Horticulture

As a consequence, farming systems address multiple and sometimes competing objectives like increasing production, improving the quality of farmers’ livelihoods, and enhancing environmental sustainability. In trying to meet these objectives, farming systems in Europe are facing an increasingly broad range of environmental, economic, social and institutional challenges . Operating in this complex environment requires stakeholders to anticipate the challenges ahead and to prepare for them by enhancing the resilience of farming systems. One of the many farming systems working towards achieving long-term sustainability in an increasingly challenging environment is the farming system in the Veenkoloni¨en, in the Netherlands. Traditionally, this farming system has been dominated by the cultivation of starch potato in a rotation with cereals and sugar beets. A review of the starch potato production in the region conducted by Bont et al. found that the production of starch from potatoes accounted for up to 50% of the income of arable farms and supported more than 7000 direct and indirect jobs in the region. The presence of Avebe, an agro-industrial cooperative dedicated to starch processing, has resulted in stable prices and demand for the farmers in the area. Avebe is the only company in the Netherlands that processes starch from potatoes and currently has 1400 members that are supplying a steady flow of starch potatoes every year . Avebe receives roughly half of all its starch potato supply from the Veenkoloni¨en. This supply represents about one third of the global market share of the starch potato value chain .

All the starch potato growers in the Veenkoloni¨en own Avebe shares, which come with the obligation to deliver starch potatoes to Avebe . Avebe’s factories process the potatoes that are produced by all shareholders and sell the resulting starch or other products for an added value on the world market. The profits of Avebe then get redistributed back to the shareholders according to the volume and quality of starch potatoes they delivered, and the number of shares they own . So far, this synergy between Avebe and the starch potato farmers in the Veenkoloni¨en has proven successful and has helped farmers to overcome significant challenges thanks to innovation and vertical integration driven by Avebe . However, vertical grow rack there are growing concerns amongst local stakeholders in the Veenkoloni¨en that this success might be reaching its limits and that starch potato cultivation might stop being a profitable economic activity in the region . While the amount of starch potato produced and the cultivated area in the region have kept increasing, since 2000 the number of farms cultivating starch potatoes has decreased significantly. The substantial reduction in the number of farmers, potentially due to poor economic performance of smaller producers, raises questions about how resilient the system is and whether it will be able to withstand future challenges. This paper develops a simulation model to explore how this farming system might respond to future challenges. In simple terms, resilience describes the capacity of a system to absorb a disturbance and to reorganise itself in ways that allow it to operate under new conditions ;. A common way to conceptualise resilience is to think of the system moving about within a particular region in state space in which the system tends to remain within the same “stable state” or “basin of attraction” .

The various basins of attraction that a system may occupy within this region, and the boundaries that separate them, are known as “stability landscapes” . Complex systems are known to have multiple basins of attraction within a stability landscape , and resilience is often conceptualised in terms of the system potential to withstand disturbances without shifting from their current basin of attraction to a different one . When systems are affected by a disturbance, they might alternate between basins of attractions, return to the same configuration after a small disturbance or shift to a different basin of attraction after a large one . Failure to anticipate these shifts between basins of attraction can be costly and sometimes even catastrophic. An alternative to anticipating shifts between basin of attractions is to use simulation models to explore the impact disturbances have in the variables and processes that control the system’s behaviour . Complex systems are characterised by comprehensive mechanisms that push the system toward a particular basin of attraction. When affected by a disturbance, a chain reaction of changes through the system triggers feedback loop mechanisms that either move the system toward a different basin of attraction or help it to remain within the current one . The aims of this study were threefold. First, we aimed to explore the impact disturbances might have on the long-term performance of the starch potato farming system in the Veenkoloni¨en region. Second, we aimed to explore the feedback loops within the system structure that influence/condition the resilience of the system. Finally, our third goal was to use the insights gained to identify potential strategies that might help to increase the resilience of this farming system. The paper proceeds as follow. We start by describing the simulation model developed to characterise the starch potato system in the Veenkoloni¨en. Next, we elaborate on the steps we followed to use this model in the assessment of the resilience of the system. These sections are followed by the results and analysis sections where we summarise and reflect on the main insights gained from our research. The first aim of this study was to explore the impact disturbances might have on the long-term performance of the starch potato farming system in the Veenkoloni¨en region. The results of our study show that environmental challenges reducing starch potato yields were found to have a higher impact in the system and relatively small changes in yields might move the starch potato production and the farmers income to a different basin of attraction.

For instance, to shift the farmers income to a different stability domain farm cost will need to double while the same results are seen when yields decrease by 33.4% over a year . These results support the perception of the Veenkoloni¨en stakeholders who participated workshops organised as part of the SUREFarm project and indicated that the number of farmers will decline considerably if extreme weather events significantly decrease yields. These differences between the resilience to economic and environmental factors leads us to our second research question as we use the model to understand the feedback loops within the system structure that influence/condition the resilience of the system. As other authors have hypothesised, see for example Meuwissen et al., , the apparent resilience of the farming system in the Veenkoloni¨en is probably driven by its relation with Avebe. The simulation results indicate that this symbiotic relationship between Avebe and the farmers is indeed an enabler of resilience to economic challenges and that there is a clear difference in the system resilience to those disturbances the ‘cooperative benefit’ can help with and those it cannot. It is important to highlight that resilience resulting from this symbiotic relationship between farmers and Avebe might be bounded by other mechanisms. For example, when considering Avebe’s financial position it can be seen that the same cash reserves used by Avebe to support farmers during difficult times are also needed for innovation that is required to increase product value and maintain farmers’ competitiveness in the future. When yields are low R2 takes priority over R3 and R6. In those years, profit will be invested in paying the right price, rather than in innovation . However, if the disturbances are too severe, Avebe loses its ability to innovate as it depletes its cash reserves. When this threshold is crossed, the system experiences larger impacts for longer times and moves to new basins of attraction that are likely to be unsustainable for both Avebe and the farmers.

While resilience is often associated with sustainability, there are some scenarios in which resilience might undermine the sustainability of the system sustainability. For instance, resilience can be improved in the short term , at the expense of resilience and sustainability in the long term . This phenomenon occurs when the sustainability goals of policy makers are in conflict with the productivity goals of other actors in agricultural systems, including the farmers and agro-industries . Finding a right balance between sustainability and resilience is an important aspect of the dynamics between farmers and cooperatives that is not only relevant to the Veenkoloni¨en but also to other farming systems in Europe. It is also a clear example that decisions actors make regarding their resources are not only relevant for resilience in the short term, but also on the long term.First, it can be noticed that the number of cases in which the system remains within the same basin of attraction increases with the implementation of any of the resilience enhancing strategies that we tested. It can thus can be concluded that all the strategies could be expected to increase,vertical grow table to some extent, the size of the disturbance the system can withstand and hence increase resilience. The results also show that the proposed strategies are less effective for increasing resilience to environmental disturbances than to economic ones . This difference can be seen in the difference between the areas covered by open dots in Fig. 8A – 8F and the same area in Fig. 8G – 8L . For instance, a decrease of starch potato in the crop rotation by over 40%, or a decrease of the average yields by more than 30% , always resulted in a system shift to a different basin of attraction, regardless of how aggressively/successfully the strategies could be implemented. Finally, the results in Fig. 8 also show that S1 and S3 outperform S2 in their effectiveness for increasing resilience to all the disturbances examined.

The only considerable difference between the S1 and S3 was observed when analysing the resilience of the system to an increase in production costs of starch potato . In this case S1 outperforms S3 considerably and even moderate increases in the starch content increased the resilience of the system considerably. An important aspect of our analysis that requires further consideration is the role of randomness in the occurrence of extreme weather events. Currently we assumed equal probabilities for all potential disturbances in the tested intervals of magnitude and duration, but we recognise that some events are more likely than others. Introducing the effect of random events in the analysis might change not only our conclusions about the resilience of the system but also our observations regarding the effectiveness of strategies. Similarly, analysing the impact of stochasticity on innovation breakthroughs could also reveal new insights about the farming system and its potential development. Structural transformation is a fundamental challenge in economic development and key to overcoming food insecurity and poverty for the millions of households that work in agriculture . An extensive literature demonstrates the variety of constraints that hinder the transition of rural farms from subsistence to commercial production. Among these are price uncertainty , access to credit , and a lack of technical knowledge . These constraints affect input demand, as well as yields, sales, and income, contributing to the perpetuation of the agrarian status quo. Vertical coordination has the potential for fostering structural transformation of rural economies . In recent years, contract farming has emerged as a popular mechanism to encourage such vertical coordination . Farm production contracts can shift risk and the need for initial capital from small farming households to medium and large processors who are better able to manage these issues. In return, firms secure a stream of quality inputs for processing. While many see contract farming as a way to spur rural structural transformation and growth in local economies, the view is far from universal.As Bellemare and Bloem and Ton et al. point out, one reason for the lack of consensus on the impacts of contract farming in developing countries is that, up till now, studies have relied exclusively on observational data, and many have been limited to cross-sectional data. We present results from the first field experiment on contract farming in a developing country context.

