Soils harbor a significant proportion of Earth’s biodiversity, especially microorganisms. Yet understanding the drivers of soil microbial diversity, community composition, and interactions remains far from complete, especially in agricultural landscapes where management at multiple scales could strongly influence soil microbiomes, and in turn, where humans depend on multiple soil-based ecosystem services supported by microbes. We studied how variation in local, field-scale diversification practices (i.e. crop diversity, cover cropping, organic amendments, and reduced tillage) and proportions of different land use / land cover classes in the surrounding landscape (i.e. landscape composition) affected soil bacterial and fungal communities across organically managed lettuce fields in an intensively-managed agricultural region. Across 28 organic farms, only crop diversity positively affected metrics of soil microbial diversity, including taxonomic diversity of bacteria and ecological functional diversity of fungi, while cover cropping reduced the diversity of fungal ecological functional diversity and the metabolic richness of bacteria. All diversification practices significantly influenced the community structure of both bacteria and fungi, collectively explaining 5.6 and 8.4% of community structure variation, respectively. Surrounding landscape composition explained 1.8-fold and 1.1-fold more variation in bacterial and fungal community structure as these field-scale diversification practices. Landscape composition also affected five fungal and one bacterial metrics of diversity and richness. Field-scale diversification practices, especially crop diversity, modulated bacterial and fungal network structure, in complex ways. Our results highlight the importance of both field management and surrounding landscapes in shaping multiple aspects of soil microbial communities. Similar to aboveground ecological communities in agricultural landscapes, scales beyond the local must be considered to steward the soil microbiome.

Light exposure is an important factor influencing the Escherichia coli survival in agricultural soils. This study evaluated the combined effects of soil moisture and light exposure on the survival of E. coli in agricultural soil under a controlled diurnal environment. For this, soil mesocosms were inoculated with E. coli TVS353 and maintained at three moisture levels (100%, 75%, and 50% field capacity (FC)) and two light conditions (diurnal and complete dark), with a 14 h day at 25 ℃ and a 10 h night at 15 ℃. Soil samples were enumerated for E. coli on days 0, 1, 3, 7, 14, 28, 35, 56, and every 7 days thereafter, and survival dynamics were analyzed using linear mixed-effect analysis and a biphasic microbial survival model. Across all treatments, E. coli declined significantly over time (p < 0.0001). Overall, E. coli survived up to 140 days under higher soil moisture levels (100% and 75% FC) and in dark conditions, whereas survival was 63 to 70 days at 50% FC in the diurnal environment. Biphasic survival modeling revealed higher initial inactivation rate constants under low-moisture and low-light exposure conditions. This study represents one of the first attempts to quantitatively assess the effect of light exposure on E. coli survival in agricultural soils across varying moisture levels.

Controlled Environment Agriculture (CEA) is a potential strategy in sustainable food system transitions. This study analyzed 587 peer-reviewed articles published between 2008 and 2023 to identify major research themes, knowledge gaps, and key societal and environmental challenges researchers associate with CEA development. We found that scholars frame CEA as a strategy to solve potential food system issues caused by population growth, urbanization, climate change, and the increasing demand for local food. Current CEA research heavily concentrates on operational optimization and resource management, particularly light optimization and energy efficiency. Studies on plant breeding and waste management are almost non-existent, and socioeconomic research is scarce and limited to conceptual analysis. Our results highlight the need for more comprehensive, system-level approach to CEA research and a balanced distribution of efforts, with greater attention to critical yet understudied areas. Future research could focus on empirically assessing CEA performance in practice and examining how governance, policy, and institutional factors shape its outcomes. Achieving system sustainability for CEA will require integrating knowledge across technological, social, cultural, economic, and political domains rather than relying solely on hardware and software innovation. Our findings also call attention to the need to broaden the scope of sustainability research in CEA systems to include implications for livelihoods, communities, and ecosystems. Finally, CEA research is predominantly driven by the Global North, and without greater inclusion of Global South perspectives, CEA risks becoming a technology that widens rather than bridges global disparities in food security and agricultural innovation.

