COVID-19 has exposed the vulnerability of our economies to shocks, and it has laid bare deep inequalities in our society that threaten to derail the Sustainable Development Goals. Governments around the world are looking for recovery options that deliver new jobs and businesses. Few sectors link job creation so closely to sustainable green production as the food sector. It is the largest source of employment in many countries in the global South. At the same time cities depend upon imported food that is produced in far-away countries and shipped around the world. The trillions of dollars to be invested in recovery from COVID-19 offers an unprecedented opportunity for a clean, green and just transition to a more biodiversity-friendly agricultural and food system. Key among the political opportunities to shift the post-pandemic world towards sustainability and resilience are the ongoing deliberations of the Post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework. The Post-2020 Framework will be the precedent for national governments to bridge economic action with the key need for a green, resilient recovery. The United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) has traditionally seen agriculture as one of the biggest threats to biodiversity and has been actively promoting the protection of natural ecosystems by concentrating its efforts on preventing further expansion of agriculture. But it has not explicitly recognized the importance of mixed, diverse agricultural landscapes for their contribution to the conservation of wild biodiversity. The CBD has an opportunity to bring its influence to bear on international policy favouring investments in local production and marketing capacity to replace imported food and beverages. This will contribute to both COVID-19 recovery through creation of rural jobs and income and empowering governments and consumers to support diverse, mixed agricultural systems that conserve and enhance biodiversity as well as reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Amid climate change, biodiversity loss and food insecurity, there is the growing need to draw synergies between micro-scale environmental processes and practices, and macro-level ecosystem dynamics to facilitate conservation decision-making. Adopting this synergistic approach can improve crop yields and profitability more sustainably, enhance livelihoods and mitigate climate change. Using spatially explicit data generated through a public participatory geographic information system methodology (n = 37), complemented by spatial analysis, interviews (n = 68) and focus group discussions (n = 4), we explored the synergies between participatory farmer-to-farmer agroecology knowledge sharing, farm-level decisions and their links with macro-level prioritization of conservation strategies. We mapped farm conditions and ecosystem services (ES) of two village areas with varying knowledge systems about farming. Results of the farm-level analysis revealed variations in spatial perception among farmers, differences in understanding the dynamics of crop growth and varying priorities for extension services based on agroecological knowledge. The ES use pattern analysis revealed hotspots in the mapped ES indicators with similarities in both village areas. Despite the similarities in ES use, priorities for biodiversity conservation align with farmers’ understanding of farm processes and practices. Farmers with training in agroecology prioritized strategies that are ecologically friendly while farmers with no agroecology training prioritized the use of strict regulations. Importantly, the results show that agroecology can potentially contribute to biodiversity conservation and food security, with climate change mitigation co-benefits. The findings generally contribute to debates on land sparing and land sharing conservation strategies and advance social learning theory as it pertains to acquiring agroecological knowledge for improved yield and a sustainable environment.

Wooded hay meadows provide livestock fodder in the form of both foliage from pollarded trees and hay from the understorey, and can be part of an environmentally friendly agroforestry system. However, trees may also have a negative effect on fodder production. Such trade-offs between productivity and sustainability in farming are poorly understood, especially in high-latitude areas. We studied hay production in two sites in the same wooded meadow in western Norway, one restored 6 years earlier than the other, to examine whether there were differences in hay production over a 4-year pollarding cycle. We measured production in transects starting from the trunks of pollarded and non-pollarded (reference) trees and running out into open meadow, and transects entirely in open meadow. We examined whether pollarding influenced hay production, and whether hay production was related to the distance from the tree trunk. Total production differed between the two sites, indicating that both time since restoration and differences in overall tree influence affected hay production. We observed a strong and immediate pollarding effect (increase in hay production) due to reduced tree influence. Trees have a negative influence on production as demonstrated by the increase in hay production with increasing distance from the tree trunk. However, additional dry fodder produced by harvesting leaves from pollarded trees more than compensates for reduction in hay production under pollarded trees. Moreover, the understorey production in the wooded hay meadow is at the same level as fertilized meadows in Norway when we include the fodder consumed by sheep during spring and autumn grazing. A wooded hay meadow is an environmentally friendly production system that does not compromise food production. Its tree component can also play an important role in climate change adaptation and mitigation, and supports higher biodiversity than industrial food production systems. Canopy cover, Management, Plantplant interactions, Pollarding, Production,Tree-influence | publishedVersion