The objective of our study was to assess the impact of farming systems on soil quality in vegetable fields, focusing on the soil nematode community as an indicator of the soil food-web. We compared nematode communities in vegetable fields with extensively managed grasslands that do not receive any fertilizer and plant protection products.Due to the agricultural intensification under conventional farming, organic farming and extensive grasslands represent a gradient of management intensity, representing high-, moderate- and low-intensive management, respectively. We specifically addressed the following questions: to what extent does management intensity affect the abundance, diversity, community composition and functional guilds of soil nematodes? What accounts for the difference in soil nematode assemblages among conventional vegetable farming, organic vegetable farming and extensive grassland? Are there any nematode taxa that can be used as indicators of a specific management system? A farmer network consisting of 60 fields was established with20 conventional vegetable fields and 20 organic vegetable fields in the Canton of Zurich.

As a standard reference, 20 extensive grassland fields in close location were also selected. The conventional vegetable fields received pesticides and synthetic fertilizers and were managed according to guidelines of the federal office of agriculture. The organic vegetable fields were managed according to the guidelines of the Swiss organic farmers association ,ebb and flow table including no application of synthetic pesticides or synthetic fertilizers. Grasslands were managed according to the Swiss regulations for extensively managed meadows,which do not receive any fertilizer input and are mown at least once per year. In Switzerland, extensively managed meadows are considered as biodiversity promotion areas and farmers are financially compensated by the federal government with biodiversity contributions for the adapted use of their land. Agri-environmental schemes such as the Swiss BPA were introduced in many European countries in the 1990 s to alleviate the loss of biodiversity due to agricultural intensification. Swiss farmers must manage at least 7% of their agricultural land as BPA. The three farming systems are characterized in the Table S1 . The soils of the fields are classified as Cambisol, which is the predominant soil type in this region . The soil samples were collected in the period from 13 to 20 December 2016. At each field, we collected 10 soil cores with a stainless steel auger. These cores were immediately homogenized and placed into a sealing plastic bag. Sub-samples for soil analyses, pesticide analysis and molecular analyses were dried at room temperature, or stored at 4 ◦C or − 20 ◦C . In addition, a soil composite sample of approximately 20 kg of soil and consisting of ten individual soil samples was collected at each site with a shovel for nematode assessment and for the purpose of a greenhouse experiment of another study. In the laboratory, the composite sample for each site was passed through a 5 mm sieve, and visible living plant materials, visible macro-fauna , and stones were removed.

The sieved soil samples were stored in a plastic bag at 4 ◦C until further processing. Effects of farming system on variables including total nematode abundance, abundance per trophic group, nematode diversity indices, maturity indices, food web indices and metabolic footprints of soil nematodes were analyzed using one-way ANOVA with farming system as the fixed factor in R . Before analysis, the normality and the homogeneity of the residuals for data were examined by Shapiro-Wilk test or by Kolmogorov-Smirnov test in the ‘stats’ package. When the assumption of ANOVA of a given variable was violated, the effect of farming system on this variable was examined with non-parametric Kruskal-Wallis test. When the effect of farming system on a given variable was significant, difference between treatments was further compared with a post-hoc test by the Tukey’s Honestly Significant Difference test or the Wilcoxon Signed Rank test at α = 0.05 level. A Pearson correlation analysis was used to evaluate relationships between abiotic soil characteristics and nematode abundance as well as between microbial properties and nematode abundance. Community composition of soil nematodes across the three farming systems were compared with Bray–Curtis similarity using the canonical analysis of principal coordinates and per-mutational multivariate analysis of variance with 999 permutations using the ‘vegan’ packages in R. Finally, we identified potential habitat specialists or indicator taxa for conventional vegetable fields, organic vegetable fields and grasslands, using the indicator species analysis. The indicator species approach identifies a given taxa that tends to be present mostly in a single habitat type and most of the samples from that habitat based on the relative frequency and average abundance, and thus implies the nematode taxa preference for a given environmental condition. Specifically, the clusters were categorized by farming system in the analysis. Indicator species for each cluster were identified using the ‘multipatt’ function in the ‘indicspecies’ package in R . For each of the three farming systems, taxa with a p-value ≤0.05 and IndVal >0.30 were selected as potential indicator species. IndVal analysis was performed on soil nematode dataset.

Although the effect of organic management on soil nematode communities has been explored in previous studies, most of these studies were performed with field-trials.The strength of field-trials is that farming treatments are assessed under a standardized management at one location and with a specific soil type. However, management effects on nematode communities may differ in actual farmlands and thus the results obtained at a single site cannot be generalized. Environmental problems that may be associated with the increase in vegetable production with its intensive management practices is a concern, particularly negative impacts on biodiversity, leaching of nutrients into drinking water, or emissions of greenhouse gases. However, we still have a limited understanding of how soil biota such as nematode respond to vegetable production practices at the farm scale where soil type and nutrient availability are of higher heterogeneity. The present study reports the impact of vegetable management practices on soil nematode communities across many fields at a regional scale analyzing a total of 60 fields. Our results suggest that organic management alters overall community characteristics of soil nematodes. The abundances of herbivores, bacterivores and omnivores were greatly enhanced by organic management in comparison with conventional management . Organic management also enhanced composite footprint and herbivore footprint,indicating that organic farming supports higher herbivore abundance and herbivorous nematode individuals of higher biomass. Moreover, organic farming in vegetable fields resulted in notable shifts in soil nematode community despite of no obvious change in soil food-web index represented by BI, CI, EI and SI, decomposition and nutrient mineralization pathway represented by the Fu/ and primary production represented by Herb/ between conventional vegetable fields and organic vegetable fields . This indicates that there are no significant change in soil ecological processes and functions provided by the nematode communities in organic and conventionally managed fields in Switzerland. However, variation among fields was large and further studies need to verify our observation. The observed higher abundance and biomass of total nematodes in soils under organic farming compared to conventional farming in our study is consistent with an earlier field experiment where organic management supported higher nematode abundance and biomass compared to conventional management in vegetable fields .

We also found that the total nematode abundance in vegetable fields was lower than that in grasslands.This result supports a previous report showing that the land transformation from grassland to agricultural use reduces soil biota . Soil biota in extensive grasslands is generally subjected to fewer disturbances, such as tillage and/or pesticides application compared to arable fields, particularly vegetable fields. Moreover, higher plant diversity and litter coverage in grasslands usually retain higher soil moisture, and thus favour soil nematode colonization and reproduction. Overall, our results suggest a negative impact of land-use intensification on soil nematode abundance. Compared to the conventional farming systems, organic farming systems contained increased population densities of microbivorous and omnivorous nematodes. However, the threat of plant-parasitic nematodes to vegetable production, especially in organic vegetable production should be given attention, and integrated management strategies should be further developed and implemented . In agreement with previous studies , we found a higher abundance of herbivores, bacterivores and omnivores in organic vegetable fields, compared to conventional vegetable fields . Previous studies proposed that the intensive application of mineral fertilizer in conventional farming systems reduced bacteria-feeding nematodes due to direct toxicity of nitrogen solutions.Besides, flood table intensive agriculture may alter the biotic interactions and patterns of resource availability in ecosystems . Such disturbance would further affect nematode abundance by changing the growth and reproductive capacity of nematodes directly and indirectly. As hypothesized, we found that the correlations among edaphic properties, microbial attributes and nematode abundance depended on the trophic group of nematode examined. Interestingly, nematode abundance was found to be positively correlated with NH4+-N in the present study . Note that further work is needed to confirm our observations because we only sampled once and the sampling was conducting at the end of the growing season. Moreover, we sampled to a soil layer in depth of 10 cm while other studies sampled to a depth of 30 cm. This may also affect the nematodes detected. The EI indicates the prevalence of opportunistic species, whereas the metabolic footprint measures the carbon utilization of component taxa . Previous studies report that crop residue retention increases EI and SI . We hypothesized that greater levels for these variables in soils would be observed in organic vegetable fields due to increased residue inputs in organic management compared to conventional management.