City regions hold much potential for advancing sustainable and just food system transformations. A mosaic of models for producing more food in and around cities is emerging that promises shorter supply chains, increased food access, plant-based solutions and robust community resilience. Models for urban agriculture range from backyard and community gardens to rooftop farms to plant factories, representing tremendous diversity in the cropping systems, technologies, skills, and organizational forms used to grow food. Amidst this flourishing, concerns over inequitable distributions of the benefits and risks of expanding urban agriculture underscore the need to center justice in determining the right mix of models. City regions need innovative governance approaches to strategically, sustainably, and equitably manage this emerging mosaic at the city region scale and considering its full social-ecological ramifications. The JUST GROW framework addresses this need by incorporating three interlinked principles of justice into a comprehensive governance process of collective knowing, inclusive deliberation, and intentional action. We offer strategies for building collaborative capacities among community, government, and research stakeholder groups to cocreate indicators and invest in the data infrastructure needed to measure outcomes that matter for sustainability and equity. Our framework also creates a pathway to proactively construct responsibility to act on this knowledge bank by aligning authority, capacity, and motivation within representative governance networks. The long term goal of the JUST GROW framework is to build a process for food producers, urban planners, municipal agencies, community groups, and civil society organizations to help city region food systems (CRFS) better provide key benefits from urban agriculture—including positive environmental impacts, supporting vibrant food cultures, land access, livelihoods, and food security—for all people now and into the future.

Mangroves comprise diverse species that exhibit unique adaptations allowing them to thrive in harsh coastal environments in continual flux. Inspired by mangroves, we present a knowledge-to-action framework for conceptualizing sustainable food systems. We posit that human and planetary health are best sought through processes of diversification across multiple root systems to sustain a plurality of desired outcomes. The mangrove metaphor highlights that processes of diversification, which are empirically observable, measurable and reflexive to contemporary needs and contexts, can address food system polycrises and support transitions that benefit people and the planet.

Regulatory regimes codify complex social objectives for agriculture, and judge producers' compliance relative to the resulting rules and standards. By combining Access Theory with Regulator-Intermediary-Target Theory, we frame farmers' compliance with agricultural rules and standards as a dynamic, relational product of social networks, rather than an asset that a farmer either has or lacks. To build these arguments, we compare four cases of governance over distinct social objectives sought from agricultural production: (1) legitimacy, examined through ongoing cannabis legalization in California; (2) safety, examined through the proliferation of microbial risk management into specialty crop agriculture in the United States; (3) organic, examined through the evolution of the US National Organic Program standards; and (4) fairness, examined through the fair trade movement and the split between Fair Trade International and Fair Trade USA. We find that farmers must continuously negotiate their compliance to maintain market access. Three key types of intermediaries participate in that negotiation: gatekeeping intermediaries who judge who shall pass, normative intermediaries who reify norms of ‘good’ as opposed to ‘bad’ farms and farmers, and facilitating intermediaries upon whom farmers depend to help them claim compliance. Our comparative analysis reveals novel insights into the network of social relations that shape who can comply and who cannot, which in turn determines who may participate in agriculture, in what ways, and for the sake of whom.

ContextConservation in working landscapes is critical for halting biodiversity declines and ensuring farming system sustainability. However, concerns that wildlife may carry foodborne pathogens has created pressure on farmers to remove habitat and reduce biodiversity, undermining farmland conservation. Nonetheless, simplified farming landscapes may host bird communities that carry higher foodborne disease risks.ObjectivesWe analyzed the effects of local farming practices and surrounding landscapes on bird communities and food-safety risks across 30 California lettuce farms. Specifically, we sought to determine how farmland diversification affects bird diversity, fecal contamination, and foodborne pathogen incidences, thereby identifying potential tradeoffs between managing farms for bird conservation versus food safety.MethodsWe surveyed birds at 227 point-count locations, quantified fecal contamination along 120 transects, and assayed 601 bird feces for pathogenic E. coli, Campylobacter spp., and Salmonella spp. We then used hierarchical models to quantify effects of farm management and landscape context on bird communities and food-safety risks.ResultsSurrounding ungrazed seminatural areas were associated with higher bird diversity, more species of conservation concern, and fewer flocks that may increase risks from foodborne pathogens. In contrast, on-farm diversification practices and surrounding grazing lands offered weaker bird conservation benefits. Surrounding grazed lands were associated with more potentially pathogenic bird feces in crop fields.ConclusionsOur results suggest that habitat conservation around produce farms could support bird conservation without increasing foodborne pathogens, especially on farms further from grazing lands. Thus, interventions that diversify farming systems offer potential to simultaneously conserve biodiversity and provide safe food for human consumption.

