100 essential questions for the future of agriculture

Abstract

The world is at a crossroad when it comes to agriculture. The global population is growing, and the demand for food is increasing, putting a strain on our agricultural resources and practices. To address this challenge, innovative, sustainable, and inclusive approaches to agriculture are urgently required. In this paper, we launched a call for Essential Questions for the Future of Agriculture and identified a priority list of 100 questions. We focus on 10 primary themes: transforming agri-food systems, enhancing resilience of agriculture to climate change, mitigating climate change through agriculture, exploring resources and technologies for breeding, advancing cultivation methods, sustaining healthy agroecosystems, enabling smart and controlled-environment agriculture for food security, promoting health and nutrition-driven agriculture, exploring economic opportunities and addressing social challenges, and integrating one health and modern agriculture. We emphasise the critical importance of interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary research that integrates both basic and applied sciences and bridges the gaps among various stakeholders for achieving sustainable agriculture. Key points Growing demand and resource limitations pose a critical challenge for agriculture, necessitating innovative and sustainable approaches. The paper identifies 100 priority questions for the future of agriculture, indicating current and future research directions. Sustainable agriculture depends on interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary research that harmonises basic and applied sciences and fosters collaboration among different stakeholders.

Description

Publication history: Accepted - 8 March 2023; Published online - 11 April 2023.

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Citation

Hu, Y., Zhao, T., Guo, Y., Wang, M., Brachhold, K., Chu, C., Hanson, A., Kumar, S., Lin, R., Long, W., Luo, M., Ma, J.F., Miao, Y., Nie, S., Sheng, Y., Shi, W., Whelan, J., Wu, Q., Wu, Z., Xie, W., Yang, Y., Zhao, C., Lei, L., Zhu, Y. and Zhang, Q. (2023) ‘100 essential questions for the future of agriculture’, Modern Agriculture. Wiley. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1002/moda.5.

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