Against expectation, we found the EI and SI in soils under organic management were comparable to those under conventional management. However, the composite metabolic footprint and herbivore footprint in soils under organic management was greatly enhanced in comparison to conventional management, implying vegetable fields under organic management supported herbivores with larger body size and higher biomass. The observed comparable level in Shannon-Weaver index between organic management and conventional management in the present study is in disagreement with earlier studies demonstrating that the application of organic manure resulted in a decline in Shannon-Weaver index possibly due to the predominance of r-selected species.One possible reason is that there are greater differences in mulch treatment which has been found to reduce the total number of nematode genera in organic vegetable fields across studies. Another likely explanation is that the effect of organic farming on the richness of nematodes might be time-dependent. A previous study found that organic vegetable farms were more diverse in terms of genera of herbivores than conventional farms at the vegetative and/or reproductive stage . However, in the present study, farmers could not allow us to sample when their fields had fully grown vegetables, and thus herbivores can be difficult to detect due to unfavorable climatic factors and limited food at the harvest of vegetables. Previous study suggested that shifts in community composition of soil organism are usually accompanied by changes in the functioning of soil food webs . The ratio of fungi to bacteria indicates soil microbial shifts, whereas the Fu/, reflects the decomposition and nutrient mineralization pathway due to microbial feeders for a given ecosystem. Small ratios are associated with faster decomposition and nutrient turnover. We observed no difference in the ratio of fungivore to bacterivore. This finding is in line with previous studies suggesting no difference in Fu/ ratio between conventional and organic fields . It is possible that the effects of organic farming on the Fu/ depend on the ecosystem type. The PPI, MI, and PPI/MI are valuable indicators used to evaluate agricultural ecosystems conditions . In the present study, PPI was unaffected by the management intensity whereas MI and PPI/MI ratio were significantly affected. Previous studies also reported mixed results with some studies reporting higher values for both variables under organic farming than conventional farming whereas another study reporting that organic farming increased the PPI, but did not affect the MI and PPI/MI . One likely reason may be that the effect of organic management on MI varies with depending on crop type. However, other factors, such as soil type, plough depth, cover crop type, and the management history might also contribute to the divergent effects of organic farming on nematode assemblage . For example, land transformation from grasslands to arable fields under intensive management results in a reduced the MI of soil nematode community,whereas the conversion from grasslands to vegetable fields did not change MI.

For example, it seems that also in other countries, especially in combination with other factors, markets play a vital role particularly in some regions, dairy farming is connected to some organic concentrations, and subsidies can effectively increase organic farming in certain areas. Therefore, same political approach to increase organic farming does not necessarily work for every region. Our research contains several limitations that should be addressed in future research. The first limitation was that we were unable to analyse all of the possible factors that may affect the share of organic cultivated land. The literature suggests that the concentration of organic farming is affected by more factors than the five included in our analysis . In addition, the data from Pirkanmaa and Southeast Finland indicate that there may be other relevant factors outside the selected conditions. Therefore, the results cannot be regarded as completely comprehensive in terms of explaining the regional differences in the proportion of organic farming. One additional condition could be the role of wholesalers. However, according to our survey, wholesale seems to have a fairly small role in the Finnish organic market, at least from a farming point of view. Data limitations and the appropriate number of conditions for a QCA method influenced the number of selected conditions in this study. The conditions were also carefully selected based on previous studies and the authors’ knowledge of regional features.

The second limitation relates to the changing situation in the spatial share of organic farming, whereby the selected reference year may influence the results. However, changes in the share of organic farming occur relatively slowly, vertical grow and regions with the highest organic shares have held that status for some time. Only regions with close to average values have witnessed more notable changes in recent years. In addition, the conditions were formed to include data that related to different periods: the period preceding 1990 , a wide range of years during which farmers converted to organic farming , and the most recent period . On a wet, cold day in November 2019, farmers from all over Ireland travelled to Dublin, the capital city, to blockade the main roads with their tractors, immobilising traffic. This protest was not organised through the main representative body – The Irish Farmer’s Association . Indeed, it appeared to take both Government and the IFA by surprise. The farmers carried placards reading: “No carbon tax” and “It takes twice the amount of carbon to produce a vegan burger than a beef burger.” Clearly, there was a strong shared sentiment that environmental policies were a threat. With the government pledging to reduce agricultural emissions by 30% by 2030 , plans to transition the sector to sustainable pathways are emerging, yet there are strong indicators that the sector is already experiencing unplanned change, disruption, and conflict. This paper explores this discontent and how climate change policies can aggravate or respond to it through the application of a conception of just transition understood as an integrated justice-based framework for governing the transition to sustainable practices .

Just transition emerged as a grass-roots labour movement in the 1970s to mobilise workers and communities directly affected by environmental policies in the energy sector which resulted in the loss of livelihoods and employment opportunities . Traditionally employed as a labour-oriented concept, trade unions and labour movements constructed this concept to argue that the benefits and burdens of the transition to enhanced environmental governance and protection policies should be fairly distributed . As Rosemberg notes, the just transition concept captures the social and economic complexities of transitioning economies to sustainability. This concept now forms a key component of the global policy architecture on transitions, marked by the International Labour Organisations’ adoption of the Guidelines for just transition towards environmentally sustainable economies and societies for all and its inclusion in the Paris Agreement in 2015. Recent scholarship has emerged to explore the linkages of this concept with established theories of climate, environmental, and energy justice . Theories of environmental and climate justice examine the normative implications of climate change and develop accounts of the moral principles necessary to guide the distribution of benefits and burdens of climate change and actions . Less examined, although of significant importance, are procedural elements of justice related to representation, participation, and recognition. Communities affected by planned climate adaptation and mitigation actions experience not only changes to economic landscapes and opportunities, but also to ‘culture, community identity, and sense of place’ . Thus, multidimensional accounts of justice that recognise the interconnections between distribution, participation, and recognition have emerged in concept ualisations of just transition as a wider, more holistic integrated governance framework . As high income countries with established political constituencies, embedded vested interests, and dominant actors transition from unsustainable to sustainable economic systems, the just transition concept has emerged as a critical tool for building the social legitimacy necessary to implement climate adaptation and mitigation policies.

In the Irish and European contexts, the language of just transition features heavily in climate action plans and economic policy materials;and in deliberations and negotiations with workers and communities concerning the energy transition from peat extraction to bog restoration in the indigenous energy sector. In 2021 it emerged as a dominant feature in Ireland’s Climate Action Plan which outlines pathways for transitioning all sectors across the economy. It notes ‘the development of plans to manage the sustainable environmental footprint of the beef and dairy sectors will be central to the achievement of [Ireland’s] climate targets’. However, it provides little insight into how the idea of just transition will be operationalised in the Irish beef farming sector. There are an estimated 78,300 specialist beef farms in Ireland, accounting for over half of all Irish farms . Ireland exports 90% of the beef it produces and in 2018 exported 579,000 tonnes at a total value of €2.5 billion, accounting for over 30% of total food and drink exports . Beef farming is not only an important economic activity in rural Ireland, it is also embedded in the social and cultural fabric of rural communities, identities, and social structures.Irish mythology, music and poetry, such as the epic T´ ain B´ o Cúailnge centring around the theft of a prized bull , provides some insight into the centrality of this sector to the collective cultural imaginary and identity of rural Ireland.The agricultural landscape of Ireland is synonymous with its ‘green’ identity, and images of cows grazing on pastures are regularly used in tourism advertisements.However, beef farming in Ireland is facing challenging times, with a range of pressures acting upon it within the social, political, economic, and environmental spheres. Beef farmers are struggling economically, relying on direct payments from the European Union Common Agricultural Policy , which on average doubles their farm income.

Most beef farms are classed as economically vulnerable, meaning that farm income alone does not remunerate family labour at the minimum wage of €20,129 per annum, thus requiring farmers to engage in off-farm work to supplement their income . Multiple factors are putting pressure on the present system of conventional beef farming, including shifting seasons and extreme weather events , competitive and declining markets, automation and technological innovation , and COVID-19. Public opinion is also changing with some pointing to the harmful environmental and health effects of meat consumption , reducing consumer demand , and problematising the collective imaginary of beef farming communities. Government policy to reduce emissions in order to meet international commitments means that funding and support for the beef industry has been declining for some time, and new policies focus on re-purposing agricultural land for forestry. Surprisingly, although beef farmers are experiencing a shifting physical and economic landscape, the concept of just transition has scarcely been applied to this context by policy makers or by researchers.Ireland’s Programme for Government policy document references ‘just transition’ 19 times in relation to the energy sector , but has little to say on how this concept may be relevant to the beef sector. These factors have all contributed to rising discontent within the beef farming community which erupted into street protests in 2019. These were sparked due to a perceived lack of transparency over how processors determine beef prices, which declined by 12.5% between the beginning of 2018 and mid-2019.Processors are organisations, usually factories, that purchase cattle to process for human consumption. Thus, it is clear the sector is under pressure,indoor growers and this is likely to continue in the coming decades.With the emergence of protests, this paper examines the drivers of beef farmers’ discontentment and how they, and other key actors, are perceiving the situation. Key actors are public and private, formal and informal organisations related to beef farming that have power to influence changes within the sector.