The challenges faced by organic vegetable farmers in California during the COVID-19 pandemic included uncertainty about food safety rules and best practices, availability of workers, and significant changes to their markets. When the pandemic began, we built on an ongoing interdisciplinary research project with organic vegetable farmers on the California Central Coast to track how those growers adapted to the crisis. We conducted surveys in April 2020 and January 2021 to determine impacts on farmers and how farm size, market channels, and management strategies influenced a farm's ability to adapt to and recover from pandemic-induced disruptions. We found that mid-sized farmers with flexible and diverse marketing channels could navigate changes from the pandemic with minimal losses and, in some cases, economic gains. By contrast, smaller farmers with limited resources, especially those with disadvantaged backgrounds and limited access to technology, experienced more drastic impacts, including lost markets, labor shortages, and increased childcare needs. The lessons learned can inform a transition toward more sustainable, resilient agroecological systems.

Fruit and vegetable growers in the US face tradeoffs and synergies between on-farm conservation and pre-harvest food safety as a result of economic considerations, regulatory concerns, and external pressure from other stakeholders. However, detailed data on the frequency and extent of these tradeoffs across US regions remain sparse. We designed and implemented a national grower survey for the 2018 crop year to address this gap. Based on 209 responses, we examined usage of pre-harvest food safety and conservation practices with a particular emphasis on managing animal intrusion into growing areas and maintaining wildlife habitat. We also analyzed associations between farm characteristics and the probability that growers used different on-farm food safety and conservation practices. We did not find a simple biophysical or socio-economic explanation for why some farms adopted specific practices over others. Instead, our findings suggest that the adoption of particular food safety practices is influenced by a complex assemblage of factors that include environmental context, supply chain pressures, cost considerations, and growers' perceptions of risk. A better understanding of the diverse tradeoffs and synergies that US produce growers face between on-farm conservation and pre-harvest food safety is critical for effective policy design.

Consumption of contaminated produce remains a leading cause of foodborne illness. Increasingly, growers are altering agricultural practices and farm environments to manage food-safety hazards, but these changes often result in substantial economic, social, and environmental costs. Here, we present a comprehensive evidence synthesis evaluating the efficacy of soil, non-crop vegetation, animal, landscape, and irrigation water management strategies aimed at reducing produce-safety risk in North America. We systematically summarized findings from 78 peer-reviewed papers on the effect of 21 management practices on the prevalence, abundance, or survival of four foodborne pathogens (i.e., E. coli, Salmonella spp., Listeria spp ., and Campylobacter spp .), resulting in 113 summaries. We then organized a 30-member expert panel, who used these summaries to evaluate the impact of each practice on food-safety outcomes. While more than half of the practices were too understudied to confidently evaluate their impact on food safety, the panel did identify several practices that were associated with reduced preharvest food-safety risks, including not using raw manure, separating crop and livestock production, and choosing low-risk irrigation sources. The panel also identified practices that appear ineffective at reducing food-safety risks, such as the removal of non-crop vegetation. Overall, these findings provide insights into the food-safety impacts of agricultural and land management practices that growers, auditors, and extension personnel can use to co-manage produce preharvest environments for food safety and other aims.