Norway has vast rangeland resources (292,361 km2) with an estimated carrying capacity of nearly four million sheep and lambs, twice the current number. However, the intensive production system currently applied has led to more concentrate dependency, resulting in heavier animals in addition to poorer utilization of rangelands and homegrown feed. Intensive feeding systems indirectly influence the sustainability of ecosystems by promoting intensive cropping that can deplete soil fertility and threaten landscape preservation and biodiversity. By contrast, extensive grazing systems can produce environmentally and animal-friendly food products and contribute to regulating soil health, water and nutrient cycling, soil carbon sequestration, and recreational environments. In this paper, the economics of current sheep feeding practices in Norway, using a linear programming model, were compared with more extensive systems which allow for higher usage of on-farm feed resources. Changes in current sheep farming practices have the potential to increase lamb meat production relative to mutton production, in addition to improving the year-round supply of fresh meat. The investigated alternatives, using the Norwegian White Sheep (NWS) breed, suggest that delayed lambing is useful only on farms with abundant pastures available for autumn feeding. Lambs achieve a better market price than hoggets and mature sheep. Therefore, based on the current Norwegian meat market and price offered per kilogram of meat for lamb, an increase in NWS lamb production improves farm profits. On the other hand, when the aim is on greater use of homegrown feed and rangelands, this can be achieved through hogget production, and the quantity of concentrates required can be reduced substantially.

The United Nations (UN) Standing Committee on Nutrition has revealed that malnutrition is the largest factor that drives the worldwide disease burden. (UNSCN) On the other hand, it is stated that currently approximately more than 820 million people are suffering from hunger. (FAO c) Another critical area in today’s world, is associated with unsustainable living and production models. (Sellahewa and Martindale 2010) A large number of health-conscious people believe that consuming organic food could help overcome these challenges. In particular, health is a critical buying motive for them; a fact that has been acknowledged by diverse quantitative consumer researches. (Davies et al. 1995; Schifferstein and Oude Ophuis 1998; Michelsen et al. 1999; Harper and Makatouni 2002; Zanoli and Naspetti 2002) At the same time, studies have revealed that there is a link between one’s diet patterns and their health. (WHO 1998) On the other hand, studies show that there is a positive correlation between healthy nutrition style and the organic products. (Barański et al. 2017) The perceived health benefits of organic food include limited exposure to contaminants (Hughner et al. 2007; Magnusson et al. 2003) and having higher nutritional value. (Hughner et al. 2007) However, these deviations are not significant (Brantsæter et al. 2017) and whether they are relevant to human health is not clear. Besides, just a limited number of researches have studied the potential effects of organic food compared to conventionally produced food on human health. (Huber et al. 2011; Norwegian Scientific Committee for Food Safety 2014; Ross et al. 2013) Welfare of animals (Harper and Makatouni 2002; Schifferstein and Oude Ophuis 1998) and environmental protection concerns (Hughner et al. 2007; Williams and Hammitt 2000) political perspectives and social elements (Bravo et al. 2013) are other important drivers behind purchasing organic food. Although studies suggest that practicing organic farming over convectional farming, offers a wide variety of benefits such as biodiversity conservation, superior soil quality, decreased evaporation and water harvesting, strengthened adaptation conservation and decreased greenhouse gas emissions, as well as energy efficiency, (Seufert et al. 2012) as the performance of organic food manufacturing plants is largely dependent on the specific operator or supply chain, no general statements can be made regarding sustainability performance of the subsequent supply chain phases (transport, processing and retailing) as well as different product types. (Schader et al) On the other hand, the economic performance of organic agriculture can be assessed in varied ways and no uniform evaluation process, has been developed so far. (Schader et al) Different levels of standards for organic food production and farming are developed (vogl et al. 2005) including, international voluntary standards, national mandatory standards and local or private voluntary standards to facilitate regulation of different food systems from field-to point of sale. International principles, regulations and standards including IFOAM norms, EU-Organic regulation and Demeter International regulations, describe the minimum requirements to be fulfilled by food processors. (Kilcher et al. 2006) Processing is part of the field to fork process and responsible to transform the raw material from the field to consumable, edible food. (Kahl et al. 2013) However, organic production has set the main focus for principles and regulations on the primary production. At the same time, processing seems to have some open gaps between principles and practices. Some of these open gaps are addressed by a European project called ProOrg. (Meier et al. 2019a) At the same time, there are some dietary approaches and models, which seem to place more emphasis on health and sustainability topics. Such approaches include but are not limited to the new Nordic, the Mediterranean, (FAO 2019), the planetary healthy, (EAT- Lancet) (Willett et al. 2019) and wholesome nutrition diets which are all embedded in the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). (Global Panel on Agriculture and Food Systems for Nutrition 2017) This study aims to evaluate the international organic food processing regulations, with the help of sustainable development goals, planetary diets as well as some other instruments including NOVA classification method with respect to two aspects of health and sustainability. Furthermore, it intends to propose some recommendations to enable food producers, manufacture nutritious foods based on sustainable food systems. The main research question of this study is, “How may integration of SDGs and recommended healthy and sustainable dietary approaches