We investigate how the sector is responding, and how key actors are framing the future of beef farming. In doing so, we contribute to theorising just transition processes through a novel model of just transition frames and functions that operationalises and illustrates how just transition frames of different key actors can be aligned, or not, and unpacking how misalignment leads to conflict. Frames and framing approaches are widely used in the study of social movements, but not commonly applied to just transition research . Our model makes an original contribution to the study of transitions in the agricultural and beef farming sectors and can be used to support the design of policies and governance systems to guide in future sustainable climate action planning and implementation.Here, frames refer to strategic communication devices used by key actors to steer solutions in their favour in deliberate framing processes.Drawing upon a conception of just transition as an integrated governance framework for justice, we explore the different experiences and perspectives of key actors across the domains of distribution, participation, and recognition. We apply the concept of frames, which are both interpretations of social and political issues and strategic communication devices for achieving a particular outcome, to analyse the qualitative data . Thus, we investigated the range of perspectives held by different actors, the key points of consensus and conflict between the actors , and how these serve different functions: diagnostic, prognostic, or having an action-imperative . Framing gives insight into how key actors construct meaning around an emerging issue, and into challenges and possible futures being considered . Understanding how key actors are framing the future of beef farming will indicate how the sector could evolve, where resources are likely to be allocated, and who will be involved in shaping its future. Indeed, understanding how key actors are planning for the future is an essential concern for the possibility of a just transition for this sector. There is abundant literature on the application of environmental and climate justice theoretical frameworks when adapting agricultural systems to climate change, and in particular, in lower income less developed locations with heavy dependencies on rainfed agriculture and subsistence farming . Within these accounts, principles of justice are considered in relation to both procedural dimensions, concerning decision-making participants, processes and structures, and distributional dimensions, concerning how responsibilities, benefits, and burdens of mitigation and adaptation ought to be allocated . Schlosberg’s account of climate justice pushes beyond material distributional and formal procedural matters, to consider non-material, situated socio-spatial and cultural factors that influence understandings and perceptions of justice. Embedded in a feminist constructivist epistemology, Schlosberg and Collins identify three interconnected dimensions of justice that require consideration. Firstly, the dimension of recognition is identified as a precondition for distributive justice that involves social respect for the identities and values of populations. Changes in economic activities affect not only income levels, but also social status, influence, and structures within communities. They can affect one’s sense of belonging and purpose and are intimately linked to collective and self-identities . Secondly, the dimension of participation is identified as a key factor in developing relevant policies and practices that can build trust and ownership within communities-in-transition. Participation is closely linked to representation, as representation from organisations and elected individuals in policy-making processes allows citizens to participate in and be recognised by wider society .

Our ultimate goal is to establish an optimal classification metrics set that is suitable for the study area through these steps.In this study, Landsat-5 TM SR data were chosen to establish spectral and index metrics sets for 1990, 2001, and 2010, while the Landsat-8 OLI SR data were used to develop spectral and index metrics sets for 2019 . The yearly mean value composite images of 2010 and 2019 were taken as examples to analyze the spectral and index separability of different land use classes. Therefore, we took the annual reflectance mean value of varying land use samples were extracted from images in 2010 and 2019 to analyze the separability between active cropland , non-active cropland , retired cropland , natural grassland , impervious surface , forest and water body . It can be seen from Fig. 3 that IS, WB, AF, and FR were well separated on visible bands and indices based on both Landsat-5 TM and Landsat-8 OLI images. The mean reflectance values of NAC and RCL were different from other land use classes, round plastic pots while they were easily confused with GL. The reflectance of RCL was lower than the NAC and GL on the visible and shortwave infrared bands and higher than the NAC and GL on the NDISI and NDVI. Although NAC, RCL, and GL were not well separated on the visible bands, they well separated on the shortwave infrared bands and NDISI and NDVI based on the TM image.

However, Fig. 3d shows that the confusing three land use classes were not well separated on the six OLI image bands and three indices. The NCL and GL curves showed high overlap on spectral bands and indices based on both TM imagery and OLI imagery. There was a vast grassland area in the farming-pastoral ecotone in the northern foot of the Yinshan Mountains, and the NCL was also widely distributed. Since NCL and GL cannot be well separated in spectral bands and indices, especially RCL cannot be separated from other easily confused land use on OLI imagery. Therefore, to distinguish better RCL and NAC from other land use classes, it is necessary to add the texture metrics to classification methodology.GGP also promotes land use classes such as arid cropland, barren mountains, and desert grassland with low ecological functions to land with high ecological functions. Our study present, the retired cropland in the study area mainly includes three types of land use change trajectories: 1: converted from the cropland in 1990; 2: converted from the cropland cultivated after 1990, and 3: converted from the other land use classes. Their areas are respectively 51.97%, 25.02%, 20.10% of the total area of retired cropland in 2019. Trajectories of other types account for a relatively small area by 2.91% of the total area of retired cropland in 2019. See Table 4 for details. The retired cropland in the northern foot of the Yinshan Mountains mainly distributes in Duolun, Taipusi, Huade, Shangdu, Chahar Right Rear, Chahar Right Middle, and Siziwang County . The eastern region has a larger amount of precipitation, and the climate conditions are suitable for the survival of the shrubs planted by GGP. Furthermore, for the remaining four counties in the western region, due to drier climate conditions and a smaller proportion of cropland, there is also less cropland to be returned.

Since Wuchuan City has more high-quality cropland than other counties, it has the smallest area of retired cropland as shown in our result. Nearly 45% of the retired cropland converted from cropland in 1990, and around 25% of the retired cropland converted from cropland cultivated after 1990, which were in line with GGP’s original intention to retire some of the cropland with low producibility to plant wood or shrub with higher ecological service functions. What needs to be emphasized is that nearly 20% of the retired cropland was not marked as cropland in 1990, 2001, and 2010. It is possible that for ten years was used as a time interval, the retired cropland may be converted from cropland cultivated within two-time notes, or it may convert from other lands .To evaluate the vegetation dynamics after GGP, we divided the last three decades into three time periods: 1990–2000, 2001–2010, and 2011–2019, and calculated the long-term Landsat NDVI-mean value of retired cropland area and that of the entire study area. First, to evaluate the vegetation dynamics in the area of retired cropland, the mean value of NDVI per decade within the scope of retired cropland in 2019 was calculated. The result present in Fig. 7. It can be seen from Fig. 7 that the mean value of NDVI of retired cropland in the three periods increased gradually with mean values 0.1524, 0.1545, and 0.1728, respectively. Moreover, the growth rate from 2011 to 2019 is higher than the rate from 2001 to 2010. This result indicates a significant vegetation restoration in retired cropland areas over the last three decades. However, over the previous ten years, vegetation restoration showed a considerable increase related to the launch of GGP in the study area and its strengthening during the last decade. Second, to evaluate the vegetation dynamics of the entire study area, each decade’s NDVI-mean value was calculated. A correlation curve with the change of the retired cropland area and the change of the cropland area was made and is presented in Fig. 8. During the past 30 years, the NDVI-mean value of the entire study area showed an increasing trend, as shown in Figs. 8 and 9, with values 0.1559, 0.1562, and 0.1749, respectively.

The NDVI-mean value of the study area did not change greatly between 1990 and 2010, but as the percentage of retired cropland in the total area increased considerably from 2011 to2019 , the NDVI-mean value of the study area has increased significantly from 0.1562 in 2010 to 0.1749 in 2019 as well . The vegetation restoration in the entire study area was also accompanied by a decrease in the percentage of cropland in the total area . The result shows that, on a large area, the decrease of cropland and the increase of retired cropland associated with the vegetation restoration to a certain extent. The retired cropland can show a more stable NDVI value on remote sensing imagery than cropland and with fewer seasonal changes. However, the change of NDVI value in the study area is affected by many factors, such as climate change and natural ecology. The long-term NDVI-mean value was used in this study shows a significant correlation with decreasing cropland and increasing retired cropland, as shown in Fig. 8.The farming-pastoral ecotone environment in the northern foot of the Yinshan Mountains in Inner Mongolia is severely damaged due to drought and endangered ecological environment. The land use in this area has also changed greatly because of the change in a natural environment and artificial afforestation program such as GGP. In the past 20 years, with the rapid development of remote sensing technology, the study of evaluating the ecological environment of farming-pastoral ecotone in the northern foot of the Yinshan Mountains has attracted extensive attention. In this study, the RF-GEE classifier and multi-metrics were addressed to identify the changes of cropland and retired cropland in the northern foot of the Yinshan in Inner Mongolia over the past 30 years. The influence of the multi-metrics set on classification accuracy, the relationship between LUCC and vegetation restoration in the study area are the key points of our research. 4.1. The accuracy of cropland and retired cropland mapping The training data quality is one of the critical factors to obtain satisfactory classification results .

