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Abstract The Farm to Fork (F2F) Strategy under the Green Deal aims to halve nutrient losses by 2030 in the European Union (EU). Here, using the nitrogen surplus as an indicator for nitrogen losses in agricultural areas, we explore a range of scenarios for nitrogen surplus reduction across EU landscapes. We identify four nitrogen surplus typologies, each responding differently to input reduction. A 20% decrease in synthetic fertilizer alone is projected to reduce the nitrogen surplus by only 10–16%, falling short of F2F goals. Specific top-down scenarios such as reducing synthetic fertilizer by 43% and animal manure by 4%, coupled with improved technological and management practices, can achieve a reduction of up to 30–45% in nitrogen surplus. Among the most ambitious scenarios, only a handful of EU countries (four to five) may meet the intended F2F nitrogen pollution targets. Achieving F2F goals requires region-specific strategies to reduce nitrogen use while improving efficiency and sustaining productivity. 

Abstract Nitrogen (N) deposition is a significant nutrient input to cropland and consequently important for the evaluation of N budgets and N use efficiency (NUE) at different scales and over time. However, the spatiotemporal coverage of N deposition measurements is limited globally, whereas modeled N deposition values carry uncertainties. Here, we reviewed existing methods and related data sources for quantifying N deposition inputs to crop production on a national scale. We utilized different data sources to estimate N deposition input to crop production at national scale and compared our estimates with 14 N budget datasets, as well as measured N deposition data from observation networks in 9 countries. We created four datasets of N deposition inputs on cropland during 1961–2020 for 236 countries. These products showed good agreement for the majority of countries and can be used in the modeling and assessment of NUE at national and global scales. One of the datasets is recommended for general use in regional to global N budget and NUE estimates. 

Abstract The concept of sustainability inherently spans multiple spatial scales, sectors, variables, and time horizons. This study links a recently developed method of assessing present‐day agricultural sustainability across environmental, economic, and social dimensions with a process‐based integrated assessment model, in order to allow forward‐looking analysis of sustainability by region and scenario. The sustainable agriculture matrix estimates present‐day agricultural sustainability at the national level using 18 indicator variables, of which this study estimates nine to the year 2100, using an enhanced version of the Global Change Analysis Model. Scenarios include a reference scenario, and scenarios that apply the following measures, both individually and in combination, that are thought to improve sustainability: yield intensification, transition toward more plant‐based (“flexitarian”) diets, and economy‐wide greenhouse gas emissions mitigation. The scenarios illustrate considerable complexity and tradeoffs inherent to efforts to improve agricultural sustainability in all regions globally. For example, yield intensification typically increases nitrogen pollution, flexitarian diets can reduce agricultural output, and greenhouse gas mitigation efforts may either increase deforestation or crowd out crop and livestock production due to consequent bioenergy demands. However, there is considerable inter‐regional heterogeneity in the responses, and the importance of such secondary responses also differs by region. The analysis and post‐processing methods developed in this study allow quantification and visualization of the absolute and relative magnitude of the tradeoffs between agricultural sustainability indicator variables across regions, time periods, and scenarios. 

Abstract The stability and resilience of the Earth system and human well-being are inseparably linked^1–3, yet their interdependencies are generally under-recognized; consequently, they are often treated independently^4,5. Here, we use modelling and literature assessment to quantify safe and just Earth system boundaries (ESBs) for climate, the biosphere, water and nutrient cycles, and aerosols at global and subglobal scales. We propose ESBs for maintaining the resilience and stability of the Earth system (safe ESBs) and minimizing exposure to significant harm to humans from Earth system change (a necessary but not sufficient condition for justice)⁴. The stricter of the safe or just boundaries sets the integrated safe and just ESB. Our findings show that justice considerations constrain the integrated ESBs more than safety considerations for climate and atmospheric aerosol loading. Seven of eight globally quantified safe and just ESBs and at least two regional safe and just ESBs in over half of global land area are already exceeded. We propose that our assessment provides a quantitative foundation for safeguarding the global commons for all people now and into the future. 

Sudden reductions in crop yield (i.e., yield shocks) severely disrupt the food supply, intensify food insecurity, depress farmers' welfare, and worsen a country's economic conditions. Here, we study the spatiotemporal patterns of wheat yield shocks, quantified by the lower quantiles of yield fluctuations, in 86 countries over 30 years. Furthermore, we assess the relationships between shocks and their key ecological and socioeconomic drivers using quantile regression based on statistical (linear quantile mixed model) and machine learning (quantile random forest) models. Using a panel dataset that captures spatiotemporal patterns of yield shocks and possible drivers in 86 countries, we find that the severity of yield shocks has been increasing globally since 1997. Moreover, our cross-validation exercise shows that quantile random forest outperforms the linear quantile regression model. Despite this performance difference, both models consistently reveal that the severity of shocks is associated with higher weather stress, nitrogen fertilizer application rate, and gross domestic product (GDP) per capita (a typical indicator for economic and technological advancement in a country). While the unexpected negative association between more severe wheat yield shocks and higher fertilizer application rate and GDP per capita does not imply a direct causal effect, they indicate that the advancement in wheat production has been primarily on achieving higher yields and less on lowering the possibility and magnitude of sharp yield reductions. Hence, in the context of growing extreme weather stress, there is a critical need to enhance the technology and management practices that mitigate yield shocks to improve the resilience of the world food systems. 