be able to guide organic food processing regulations for healthy and sustainable food systems?” The study mainly relied on the narrative qualitative methodology. However, to analyze the organic food processing standards, the inductive and deductive research methodology were used. The findings of the study revealed that organic food processing sector goals are concerned with two aspects of producing healthy and nutritious foods based on the sustainable value chain. On the other hand, it was uncovered that fulfilling this aim is solely feasible through a restricted regulatory framework for the production and processing of the food. At the same time, it was found, nutritional patterns and diets cannot fully address on the level of processing/product composition and these topics are only one driver of the nutrition style. Furthermore, it was revealed that organic food processing regulations and codes of practice, fail to reflect on all aspects and requirements of healthy and sustainable diets. Thus, it was proven that organic regulations and codes of practice should further be improved and more regulations are required to be established to enable regulations/codes of practice, fully reflect on all the requirements that are addressed by global sustainable diets. In order to fulfill this objective, some recommendations were made. Following, a list of most prominent proposed recommendations can be found. It was advised that international organic food processing regulations and codes of practice establish some standards or codes of practice to give recommendations about the best sources of fats, proteins, grains and sugars based on the studied diets. These sources would then be used for the production of different types of processed foods, enabling them to go hand in hand with the requirements covered in the healthy and sustainable dietary approaches. It was also recommended to insert a requirement which facilitates plant-based meat alternative sources in the standards to encourage the production of plant based processed foods to support sustainability. The study also uncovered that some inconsistencies among international organic food processing regulations and codes of practice, in terms of the different aspects, criteria and indicators addressed by them exist. Thus, it was uncovered that there is a need for some sort of consistency in a way that these covered fields align well with each other. This would prevent confusion among the organic food processors. With regards to the nutritional quality aspect covered by international organic food processing regulations, it was recommended to make some amendments in regulations by prioritizing the permitted additives, flavors and aids based on their impact on the environment, biodiversity and human health. Also, it was recommended to avoid using some unhealthier additives and flavors including the additives and flavors that are used in the production of ultra-processed foods and rely on other healthier alternatives. It was also advised to set some thresholds regarding the permitted level of cleaning and disinfecting agents to be used in food production and some guidelines also were recommended to be developed to enable food producers to maintain a hygienic workplace and avoid contaminating foods through exposing them to these materials. Furthermore, the study showed, a large number of organic food processing regulations have made general statements about the specification of organic food processing techniques that can be defined subjectively. For instance, the terms careful, misleading and natural that have been associated with organic food processing techniques or consumer perception of organic foods is vague and unclear. Therefore, it was recommended that some amendments be made to clarify any confusion about the type of processing techniques to be used in organic food production. At the same time, one strategy to fight against hunger was deemed to be application of information and communication technologies. As they potentially can help to combat price variability, for instance, through lowering the cost of search and subsequently, the production cost can be reduced. (Hoddinott et al. 2012) Thus, it was recommended that organic food processing regulations reflect on the advanced technologies in the aforementioned fields. Another considered strategy to fight against hunger is, relying on the profitable crops for manufacturing different foods (Hoddinott et al. 2012) and it was recommended that organic food processing regulations reflect on the list of profitable and nutritious crops. The study also revealed that nutritional quality of foods is vulnerable to heat. In order to combat this problem, it was recommended that some thresholds determining the acceptable degree of heat to be applied on the foods in varied types of processing techniques that function based on heat treatment for varied processing purposes be established by organic regulations. Additionally, it was advised that organic food processing regulations propose a list of alternative technologies that can deliver similar effects, without compromising the quality of the end product. On the other hand, it was recommended that organic food processing regulations and codes of practice, generate requirements facilitating environmentally friendly technologies that can help to minimize, the negative effects of food processing technologies on the environment, such as, technologies that function based on renewable energies, consume the least amount of natural resources, emit the least amount of greenhouse gasses and produce the least amount of waste. Reducing emissions by upscaling low carbon energy or usage of nuclear energy (Roser and Ritchie 2020) is another recommendation that was made to support environmental sustainability and it was recommended to be stated in the organic food processing regulations. At the same time, it was uncovered that the sustainable and healthy planetary diet has established some thresholds to support sustainability. For instance, the established boundaries regarding greenhouse gas emissions as well as consumptive water use per year to regulate climate change and freshwater use respectively. It was recommended to reflect on these thresholds in organic food processing regulations and codes of practice.