The fact that active cropland and non-active cropland exit simultaneously in the northern foot of the Yinshan Mountains was fully considered when the cropland sample was selected. The sample of non-active cropland accounted for 20–30%. Although nonactive cropland and retired cropland are easily confused with natural grassland in the study area , the highest OA and Kappa coefficients of cropland classification were obtained in this study . The highest F1 score of croplands was 0.94, which is higher than the accuracy of previous land cover mapping studies focused on entire Inner Mongolia or global scale based on Landsat data . The accuracy of our study can support subsequent research about complex cropland use patterns, such as remote sensing monitoring of fallow and abandoned cropland in the farming-pastoral ecotone. On the other hand, the highest F1 score of the retired cropland was 0.75, with lower accuracy than the cropland and others. Retired cropland’s spectral and index metrics have weak separability with those confusing land use classes ,hydroponic bucket and the texture metrics of retired cropland are similar to that of cropland. In the research on land use in InnerMongolia, there are very few studies that classify retired cropland as a single land use class, and most of these previous remote sensing land use classification researches in the northern foot of the Yinshan Mountains adopts visual interpretation method. The precision of cropland can reach more than 0.9. Chun used Landsat TM data to visually interpret the land use change in Wuchuan County in the northern foot of the Yinshan Mountains, with accuracy over 0.9 and concluded that the cropland in this area has a continuous decreasing trend. Wang took the year 2000 when human intervention was minimal as an example, using supervised classification and visual interpretation to produce a city-level land use map of Ulanqab city in the middle part of the northern foot of the Yinshan Mountains. In this research, the UA of arid cropland and irrigated cropland were higher than 0.95, and the PA of arid cropland and irrigated cropland were higher than 0.80. However, the methods introduced by Chun and Wang are time-consuming and labor-intensive and do not have the advantages to the large-scale research. Most of the land use classification in large-scale studies has not mentioned the retired cropland, while there are remote sensing results of the shrubland or sparse shrubland on a large scale, with the accuracy ranging from 0.30 to 0.70 .

Although the “Grain for Green” project has been implemented in Inner Mongolia for 20 years, the existing land use research in Inner Mongolia classifies the retired cropland into the category of woodland. It does not certify it as a separate type of land use, except for studies with smaller spatial scales. A study has explained this problem from another view; Yin et al. classified the degraded cropland in Inner Mongolia as a single land category. The UA of degraded cropland varied from 0.42 to 0.70 in different years. The PA was between 0.65 and 0.96. Nevertheless, still retired cropland is differing from degraded cropland even in the ecological transition zone. From the results in Section 3.1, it can be seen that the vegetation coverage of the retired cropland in arid and semi-arid regions is not high. This phenomenon is expected in the farming-pastoral ecotone in the northern foot of the Yinshan Mountains in Inner Mongolia. Therefore, classify the retired cropland as a single land use type has a great significant when monitor the LUCC in farming-pastoral ecotone of northern China using remote sensing technology.Human land use is a dominant driver of the greening earth . GGP is a typical case of Human-intervention in land use, especially in the farming-pastoral ecotone. Previous studies have shown that GGP has improved China’s ecology and of Inner Mongolia . By the end of the 20th century, the vast grasslands in the farming-pastoral ecotone in northern China started to be cultivated and approximately doubling the cropland area. A large amount of cropland was often accompanied by extensive land degradation . Inner Mongolia is considered one of the most severely degraded regions in China. Therefore, almost all national environmental protection land restoration projects were launched first in Inner Mongolia, which became the Chinese province with the highest investment in ecological restoration programs . Land degradation directly affects the region’s vegetation dynamics, which is particularly prominent in the Mongolian Plateau .

Mainstreaming of organic agriculture in the public, pushed by green policies and NGO activities, continues to play an important role in its success, promoting empathy for and trust in organic certification schemes. Lastly, organic products are more profitable for farmers, while consumers, not governments, pay for most of the premium prices. However, there are also important limitations to the biodiversity benefits of organic farming, resulting from reduced yields, misconceptions about pesticide use, taxon-specific benefits, and commercial intensification of production. While reducing food waste and meat consumption are important for global food security, lower crop yields and the additional land needed for similar yields are major obstacles for organic farming to benefit biodiversity conservation. When biodiversity benefits are measured per unit of land necessary for a defined agricultural output or yield and not simply per unit of agricultural land , the biodiversity benefits of organic farming can disappear. Globally and across all major crops, organic farming yields are lower by 19–25%. Vegetables and cereals show the highest yield gaps, with up to 50% yield decrease in wheat; however, yields of fruits and oil seed crops are not lower. Moreover, it is a myth that organic farms principally waive pesticides. Pesticides are allowed under organic labels as long as they are derived from natural substances rather than synthetic ones. Widespread insecticides used in organic farming include natural pyrethrin, derived from chrysanthemum, and azadirachtin from the Asian neem tree.

Copper sulfate is often applied to cope with fungal and bacterial diseases, for example, in vineyards, aeroponic tower garden system orchards, and vegetables, but is persistent and accumulates in soils.While the vast majority of organic arable crops are rarely treated with pesticides, potatoes, vegetables, hops, grapes, and other fruits are regularly and heavily treated with natural pesticides. For instance, spraying in organic grapes or apples has been shown to be just 20% less but can also be more than in conventional fields. Overall, this suggests that smart application strategies for pesticide use are needed regardless of organic or conventional agricultural systems. Similarly, harmful overfertilisation occurs not only with mineral fertilizers, but also with manure. Importantly, organic farming enhances only a limited spectrum of species. In particular, noncrop plants benefit due to missing herbicides, whereas more mobile, landscape-dependent insect populations benefit less. Furthermore, reduced applications of agrochemicals enhance common insect species associated with agriculture, but not the less common species associated with a great diversity of semi-natural habitats. These semi-natural habitats include hedges, herbaceous field boundaries, and traditional, uneconomic agroecosystems such as calcareous grasslands and orchard meadows. In fact, a meta-analysis of agrienvironment schemes found that off-field measures, such as field margins and hedgerows, are more than twice as effective in promoting biodiversity as in-field measures such as organic management . For example, higher farmland habitat diversity, but not conversion to organic farming, increases butterfly diversity on farms by ~50%. Increasing hedge length per field by 250 m raises bird diversity from one to 12 species, whereas conversion from conventional to organic farming increased species richness by only 50%. Lastly, current organic production is increasingly intensified, specialised, and often far away from the idealism and enthusiasm of the original organic movement .

In contrast to the small and diversified family farms that characterised the beginning of the organic movement, modern organic arable fields can be huge monocultures, resembling conventional fields. Organic vegetables often come from sterile greenhouse blocks or large-scale cultures under plastic sheets, covering entire landscapes. The Almeria Province is the heart of Europe’s intensive agriculture, where >50% of fruits and vegetables are grown under plastic sheets, with the proportion of organic farming increasing over the last decade from 1.4% to 10.3%. Further examples of landscape-damaging practices of organic production include vegetables that are produced in greenhouse blocks, favourably doubling yields by intensification and extending growing seasons, but at high cost for biodiversity. Overall, pesticide use, limited species benefits, and the above intensification suggest that certified organic production is not the silver bullet for current biodiversity conservation and agricultural production.Diversifying agricultural systems is key for the restoration of biodiversity and associated ecosystem services, such as pollination, and biological pest and weed control.Agricultural land, in particular in Europe and North America, is increasingly shaped by large mono-cultures and short crop rotations to simplify production techniques and to specialise on the best-selling products. Diverse crop rotations are increasingly missing or dominated by just one crop , or only up to three crop species . These simplified crop rotations deplete soils, and promote pest infestations, resistance through repeated pesticide applications, and the risk of resource bottlenecks for pollinators and biocontrol agents; all of which also increase the risk of yield declines. In contrast, resource continuity provided by a mixed pattern of crops, alone or combined with land-sharing practices, such as wildflower strips, effectively increases the stability of ecosystem services, such as pollination and biological pest control.

