight about resources consumption is essential. This study aims to apply the water-energy-food nexus index (WEFNI) as a new management perspective at the farm level. Measurements related to WEFNI were done using integrated primary and secondary data. The data for water and energy consumption, water and energy mass productivity, and water and energy economic productivity were gathered for dominant crops (wheat, maize-grain, and tomato) in the study area. Finally, due to the study framework and equations, six indicators have been weighted and combined for each crop. The study area includes Miandarband plain in Kermanshah province (the west of Iran). Results revealed that the rate of WEFNI was very low for studied crops (wheat = 0.209, tomato = 0.206 and maize-grain = 0.197). Wheat, meanwhile, has been ranked first in terms of sustainability while based on the 6 indicators, separately, and before integration in the WEFN framework, it was ranked third. Therefore, the integration of indicators within the used WEFN framework has changed the former insight about farm management, crop cultivation, and also input consumption. This study is one of the first attempts to provide empirical evidence that supports WEFNI effect in farm management. Therefore, annual calculation and analysis of WEFNI in the framework of the present study to monitor agricultural activities are recommended.