Dear Colleagues,

This Special Issue on “Land Use and Food Systems Interactions in South America” welcomes submissions of papers on land science from local to broad scales that address how chosen strategies of land use systems can help guarantee food security and improve nutritional requirements to a growing world population under or at risk of hunger and/or undernourishment.

The importance of South American land use systems in addressing regional and global food security lay on the fact that the continent, especially Brazil, holds the world largest land availability for agricultural and livestock production combined with climatic suitability. Despite that being a shared view by two institutions influencing food security—the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD)—research and governmental experts at the country level´s indicate that South America can only achieve such an ambitious goal if substantial investments are done in agricultural subsidies, logistics as well as technology to improve yield gaps and developed countries´ external dependency of inputs. In this context, land prices at the national level and international food prices play also important roles in driving further land expansion in South America, which are all affected by the massive agricultural subsidies allocated by developed economic blocks like Europe and North America in their food and land systems.

On the other hand, environmental, social and health concerns regarding the impact of large scale agriculture and grazing in ecosystem services had brought to the scientific agenda dispute discussions that diets with less animal protein and more vegetables could diminish climatic pressures on land systems together with organic over conventional farming. Thus, inevitably the governance of land-food systems has to be a core drive enabling South American countries to address strategies to guarantee transnational food security and nutrition requirements. Such strategies enclose policies and innovations that tackle climate-smart farming (e.g., low carbon agriculture, agroforestry, REDD+, PES), co-production knowledge and participative governance. Discussions regarding the human dimensions of integrative land use systems (e.g., gender, aging, rural exodus, land distribution and conflicts), and whether/how such systems are able to meet food needs for low income population in South America and/or promote more sustainable and healthier diets are also welcome. Conversely, raised concerns about land demand aimed for large scale agriculture for food/feeding, competing or not with energy or fiber crops in the region, can also bring relevant contributions. We especially consider relevant discussions on land degradation and impacts on ecosystem services (e.g., water) by commercial farming, either under governmental subsidies and/or promoted by dominant socioeconomic groups whose responsibilities in generating a communal wealth to meeting food security SDGs must be addressed.

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Land is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• food security
• land demand
• climate-smart farming
• dietary choices
• climate change
• REDD+
• agroforestry
• commodities
• ecosystem services
• South America