Globally, crop rotations are only 15% longer in organic than conventional farming . Still, organic farms have on average 48% higher crop species richness . Diversification of organic farming by multi-cropping and diversified crop rotations may reduce the yield gap to just 8–9%. However, crop rotations could be longer, for example, over at least a 7-year period , but there is little uptake in both organic and conventional agriculture. Instead, the current trend in organic farming is, similar to conventional agriculture, to specialise and intensify. Hence, measures to enhance biodiversity include temporal and spatial crop diversification, as reported from both temperate and tropical regions, but also cover crops or green manure, agroforestry, that is, combining trees and crops, or crop–livestock systems and other biodiversity-friendly measures. semi-natural habitats adjacent to croplands may include linear or patchy landscape elements, such as hedges and woody or herbaceous patches, facilitate spillover to small fields and enhance on-farm biodiversity. However, targeted on-farm measures to restore biodiversity are not mandatory in any organic certification scheme.We emphasise the key role of landscape-level species pools and suggest two major biodiversity friendly measures at the landscape scale that are missing in organic certification and agri-environmental EU policies. Landscape changes often provide much larger biodiversity benefits than the incentivised changes of local management. First, we provide evidence for the need to restore semi-natural habitats in simplified landscapes. Second, we focus on augmenting landscape heterogeneity through small and diversified crop fields.Local field or farm biodiversity is determined by the available pool of populations and species in the surrounding landscapes. In structurally poor, simplified landscapes, biodiversity is reduced so that only few species can be locally expected – independent of the type of local management . For example, current dramatic insect declines in German grasslands were mainly observed in simplified landscapes dominated by annual crops, irrespective of the local intensification level. This spatial scale mismatch, that is, the usual focus on local management instead of managing landscapes and their species pools, needs to be addressed for successfully redesigning organic certification schemes and policy instruments for biodiversity conservation.

Landscape complexity, that is, the amount of semi-natural habitats in the agricultural landscape, is well known to increase species pools, linking resources and populations of cropland and natural area, although effects are variable and taxon specific. For example, wild bee richness in standardised field margin strips doubles when landscape-wide habitat increases from 10% to 40%. Complex landscapes also enhance local availability of key predators and parasitoids for pest control,including a tenfold increase in parasitism of the pollen beetle, halving oil seed rape damage. Interestingly, 29% of the local species richness in protected calcareous grasslands, which are among the most species rich habitats in Central Europe, is lost when the percentage of arable land in the surrounding landscape increases from 10% to 80%. Complex landscapes support a broader range of resources and microclimates, thereby counteracting biotic homogenisation and promoting stability of population dynamics. There is evidence that a 20% threshold level of semi-natural habitat in agricultural landscapes is key to biodiversity maintenance. According to percolation theory, habitat loss below 20% causes disproportionally high losses in patch connectivity. This can disrupt exchange of organisms across the landscape, and therefore, their survival probability. Connectivity loss may be also counterbalanced by reduced field sizes per landscape as well as crop diversification, but quantification of these effects needs further research. In Europe, maintaining landscape complexity with semi-natural habitats needs to consider the traditional, uneconomic agroeco-systems that are threatened from agricultural intensification or abandonment, such as orchard meadows and dry grasslands.Although increasing the amount of semi-natural habitat in the landscape can mitigate biodiversity loss,dutch buckets for sale rising land prices make semi-natural habitat an expensive good that is difficult to maintain, yet alone to increase. Consequently, the idea has gained momentum that raising landscape wide heterogeneity of the crop mosaic may also exhibit major positive effects on biodiversity, without compromising the availability of agricultural land. A recent study, based on 435 landscapes across eight regions, showed that increasing configurational cropland heterogeneity by decreasing field size can be even as beneficial for multi-trophic diversity as increasing semi-natural habitat.

Reducing size of crop fields from 5 to 2.8 ha enhanced as many species as increasing semi-natural habitat from 0.5 to 11% . This was not just due to the increase in common grassy field margin strips along crop fields, as there was also a positive effect of increasing crop edges per se. Higher field edge densities can result in up to five times the number of wild bees and higher fruit set in an agricultural landscape and also reduces pest infestation. These patterns have been quantified in the mosaic landscapes of Europe, but the situation may be different in largescale regions with large fields and farms, for example, found in North America or Brazil. Batáry et al. found also high biodiversity benefits of small-scale over large-scale agriculture, which are on par or even higher than the biodiversity benefits from converting conventional to organic agriculture . Independent of field size, organic farming increased biodiversity, but also halved cereal yield levels, compared to conventional farms. However, profit per farmland area was 50% higher on 20-ha than 3-ha fields, due to the lower costs for managing large fields. The higher costs for managing small fields include also higher risks for compacted soil, higher crop damage, and growth heterogeneity due to the increase of edges and headland. However, conversion to long, narrow fields can minimise headland, while biodiversity enhancement is optimised through long margins, promoting ecosystem services through spillover of crop pollinators as well as predators and parasitoids in temperate and tropical regions. Furthermore, small fields allow better adaptation of crop diversification to local heterogeneity, for example in soil quality, and may reduce the risk of pest outbreaks, typical for large areas of monocultures . Increasing the number of crop types had also a positive effect on landscape-level biodiversity, but only in landscapes with >11% of semi-natural habitat. Pest densities are typically lower in landscapes with higher crop diversity, while monocultural, maize-dominated landscape are of little value for pollinators.According to the United Nations, the population of the world is expected to grow in the next century, which in turn encourages the development of innovative techniques to ensure agricultural sustainability. Agriculture on productive land is threatened not only by high levels of urbanization, uneven water distribution, and inclement weather, but also is threats to biodiversity that have unfavorable environmental impacts. Due to the anticipated drastic population growth and constraints on resources in the upcoming decades, only 10% of the demand for food is estimated to be met by expansion of productive lands, with the remainder relying on new techniques that can achieve higher yields. Therefore, developing novel methods to augment the ratio of crop production over used land is a vital issue. In recent years, the indoor vertical farming systems with artificial light are found to be a viable solution to resolve the in-creasing demands of future agricultural products. The IVFS are promising alternatives to open field or greenhouse agriculture because they have precisely monitoring environmental parameters and are insensitive to outdoor climates, which can boost annual sales volume per unit area up to 100 times compared to that of open lands. Furthermore, employment of light emitting diodes as light sources can initiate and sustain photosynthesis reactions and the optical wavelength, light intensity, and radiation intervals can further enhance growth quality.

Through scientific improvement of land productivity and labor productivity to ensure a long-term and stable increase in food production capacity and strengthen the base to cope with the uncertainties of global climate change. 3) Enhancing social benefit is the emphasis of SICLU. It requires increasing attention to social issues and human welfare brought by the cultivated land use, such as dietary needs, waste reduction, market transactions, distributive justice. In particular, paying more attention to the cultivated land users’ needs in microfinance and agricultural technology. By strengthening policy publicity, supervision and guidance to form a restraint mechanism for saving and intensive land use and an encouragement mechanism for consciously protecting the environment. From the perspective of participants and external social and economic environment, the SICLU goals further strengthen the value responses and linkages of agriculture, countryside and farmers. There are the interest connections between countryside and agriculture at the level of industrial development, the element exchanges between agriculture and farmers at the level of input/output, and the same pursuits between farmers and countryside at the level of environmental demand. They mean rural human settlement environment demands that the cultivated land use should not be degraded of ecological environment, agricultural sustainable development has set up green and efficient resource saving conditions for the cultivated land use, and farmers’ life needs and welfare guarantee promote the intensification of management through the transformation of production and life style.

SICLU will help cement the foundation of agriculture, foster a new type of professional farmers, fodder system for sale make rural areas more livable, and ultimately form a new development pattern featuring efficient agriculture, rich farmers and beautiful countryside. In response to the relationship between goals and connotations of SICLU. 1) Intensive management, high yield efficiency and resource saving can all optimize economic benefit. Resource saving, non-degradation of the ecological environment and intensive management can all guarantee ecological benefit. High yield efficiency, resource saving, non-degradation of the ecological environment and social sustainability can all enhance social benefit. 2) SICLU is to balance and optimize the comprehensive benefits of economy, ecology, and society in order to identify the optimal solution and maintain a long-term stable dynamic balance. The higher level of SICLU is not the maximization of the five connotations simultaneously, but the maximization of the comprehensive benefits and the maintenance of a dynamic balance. It is difficult to achieve the optimal solution of ecological, economic and social benefits by placing too much emphasis on one or several aspects while ignoring other aspects. Cultivated land is the important livelihood capitals of farming households.Differences in the use behaviors of farming households are the main factors affecting the SICLU. The farming households’ livelihood transition is a long-term gradual evolution process from a traditional agricultural livelihood type to non-agricultural or agricultural specialization. In this process, the external environment and resource endowment of cultivated land affect the direction of farming households’ livelihood transition by influencing the accumulation and survival of farming households’ livelihood capitals.