Scholarship flourishes in inclusive environments where open deliberations and generative feedback expand both individual and collective thinking. Many researchers, however, have limited access to such settings, and most conventional academic conferences fall short of promises to provide them. We have written this Field Report to share our methods for cultivating a vibrant intellectual community within the Science and Technology Studies Food and Agriculture Network (STSFAN). This is paired with insights from 21 network members on aspects that have allowed STSFAN to thrive, even amid a global pandemic. Our hope is that these insights will encourage others to cultivate their own intellectual communities, where they too can receive the support they need to deepen their scholarship and strengthen their intellectual relationships.

Interdisciplinary research needs innovation. As an action-oriented intervention, this Manifesto begins from the authors’ experiences as social scientists working within interdisciplinary science and technology collaborations in agriculture and food. We draw from these experiences to: 1) explain what social scientists contribute to interdisciplinary agri-food tech collaborations; (2) describe barriers to substantive and meaningful collaboration; and (3) propose ways to overcome these barriers. We encourage funding bodies to develop mechanisms that ensure funded projects respect the integrity of social science expertise and incorporate its insights. We also call for the integration of social scientific questions and methods in interdisciplinary projects from the outset , and for a genuine curiosity on the part of STEM and social science researchers alike about the knowledge and skills each of us has to offer. We contend that cultivating such integration and curiosity within interdisciplinary collaborations will make them more enriching for all researchers involved, and more likely to generate socially beneficial outcomes.

An emerging discourse about automated agricultural machinery imagines farms as places where farmers and workers do not need to be, but also implicitly frames farms as intolerable places where people do not want to be. Only autonomous machines, this story goes, can relieve farmers and workers of this presumed burden by letting them 'farm at a distance'. In return for this distanced autonomy, farmers are promised increased control over their work-life balance and greater farm productivity from letting 'smart' robots assume control over the operational environment. Drawing upon the ways that these machines are promoted by manufacturers in various media, we trace the nascent contours of what we term a liberatory sociotechnical imaginary for agricultural automation across three cases-automated milking systems, self-driving tractors, and robotic strawberry pickers. We show how promises for new freedoms and autonomy are flexibly deployed to respond to distinct frictions that farmers, workers, and even farm animals experience in different modes of industrial agriculture. However, underlying these promises is the purposefully understated self-interest of manufacturers, who stand to gain further control over farms if automated technologies assume a central role in agriculture. Through the liberatory rhetoric, we contend, the imaginary seeks to enroll farmers into a socio-technical network that creates new relations of dependence upon the companies who design, sell, maintain, and often retain ownership over automated technologies. While potentially powerful, this imaginary may nonetheless fail to coalesce as farmers, workers, and agroecosystems exert their own agency on automated imaginaries and technological futures for agriculture.

The emergence and impact of tipping points have garnered significant interest in both the social and natural sciences. Despite widespread recognition of the importance of feedbacks between human and natural systems, it is often assumed that the observed nonlinear dynamics in these coupled systems rests within either the underlying human or natural processes rather than the rates at which they interact. Using adoption of agricultural diversification practices as a case study, we show how two stable management paradigms (one dominated by conventional, homogeneous practices and the other by diversified practices) can emerge purely from temporal feedback between human decisions and ecological responses. We explore how this temporal mechanism of tipping points provides insight into designing more effective interventions that promote farmers' transitions toward sustainable agriculture. Moreover, we present a flexible modeling framework that could be applied to other cases as well as questions in social-ecological systems research and environmental policy design.

In the face of myriad environmental challenges associated with industrial agriculture, some farmers and researchers have looked to diversified farming systems as a promising alternative. Despite well-documented ecological benefits, diversification practices remain rare in many regions of the U.S, even amongst organic farmers. Our study focuses on organic farmers in the Central Coast region of California, an area that has played a crucial role in the rise of organic agriculture over the last several decades. Through 20 interviews with farmers who all grow lettuce and 8 interviews with technical assistance providers, we investigate the persistent barriers that growers in this region face in adopting diversification practices including cover cropping, compost application, crop rotation, insectary strips, and hedgerows. We find that high land rents, the predominance of short-term leases, stringent food safety standards, and other supply chain pressures significantly hamper the adoption of diversification practices. In order to surmount these barriers and increase adoption, solutions must be pursued at three interconnected levels: innovation at the farm level, and policy change at the technical and structural levels. Locally-informed, integrated, and innovative policies across these three levels must be explored to support the creation of a more resilient, sustainable, and equitable food system.

