Boosting Widespread Adoption of Sustainable Agriculture – New Metrics and the Role of Science

Abstract

Adapting to new climatic, social, and environmental realities demands deep and massive transformative changes
in how humans manage, perceive, and relate with terrestrial and aquatic productive systems. In India, agriculture
production is challenged by degraded soils, scarce and contested water, fragmented and degraded seminatural habitats,
social confl ict, and more frequent extreme events. Existing political will is enabling the adoption of sustainable
agriculture. However, the pace and the extent of the adoption of promising strategies, practices, and approaches
for achieving sustainable and resilient agriculture remains sparse. Accelerating a socially just transformation to
sustainability in India requires a new systems-oriented, multidisciplinary, human well-being-centered research
agenda. Specifi cally, the new agenda can expand, contest and reevaluate agriculture performance’ in terms of
how is evaluated and measured at the farm and landscape level. The new evidence will be critical for learning,
innovating and re-designing sustainable, multifunctional and resilient agricultural landscapes