Future Foods in the Face of Hunger and Surplus: From Sustainable Production to Responsible Consumption

Dear Colleagues,

World food production has increased greatly in the past and secured food for millions of people around the world. However, there are still food insecurity issues in terms of either less or surplus food availability with poor quality leading to several challenges such as anemia, hidden hunger, and malnutrition, ultimately giving rise to the prevalence of non-communicable diseases. Recently, the world has witnessed 811 million undernourished people with an increase of 118 million people from 2019 to 2020. Global food production and consumptions are the centers of the global economy. Thus, it has become inevitable to develop climate-resilient sustainable crop production systems to produce quality food and measures for the responsible use of available foods. However, progress toward reducing hunger is variable across the world.

Today, food and agriculture production systems worldwide are facing unprecedented challenges from an increasing demand for food for a growing population, rising hunger and malnutrition, adverse climate change effects, overexploitation of natural resources, loss of biodiversity, and food loss and waste. These challenges can undermine the world’s capacity to meet its food needs now and in the future. In other words, fewer people have adequate access to nutritious food. Our current food and agriculture systems need to be boosted to address the key challenges of our times, while millions still go hungry or malnourished. Achieving a level of production that meets our needs from an already seriously depleted natural resource base will be impossible without profound changes in our food and agriculture systems. We need to expand and accelerate the transition to sustainable food and agriculture which ensures world food security, provides economic and social opportunities, and protects the ecosystem services on which agriculture depends.

The main objective of the Special Issue is to publish original research, modeling approaches, and review papers addressing how agricultural production systems and the food industry could be implemented with a sustainable approach. To achieve this goal, Sustainability is encouraging researchers to submit relevant articles to this Special Issue. Therefore, manuscripts evaluating how innovative agricultural production systems and food technology could support sustainable practices and improve food productivity, transformation, as well as conservation and the food chain are welcome. This Special Issue aims to collate recent research measures centering on sustainable crop production and responsible consumption with reduced food losses. Research papers focusing on but not limited to the given topics are welcomed in the present Special Issue.

1. Sustainable crop production systems under the face of increasing weather extremes and global climate change;
2. Sustainable exploitation of natural resources for quality food production;
3. Relationships and impacts on society due to sustainable crop production and consumption system.

Dr. Emanuele Radicetti
Dr. Rana Muhammad Aadil
Dr. Ghulam Haider
Dr. Paola Tedeschi
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

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Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 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 systems
• food chains
• food networks
• food security
• food safety
• food waste
• food loss
• food production
• food processing
• food policy
• crop production