Decarbonization is crucial to combat climate change. However, some decarbonization strategies could profoundly impact the nitrogen cycle. In this Review, we explore the nitrogen requirements of five major decarbonization strategies to reveal the complex interconnections between the carbon and nitrogen cycles and identify opportunities to enhance their mutually sustainable management. Some decarbonization strategies require substantial new nitrogen production, potentially leading to increased nutrient pollution and exacerbation of eutrophication in aquatic systems. For example, the strategy of substituting 44% of fossil fuels used in marine shipping with ammonia-based fuels could reduce CO2 emissions by up to 0.38 Gt CO2-eq yr−1 but would require a corresponding increase in new nitrogen synthesis of 212 Tg N yr−1. Similarly, using biofuels to achieve 0.7 ± 0.3 Gt CO2-eq yr−1 mitigation would require new nitrogen inputs to croplands of 21–42 Tg N yr−1. To avoid increasing nitrogen losses and exacerbating eutrophication, decarbonization efforts should be designed to provide carbon–nitrogen co-benefits. Reducing the use of carbon-intensive synthetic nitrogen fertilizer is one example that can simultaneously reduce both nitrogen inputs by 14 Tg N yr−1 and CO2 emissions by 0.04 (0.03–0.06) Gt CO2-eq yr−1. Future research should guide decarbonization efforts to mitigate eutrophication and enhance nitrogen use efficiency in agriculture, food and energy systems. 

The health of the planet and its people are at risk. The deterioration of the global commons—ie, the natural systems that support life on Earth—is exacerbating energy, food, and water insecurity, and increasing the risk of disease, disaster, displacement, and conflict. In this Commission, we quantify safe and just Earth-system boundaries (ESBs) and assess minimum access to natural resources required for human dignity and to enable escape from poverty. Collectively, these describe a safe and just corridor that is essential to ensuring sustainable and resilient human and planetary health and thriving in the Anthropocene. We then discuss the need for translation of ESBs across scales to inform science-based targets for action by key actors (and the challenges in doing so), and conclude by identifying the system transformations necessary to bring about a safe and just future. Our concept of the safe and just corridor advances research on planetary boundaries and the justice and Earth-system aspects of the Sustainable Development Goals. We define safe as ensuring the biophysical stability of the Earth system, and our justice principles include minimising harm, meeting minimum access needs, and redistributing resources and responsibilities to enhance human health and wellbeing. The ceiling of the safe and just corridor is defined by the more stringent of the safe and just ESBs to minimise significant harm and ensure Earth-system stability. The base of the corridor is defined by the impacts of minimum global access to food, water, energy, and infrastructure for the global population, in the domains of the variables for which we defined the ESBs. Living within the corridor is necessary, because exceeding the ESBs and not meeting basic needs threatens human health and life on Earth. However, simply staying within the corridor does not guarantee justice because within the corridor resources can also be inequitably distributed, aggravating human health and causing environmental damage. Procedural and substantive justice are necessary to ensure that the space within the corridor is justly shared. We define eight safe and just ESBs for five domains—the biosphere (functional integrity and natural ecosystem area), climate, nutrient cycles (phosphorus and nitrogen), freshwater (surface and groundwater), and aerosols—to reduce the risk of degrading biophysical life-support systems and avoid tipping points. Seven of the ESBs have already been transgressed: functional integrity, natural ecosystem area, climate, phosphorus, nitrogen, surface water, and groundwater. The eighth ESB, air pollution, has been transgressed at the local level in many parts of the world. Although safe boundaries would ensure Earth-system stability and thus safeguard the overall biophysical conditions that have enabled humans to flourish, they do not necessarily safeguard everyone against harm or allow for minimum access to resources for all. We use the concept of Earth-system justice—which seeks to ensure wellbeing and reduce harm within and across generations, nations, and communities, and between humans and other species, through procedural and distributive justice—to assess safe boundaries. Earth-system justice recognises unequal responsibility for, and unequal exposure and vulnerability to, Earth-system changes, and also recognises unequal capacities to respond and unequal access to resources. We also assess the extent to which safe ESBs could minimise irreversible, existential, and other major harms to human health and wellbeing through a review of who is affected at each boundary. Not all safe ESBs are just, in that they do not minimise all significant harm (eg, that associated with the climate change, aerosol, or nitrogen ESBs). Billions of people globally do not have sufficient access to energy, clean water, food, and other resources. For climate change, for example, tens of millions of people are harmed at lower levels of warming than that defined in the safe ESB, and thus to avoid significant harm would require a more stringent ESB. In other domains, the safe ESBs align with the just ESBs, although some need to be modified, or complemented with local standards, to prevent significant harm (eg, the aerosols ESB). We examine the implications of achieving the social SDGs in 2018 through an impact modelling exercise, and quantify the minimum access to resources required for basic human dignity (level 1) as well as the minimum resources required to enable escape from poverty (level 2). We conclude that without social transformation and redistribution of natural resource use (eg, from top consumers of natural resources to those who currently do not have minimum access to these resources), meeting minimum-access levels for people living below the minimum level would increase pressures on the Earth system and the risks of further transgressions of the ESBs. We also estimate resource-access needs for human populations in 2050 and the associated Earth-system impacts these could have. We project that the safe and just climate ESB will be overshot by 2050, even if everybody in the world lives with only the minimum required access to resources (no more, no less), unless there are transformations of, for example, the energy and food systems. Thus, a safe and just corridor will only be possible with radical societal transformations and technological changes. Living within the safe and just corridor requires operationalisation of ESBs by key actors across all levels, which can be achieved via cross-scale translation (whereby resources and responsibilities for impact reductions are equitably shared among actors). We focus on cities and businesses because of the magnitude of their impacts on the Earth system, and their potential to take swift action and act as agents of change. We explore possible approaches for translating each ESB to cities and businesses via the sequential steps of transcription, allocation, and adjustment. We highlight how different elements of Earth-system justice can be reflected in the allocation and adjustment steps by choosing appropriate sharing approaches, informed by the governance context and broader enabling conditions. Finally we discuss system transformations that could move humanity into a safe and just corridor and reduce risks of instability, injustice, and harm to human health. These transformations aim to minimise harm and ensure access to essential resources, while addressing the drivers of Earth-system change and vulnerability and the institutional and social barriers to systemic transformations, and include reducing and reallocating consumption, changing economic systems, technology, and governance. 