Livelihood transition will indirectly change farming households’ cultivated land dependence and land consciousness, affect cultivated land use behaviors, and then affect the level of SICLU, and feedback the progress of farming households’ livelihood transition. In terms of SICLU connotations, farming households are “Economic Man” of bounded rationality, they are more inclined to pursue the maximization of short term interests, and are willing to pay more attention to the economic benefit of cultivated land use, and tend to ignore the ecological benefit and social benefit. That is to say, in the process of direct cultivated land use in pursuit of high yield efficiency through the means of intensive management, farming households indirectly assume the responsibility of resource conservation and non-degradation of ecological environment, and make contributions to social food security and sustainable resource protection. Energy is involved in the structure and function of the entire cultivated land use, among which solar energy is the basis of all forms of energy on Earth. Each farming household belongs to a relatively independent cultivated land use system , and the emergy analysis can cover most input sources and material outputs in the process of cultivated land use by farming households. Therefore, considering each farming household as one unit, by converting different concepts, categories, energy levels, and other incomparable energies and materials into the same standard solar emergy, a SICLU evaluation can be performed. It is helpful to quantitatively analyze the complex energy, material, currency, and information flow in the complex system of nature economy-society in order to quantitatively measure the structural and functional characteristics of cultivated land use and more comprehensively and objectively measure the ecological, economic, and social benefits of cultivated land use dominated by different household livelihood types . The energy inputs of cultivated land use mainly include renewable environmental resources, non-renewable environment inputs, nonrenewable industrial auxiliary energy, and renewable organic energy.

Accompanied by inevitable waste and losses , part of the energy entering the system is stored in the topsoil, most of which participates in cultivated land use and is converted into crop energy . Another part of the energy is stored by seed retention, straw turnover, and other methods. Most agricultural crops enter the economic market to gain profits, which are used to purchase new non-renewable auxiliary industrial energy and renewable organic energy for use in the next production cycle. With reference to related emergy analysis research and the representation of emergy computation in Emergy Analysis of Ecological Economic System by Lan Shengfang et al, the materials, energy, and services involved in the inputs and outputs of cultivated land use can be converted into solar emjoules according to Equations – . According to the statistics, 333 farming households in the sample made use of cultivated land in 2019. According to the emergy overview of the cultivated land use of 333 farming households , the renewable environmental resources mainly included rainwater chemical energy and earth rotational energy. The energy of non-renewable topsoil lost was relatively low because the soil texture is mostly cinnamon soil, and soil erosion is generally due to mild or moderate water erosion in Qufu County. The auxiliary inputs obtained by purchase were obviously higher. They were the most important input sources in cultivated land use, as compared with the environmental inputs obtained free of charge. Specifically, the non-renewable industrial auxiliary inputs primarily included the inputs of increasing production and saving labor, while renewable organic auxiliary inputs were mainly the increasing production inputs.

The non-renewable industrial auxiliary inputs, which mainly consisted of fertilizer, mechanical power, and pesticides, were higher than that of renewable organic inputs, which primarily included labor, straw, and seeds. Regarding non-renewable industrial auxiliary inputs, the fertilizer and machinery were relatively higher, whereas for organic auxiliary inputs, the labor and straw were higher. In terms of agricultural output, the outputs of grain crops were significantly higher than that of cash crops. In addition, auxiliary inputs inevitably produces waste in the process of cultivated land use, thereby reducing its use efficiency. Fertilizers and pesticides were the main sources of waste loss. According to the SICLU evaluation system, it is assumed that the SII is approximately 2.38 when the five criterion indices reach a maximum of 1. However, it is difficult to reach this the level in actual cultivated land use. With the above theoretical analysis of SICLU, there are checks and balances and coordination among the five connotations. For example, high-efficiency output is the most direct purpose of farming households’ cultivated land use, and intensive management is the desirable main method to obtain high-yield output under existing resource conditions, which can be embodied via changes in input structure and cultivated land use management, as well as changes in the degree of ecological environment interference and the impact on social and economic development. Regarding inputs, an increase in the management intensive criterion index indicates an increase in the artificial auxiliary inputs, wherein the increase in material inputs is the most direct. Meanwhile, an increase in industrial auxiliary inputs indicates an increase in non-renewable inputs and waste loss, causing negative impacts on resource savings and the ecological environment. If the two criterion indices of resource savings and non-degradation of ecological environment are increased while the external natural environment remains unchanged, it is necessary to reduce the auxiliary inputs applied externally, which will weaken the criterion index of high yield efficiency, further affecting the criterion index of social sustainability. Therefore, it is necessary to lower the industrial auxiliary inputs and increase renewable organic function inputs. However, the industrial auxiliary inputs cannot be lowered on a large scale because of its irreplaceable nature in agricultural production. In addition, reducing the inputs of pesticides, chemical fertilizers, and even agricultural machinery means that more labor inputs are required, thereby reducing cultivating efficiency and affecting the criterion index of management intensification.

Therefore, because of the actual use of cultivated land and the coordination and balance among the SICLU connotations, the criterion indices cannot reach their maxima simultaneously, fodder growing system which is consistent with the law of diminishing marginal returns. This is consistent with the purpose of SICLU that is not to simultaneously maximize the ecological, economic, and social benefits, but to obtain a solution that maintains a dynamic balance in order to maximize the compound benefits. In addition, differences exist in not only the SII values but also the internal structure among the non-SI, low-SI, medium-SI, and high-SI. The SII structures summarized in Table 3 reveal the average value of the criterion indices under different SICLU levels. Note that its pentagon has a somewhat regular shape, while the pentagons formed by each individual farming household have more abnormal shapes. The irregular pentagons also verify the checks and balances and coordination among the five connotations. Nevertheless, they effectively reflect differences in cultivated land use under different SII values. Assuming that the SI levels of the sample farming households are in a dynamic process of continuous improvement, it can be speculated that the SICLU evolved from intensive dominance to sustainable dominance as development changed from low to high levels. These results demonstrated substantial economic benefit, but the ecological benefit and social benefit remain in their early stages. With increasing SICLU, economic benefit growth will slow and even stagnation, ecological benefit and social benefit will begin to appear until a relative equilibrium is reached. According to the SICLU evaluation structure of the sample farming households with different farming households’ livelihood types , the average values of SIY’ and SIM’ were high, followed by the SIR’, SIE’, and SIS’. In particular, the average value SIY’ of agricultural professional farming households was significantly higher than the others, the average values of SIM’ and SIS’ were relatively higher, and the SIE’ and SIR’ were significantly lower, revealing an obvious imbalance. The relatively higher SII can primarily be attributed to the contribution of SIY’. Theoretically, these results denote an intensive and low sustainable model, but this may not be the case in practice. Because the agricultural-professional farming households had a large management scale, a high degree of agricultural mechanization, high farming efficiency and agricultural productivity, and lower labor inputs, as compared with the other types, it can achieve lower renewable organic inputs, and higher non-renewable and environmental load ratios, making its average value of SIE’ relatively low. Moreover, although the SIE’ value was relatively low, there was a strong correlation between SIS’ and SIY’ and SIE’, and the SIS’ was relatively high because of the high SIY’. However, agricultural-professional farming households had lower SIR’ than other farming household types, indicating that their dependence on non-renewable resources was still strong. This may also explain why the cultivated land use of agricultural-professional farming households were mostly at a medium-SI level, not a high-SI level. The SIE’ and SIR’ could be improved by improving the proportional relationship of inputs, moderately reducing the inputs of non-renewable resources, such as chemical fertilizers and pesticides, and increasing the renewable ratio by reducing non-renewable auxiliary inputs. However, for agricultural-professional farming households, agricultural income is the main source of family earnings and main purpose. Thus, although their dependence on cultivated land was the strongest, their consciousness of land protection was weaker than that of traditional agricultural farming households.

The first alternative system is the semi-intensive system. The main goal in this system is to improve the provision of private goods, i.e. increased meat production and improved labor conditions. Several enabling conditions at farm level were identified to reach this end . This alternative system would fit better in the southernmost and flat areas where crop diversification is easier to implement. The second alternative system is the high-tech extensive system. The aim is to improve farms’ profitability by reducing feeding costs based on an improved pasture management. Participants highlighted the need for the innovation in herd geo-location, weather information and wild fauna surveillance . In addition, subsidies are essential in this system to support the provision of public goods as well as a legal framework to regulate and protect the access to land for grazing purposes. This alternative system would be more suitable in the northernmost and mountainous locations, where there are more pasture lands and geography makes other types of farming systems less appropriate. Current challenges, such as the reduced consumption of lamb meat by consumers, the lack of workforce and the increasing feeding costs,bato bucket are still important in the future alternative systems.

