News Release

MADISON, Wis. — Our global food supply needs to keep up with the growing population while also protecting the environment and keeping food nutritious. New farming techniques have been great at raising yields but are often less sustainable and lead to lower food quality.

In response, researchers from the Sydney Institute of Agriculture have proposed the 3N Agriculture Framework, a way to grow nutritious food sustainably without heating up the atmosphere. They published their commentary in the Agricultural & Environmental Letters journal.

This framework establishes a scalable path to align agricultural productivity with human health, biodiversity, and climate mitigation. Although farming has become increasingly more productive over the past two centuries, the cost was substantial if we consider water pollution, greenhouse gas emissions, and decline in soil health and biodiversity. These cumulated effects shake the foundation of our global food supply and put it at risk.

Most studies show that we have the resources to meet global food demand. Two challenges are that most farming methods harm the environment and produce less nutritious food. Many different methods have been assessed to solve these problems separately, but this framework simultaneously addresses them, hoping to affect global policies and markets.

Agriculture contributes up to 26% of global greenhouse gas emissions. In addition, expanding farmland too recklessly destroys habitats, ecosystems, and biodiversity. Pesticides kill off pollinators and soil microbes beneficial to the crops. Nutrient runoff pollutes waterways; irrigation depletes freshwater; and climate change kills more living things.

Modern farming makes less nutritious crops since methods have been prioritizing high yields. Most fertilizers don’t contain all the nutrients crops need to be healthy. Increased CO2 in the atmosphere lowers the amount of protein, iron, and zinc in major crops adding to the issue. By bringing back a focus on nutrition, 3N agriculture can solve these problems.

"3NAg is an unrealised solution hiding in plain sight," said study co-author Damien Field, professor of Global Social Security and Soil Science Education at the University of Sydney. "The future of agriculture is not about choosing between productivity, climate and nature, but by designing profitable farming opportunities that deliver better food, lower emissions and stronger natural systems."

To combat climate change, several new farming methods popped up. Climate-smart agriculture devises ways to mitigate rising temperatures and drought. Conservation agriculture tries to minimize soil damage. Agroecology focuses on the health of nearby ecosystems, regenerative agriculture wants to keep soil healthy, and now 3N agriculture offers a framework to evaluate them. It establishes strict performance metrics to ensure progress in one area is not achieved at the expense of another.

Rather than treating all these issues separately, 3N agriculture recognizes their interconnections. The 3N framework has three main principles:

• Integration of “different dimensions of agricultural sustainability (Net-Zero, Nature-Positive, Nutrient-Balanced)”.
• Balance is about managing the environmental, nutritional, and productivity goals all at once.
• Transformation calls for changes in how our food is produced, distributed, and consumed.

Net-zero agriculture is making farms absorb as much carbon as they emit using solar, wind, bioenergy and energy-efficient machinery.

Nature-positive agriculture focuses on reducing harm to and healing nearby ecosystems. It fights soil degradation and habitat loss while preserving native wildlife. Farms are environments for wild animals too, and soils are full of microorganisms that are essential to crops and soil to survive.

Nutrient-balanced agriculture recognizes that soil nutrients are necessary for healthy plants, livestock, soil, people, and environments. It seeks to keep soil nutrients intact as the productivity of farms gets higher. Less nutrients in the soil means less nutritious food, and mass malnutrition is a currently seen as a global health problem.

We need policies that support nutritional balance and give more subsidies to fertilizer, soil, and specialized seed use to create more nutritious crops. Dietary plans and trade policies that denote food as nutritious vs. non-nutritious can help consumers know what foods are best for the planet and themselves.

The 3N agriculture theory needs additional testing to prove to the industry that it can work and provide the expected results to keep carbon trapped in the soil, increase bird populations, and increase the diversity of soil organisms.

3N agriculture doesn’t aim to replace climate-friendly or ecological farming methods but rather provide standard rules to measure their performance. Any trade-offs are identified and measured so that all the branches can work together equally well. The suggestion is to start small with local farms using 3N agriculture first, then show the success to national and even the UN audiences, ensuring that everyone can have better food while sustaining the environment.

The transition won’t be easy, but doing nothing will threaten our future food supply and environment. This plan will need commitment, collaboration and innovation with policies and investments to back it up, but it can give the world a better way of producing nutritious food without the devastation of global warming.

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The Alliance of Crop, Soil, and Environmental Science Societies is a nonprofit organization providing management and administrative support services to founding members, the American Society of Agronomy, Crop Science Society of America, and Soil Science Society of America. The headquarters office is in Madison, Wis.