Efficient management of nitrogen (N) and phosphorus (P) is imperative for sustainable agriculture, resource conservation, and reducing environmental pollution. Despite progress in on-farm practices and urban wastewater treatment in the Chesapeake Bay (CB) watershed, limited attention has been given to nutrient transport, use, and handling between farms and urban environments. This study uses the hierarchical CAFE (Cropping system, Animal-crop system, Food system, and Ecosystem) framework to evaluate nutrient management performances within the watershed. We first develop a three-decade, county-level nutrient budget database (1985–2019), then analyze the spatiotemporal patterns of N and P budgets, as well as N and P use efficiencies, within the four CAFE hierarchies. Our results indicate a sizable increase in potential N and P losses beyond crop fields (i.e. in the Animal-crop system, Food system, and Ecosystem), surpassing losses from cropland in over 90% of counties. To address these system-wide trade-offs, we estimate the nutrient resources in waste streams beyond croplands, which, if recovered and recycled, could theoretically offset mineral fertilizer inputs in over 60% of counties. Additionally, the growing imbalance in excess N versus P across systems, which increases the N:P ratio of potential losses, could pose an emerging risk to downstream aquatic ecosystems. By utilizing a systematic approach, our novel application of the CAFE framework reveals trade-offs and synergies in nutrient management outcomes that transcend agro-environmental and political boundaries, underscores disparities in N and P management, and helps to identify unique opportunities for enhancing holistic nutrient management across systems within the CB watershed. 

Agriculture’s global environmental impacts are widely expected to continue expanding, driven by population and economic growth and dietary changes. This Review highlights climate change as an additional amplifier of agriculture’s environmental impacts, by reducing agricultural productivity, reducing the efficacy of agrochemicals, increasing soil erosion, accelerating the growth and expanding the range of crop diseases and pests, and increasing land clearing. We identify multiple pathways through which climate change intensifies agricultural greenhouse gas emissions, creating a potentially powerful climate change–reinforcing feedback loop. The challenges raised by climate change underscore the urgent need to transition to sustainable, climate-resilient agricultural systems. This requires investments that both accelerate adoption of proven solutions that provide multiple benefits, and that discover and scale new beneficial processes and food products. 

Agricultural activities contribute almost half of the total anthropogenic nitrous oxide (N2O) emissions, but proper assessment of mitigation measures is hampered by large uncertainties during the quantification of cropland N2O emissions and mitigation potentials. This review summarizes the up-to-date datasets and approaches to provide spatially explicit and crop-specific assessment of the global mitigation potentials. Here, we show that global cropland N2O emissions have quadrupled to 1.2 Tg N2O-N year 1 over 1961–2020. The mitigation potential is 0.7 Tg N2O-N without compromising the crop production, with 86% from optimizing nitrogen fertilization, three-quarters (78%) from maize (22%), vegetables, and fruits (16%), other crops (15%), wheat (13%), and rice (12%), and over 80% from South Asia, China, the European Union, other American countries, the United States, and Southeast Asia. More accurate estimation of cropland N2O mitigation potentials requires extending the N2O observation network, improving modeling capacity, quantifying the feasibility of mitigation measures, and seeking additional mitigation measures.