The feeding costs are more important in the semi-intensive alternative system due to a greater dependency of feed inputs and lower dependency on the availability of pastures. On the other hand, wild fauna attacks will only pose a challenge in the high-tech extensive alternative system. In the alternative systems, all main functions are expected to increase in a moderate way . The gross margins would increase in both systems, although margins seem to differ depending on the degree of intensification or extensification of the farms, as well as the areas where the farms are located. The increase in gross margin in both systems is the main change that is expected to allow to increase the number of sheep and farms, and are therefore moving away from other critical thresholds as well. The location of the farm determines the agro-ecological potential and the access to markets . Thus, the semi-intensive alternative system is more likely in the flat areas where pastures are more scarce and payments for the less favorable areas are not applicable . In the high-tech extensive alternative system, the production is not expected to change. However, its performance in less favored areas and the provision of public goods services is supported by European subsidies that could increase the current margins. Greater gross margins would lead to a greater number of farms in the farming system, although this increase would be limited by the access to lands in the high-tech extensive system. The increase of the number of sheep is expected in both alternative systems, although this increment would be greater in the high-tech extensive alternative system. According to participants the lower production in this system would be compensated with greater herd sizes.

While some resilience attributes of the farming system are expected to improve in both alternative systems, participants agreed that all the resilience attributes of the FS could improve in the high-tech extensive system . The “social self-organization” resilience attribute in the high-tech extensive system would be improved as cooperation is needed to manage pastures and herds; it can also be argued that “production coupled to the local and natural capital” will improve as herd feeding will be coupled to the availability of pasture lands; and “diverse policies” will be enhanced as new policies will be tailored to support the provision of the public goods provided by the farming system. Moving towards the semi-intensive alternative scenario could constrain the resilience attributes “production coupled to the local and natural capital” and “diverse policies” leading to a deeper unbalance between the economic, social and environmental dimensions. Several current strategies, with currently low implementation levels, could be enhanced in the alternative systems. Some current strategies are compatible with the alternative farming systems. These strategies are mainly oriented to the economic domain, specifically related to the on-farm economic administration . Moreover, there were several new strategies identified during the workshop that match with current strategies .

Most of these strategies are economic strategies such as opening new marketing channels and developing new financial products and sales contracts that contribute to increase the robustness of the farming system to face hard times. Some institutional strategies are related to the public awareness campaigns about the positive contribution of the extensive sheep farming system to nature conservation and health. In the system, public awareness is expected to stimulate lamb meat consumption, which results in improved incomes. Public awareness is also expected to improve regulations for improving management of pastures, which in turn could lead to even more public awareness. Most of the strategies proposed in the workshop are applicable for both systems and are mainly related to the need for improved technologies and innovation . The number of proposed strategies was higher for the high-tech extensive system. The extra strategies in this system relate to the environmental and social domains, due to its more environmental-based and social nature. Institutional changes need to be made that improve the access to lands and the management of pasture lands, and the recognition of the farming system’s contribution to the conservation of natural resources. This is expected to pay off in the economic domain, through subsidies and the lower feeding costs due to the use of pastures. Social measures are related to the promotion of generational renewal, which would increase the workforce in the farming system.

The workforce availability improves the farmers’ quality of life, stimulating the attractiveness of the farming system. The quality of life is also improved with the implementation of new technology related to management of pastures and animal handling – in the semi-intensive alternative system the animal handling strategies are very important, mainly related to sanitary and production issues. The technology and innovation requires the cooperation between different actors in the exchange of knowledge and training in the technology . The cooperation between farmers is also expected to increase the bargaining power and margins. In any case, strategies regarding innovation and cooperation among system actors would be necessary, no matter what future system unfolds . It should be noted that the import of feed in the semi-intensive system reduces the coupling of production with local and natural resources. This could result in an opposite direction where, because of a worsening public image, less meat is consumed and regulations are getting stricter. In both alternative systems, several strategies are oriented to technology implementation. The implementation of new technology generally does not allow for experimentation because of the great investments involved in new technology. For instance, in the high-tech extensive system the use of satellite images or the GPS per ewe is expensive. In the semi-intensive system, the replacement of more prolific ewes requires high investments. Strategies with low investment costs are related to the sanitary prevention, which lend robustness to the farming system , or the coordination among actors. The probability of unfolding the high-tech extensive alternative system is expected to be larger than that of the semi-intensive system. The reason is that the semi-intensive system is going to compete with other intensive farming systems that are more profitable.

The high-tech extensive system might highlight its importance in the contribution to the public goods and the conservation of the local breed Rasa aragonesa. As mentioned before, the greater availability of pastures makes the high-tech extensive system more suitable to mid-mountain areas. Farmers mentioned the high-tech extensive system as the preferable option in the future but also the most complicated to accomplish, especially without supporting policies in place. Besides, some of the technology for pasture lands and herds management is still in a development phase. In contrast, the lower presence of pastures in flat areas of the farming system make the semi-intensive systems more appropriate in those areas. Participants pointed out that both alternative systems could attract young people to the farming system. Riedel et al. have related young farmers to a greater dynamism and technology adoption in the ovine production system and to the reduction of shepherding. Based on the challenges, enabling conditions and strategies of the current and alternative systems, the extensive ovine farming system in the province of Huesca seems to be most compatible with a scenario on a pathway to higher sustainability with improved attention for the maintenance of natural resources , especially in the case of a high-tech extensive system. Compatibility with Eur-Agri-SSP1 is largely due to the increment of support for environmental services. As the current system is close to collapse, the compatibility with a scenario where the status quo is maintained as much as possible for the current state is limited. The establishment of the semi-intensive system is more compatible with Eur-Agri-SSP2 due to its production orientation. Eur-Agri-SSP3, with regional rivalry leading to amongst others slow technological process, is moderately to strongly incompatible with the current system and the alternative systems. In Eur-Agri-SSP3, specifically for the semi-intensive system, the lack of internationalization of markets, and for the high-tech extensive system the lack of environmental services valorization reduces compatibility. The semi-intensification of the farming system is evaluated as the only alternative system moderately compatible with Eur-Agri-SSP4, a scenario driven primarily by increasing social inequality, and Eur-Agri-SSP5, dutch bucket hydroponic a scenario primarily driven by improvements in technology.

The high-tech extensive system is even less compatible with Eur-Agri-SSP4 and EurAgri-SSP5 than the current system. Although the high-tech extensive system is most compatible with Eur-Agri-SSP1, the semi-intensive system seems the safest bet regarding its overall compatibility with all Eur-AgriSSPs .The outcome of the workshop suggested that, currently, the social, economic and environmental performance of extensive sheep farming system in Huesca, Spain is poor and declining. This is a common trend in Europe. Strijker explained that increasing opportunities outside agriculture, lower product prices, and higher land prices explained the continuous decline of extensive livestock grazing systems in several rural areas across Europe. Bernu´es et al. found that the lack of generational succession and the high opportunity cost of labour are also drivers of the disappearance of livestock farming in European Mediterranean countries. Most challenges, system functions and resilience attributes seem to be at or beyond critical thresholds, indicating simultaneously low sustainability and low resilience levels. Interactions between critical thresholds of challenges, functions and resilience attributes across levels and domains are perceived to be present. This emphasizes the importance of including multiple levels and domains when studying the sustainability and resilience of farming systems. This also emphasizes the complementarity between sustainability and resilience, albeit in a negative sense. Overall, the effect of exceeding thresholds is expected to strongly reduce system performance in terms of sustainability and resilience. Economic viability at farm level plays a pivotal role regarding interacting thresholds. Participants indicated that exceeding the critical threshold for gross margin would result in a collapse of the farming system. This supports the idea that interacting indicators being close to critical thresholds at lower levels increase the vulnerability of the focal system . Interestingly, the level of gross margin is artificially maintained by subsidies that farms receive. This suggests a current focus on mainly economic sustainability, which in the long run may not be sustainable at all: subsidies may keep the fast responding “gross margin” away from critical thresholds, while the indicators relating to slower processes such as declining access to pastures in the environmental domain and lower attractiveness of the countryside in the social domain are not countered. Amalgamation of farms and livestock partly slows down the decline in sheep numbers and subsequent lower maintenance of the landscape. However, in the absence of subsidies and the limitations in managing huge herds, amalgamation is no longer profitable, which explains why participants expected a collapse. Biggs et al. mention that large shifts in socio-ecological systems are uncommon. The provisioning of agricultural subsidies could be seen as a main reason for continuing the status quo in some other agricultural systems in Europe as well.