Media outlets, industry researchers, and policy-makers are today busily extolling new robotic advances that promise to transform agriculture, bringing us ever closer to self-farming farms. Yet such techno-optimist discourse ignores the cautionary lessons of past attempts to mechanize farms. Adapting the Social Construction of Technology framework, we trace the history of efforts to replace human labor with machine labor on fruit, nut, and vegetable farms in California between 1945 and 1980-a place and time during which a post-WWII culture of faith in the beneficence of technoscience applications to agriculture reached an apex. The degree to which and forms whereby mechanization gains momentum hinges on whether, how, and among whom a technological frame for mimicking human capabilities and supplanting workers coalesces. These frames, we find, vary considerably across crops, reflecting complex interactions of biology, farmer and farm worker behavior, industry supply chains, agricultural research and development, financial flows, and beliefs about labor, race, gender, and immigration. To tease out these complex dynamics, we draw directly from archival evidence to follow the development of cultivation and harvest machines through four cases spanning a spectrum of outcomes-tomatoes, nuts, peaches, and lettuce. In comparing across these cases, we find that although agricultural engineers, scientists, and their boosters framed mechanization as a triumphal narrative of progress in 'human vs. nature' conflicts, this techno-optimist rhetoric camouflaged deeper 'human vs. human' conflicts, particularly among agribusiness, farmers, and farm workers. We conclude with several insights that this historical study brings to the study of agricultural automation today.

Leafy greens cause a growing proportion of foodborne illness outbreaks despite heavy investment in surveillance technologies designed to control pathogenic hazards in agriculture. To understand how the governing regime maintains authority despite continual lapses in control, I examine a deadly 2 0 18 outbreak of Escherichia coli O157: H7 linked to romaine lettuce. By comparing the outbreak investigation and regulatory response to the questions notasked and actions nottaken, I show how the regime ’ s methods of understanding the outbreak also organized its ignorance of dangers outside its carefully constructed field of vision. Applying agnotology theory, I argue that the industrial organization of leafy greens agriculture and the institutionalized non-knowledge of emergent social–ecological vulnerabilities coproduce one another, allowing the industrial food regime to avoid fundamental reforms that might enhance resilience. This case demonstrates that critical examination of organized non-knowledge in complex environmental governance systems can reveal limits to institutional learning and systemic reflexivity that impede sustainability transitions.

Humanity faces a triple threat of climate change, biodiversity loss, and global food insecurity. In response, increasing the general adaptive capacity of farming systems is essential. We identify two divergent strategies for building adaptive capacity. Simplifying processes seek to narrowly maximize production by shifting the basis of agricultural production toward centralized control of socially and ecologically homogenized systems. Diversifying processes cultivate social-ecological complexity in order to provide multiple ecosystem services, maintain management flexibility, and promote coordinated adaptation across levels. Through five primarily United States focused cases of distinct agricultural challenges—foodborne pathogens, drought, marginal lands, labor availability, and land access and tenure—we compare simplifying and diversifying responses to assess how these pathways differentially enhance or degrade the adaptive capacity of farming systems in the context of the triple threat. These cases show that diversifying processes can weave a form of broad and nimble adaptive capacity that is fundamentally distinct from the narrow and brittle adaptive capacity produced through simplification. We find that while there are structural limitations and tradeoffs to diversifying processes, adaptive capacity can be facilitated by empowering people and enhancing ecosystem functionality to proactively distribute resources and knowledge where needed and to nimbly respond to changing circumstances. Our cases suggest that, in order to garner the most adaptive benefits from diversification, farming systems should balance the pursuit of multiple goals, which in turn requires an inclusive process for active dialogue and negotiation among diverse perspectives. Instead of locking farming systems into pernicious cycles that reproduce social and ecological externalities, diversification processes can enable nimble responses to a broad spectrum of possible stressors and shocks, while also promoting social equity and ecological sustainability.