The grape berry moth, Lobesia botrana is considered one of the most important economic pest affecting the grapes and causing great economic losses. Field experiments were conducted in2017-2018 in e vineyards located in Zaidel (5 km in the east of Homs city). to test the efficiency of some elements of integrated management in controlling the grape berry moth, where the efficacy of four elements that included sexual pheromones in technique of mating disruption and eggs parasitoid's Trichogramma cacoeciea and larval parasitoid Bracon brevicornis and bacterial pathogen Bacillus thuringiensis subsp. kurstaki , were tested separately or when incorporating more than one component Sex pheromones of the grape berry moth was used by applying the mating disruption technique, and was effective in reducing the numbers of the captured moths to a very low limits, which reached 3 moths in the experimental field in 2017 and 11 moth in 2018 , as compared to 325 moths in the control field, during the third and fourth generations in 2017 . and 278 moth during the Second third and fourth generations in 2018, and the reduction in the number of moth during the 2017 and 2018 seasons was 99.07% and 96.04%, respectively. This method also reduced the number of larvae on infected clusters in the experimental field by 76.2%. When using T. cacoeciae parasitoid eggs, The rate of reduction of infection grape berry moth ranged between 55.2-68.4% during the seasons 2017-2018, respectively AbstractHigh temperatures have had a negative effect on the efficiency of the 3rd generation of the grape berry moth in the 2017 season, where the efficiency decreased to 35.1% , diseases such as gray mold have a significant role in reducing efficiency to to 28.1%. During the 4th generation of grape berry moth. When using the parasitoid B. brevicornis, the lowest rate of reduction of larvae of the grape berry moth was 3.1%. was recorded one week after the first releases to control the 2ed generation of 2017 season. The efficiency of the parasitoid gradually increased during the subsequent generations of the seasons 2017-2018 with the highest rate of reduction of larvae in the fourth generation of the 2018 season were 34.2% and the average number of larval parasitized by. B. thuringiensis subsp kurstaki was found to have a high efficiency in killing the larvae of the grape berry moth Lobesia botrana when using commercial Delfin at dose of 1 g / 1L water. The spray was re-sprayed with the bioinsecticide Bt after 11 days, The control gave good results by reducing the number of larvae of the grape berry moth to 80% When release T. cacoeciae parasitoid and spray B. thuringiensis subsp kurstaki to control the 2ed,3th and 4th generations for larval stages of L. botrana during 2017 and 2018,The control gave good results by reducing the number of larvae of the grape berry moth. The reduction rates in the 2017 season ranged between 81.6 - 83.6% while in the 2018 season they ranged from 69.7 to 86.7%. In this research, sexual pheromones, T. cacoeciae, B. thuringiensis subsp. kurstaki and B. brevicornis were used to control the larval stages of the 2nd,3rd and 4th generations of L. botrana. The percentage of reduction in the number of larvae was 84.8% in the second generation of the 2017 season when thepathogenic bacteria B. thuringiensis and eggs parasitoid T. cacoeciae and larval parasitoid B. brevicornis were combined. This percentage increased in subsequent generations when the sexual confusion pheromones was combined with the pathogen and parasitoids to % 87.7 in the 3rd generation and 88.8% in the 4th generation. These results were very close to those of 2018 season and the larval reduction rates were 93.3%, 95.8% and 76.9%. Our results indicate the importance of including the elements of control studied in this research in the programs of integrated management of grape berry moth, especially Sexual confusion by pheromones, bacteria B. thuringiensis subsp. kurstaki and egg parasitoid T. cacoeciae.