Abstract: Most people live in cities, but most food system studies and food security issues focus on the rural poor. Urban populations differ from rural populations in their food consumption by being generally wealthier, requiring food trade for their food security, defined as the extent to which people have adequate diets. Cities rarely have the self-provisioning capacity to satisfy their own food supply, understood as the extent to which the food consumed by the city’s population is produced from the city’s local agro-ecosystems. Almost inevitably, a city’s food security is augmented by production from remote landscapes, both internal and external in terms of a state’s jurisdiction. We reveal the internal and external food flows necessary for the food security of three wealthy capital cities (Canberra, Australia; Copenhagen, Denmark; Tokyo, Japan). These cities cover two orders of magnitude in population size and three orders of magnitude in population density. From traded volumes of food and their sources into the cities, we calculate the productivity of the city’s regional and non-regional ecosystems that provide food for these cities and estimate the overall utilised land area. The three cities exhibit differing degrees of food self provisioning capacity and exhibit large differences in the areas on which they depend to provide their food. We show that, since 1965, global land area effectively imported to produce food for these cities has increased with their expanding populations, with large reductions in the percentage of demand met by local agro-ecosystems. The physical trading of food commodities embodies ecosystem services, such as water, soil fertility and pollination that are required for land-based food production. This means that the trade in these embodied ecosystem services has become as important for food security as traditional economic mechanisms such as market access and trade. A future policy question, raised by our study, is the degree to which governments will remain committed to open food trade policies in the face of national political unrest caused by food shortages. Our study demonstrates the need to determine the food security and self-provisioning capacity of a wide range of rich and poor cities, taking into account the global location of the ecosystems that are provisioning them. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Abstract: Molecular genetics has confirmed older research and generated new insights into the ways how plants deal with adverse conditions. This body of research is now being used to interpret stress behavior of plants in new ways, and to add results from most recent genomics-based studies. The new knowledge now includes genome sequences of species that show extreme abiotic stress tolerances, which enables new strategies for applications through either molecular breeding or transgenic engineering. We will highlight some physiological features of the extremophile lifestyle, outline emerging features about halophytism based on genomics, and discuss conclusions about underlying mechanisms.

Abstract: Models integration and possible contrasts with up-scaling activities has received increasing attention in recent years especially with respect to the relationship between farm-economics and biophysical assessments. Current bio-economic models that analyse the trade-offs between farm income and interventions on eco-bio-environmental parameters such as maintenance of biodiversity, reduction of erosion and nitrate pollution and more, include static models. Agricultural systems are facing a series of threats, including climate change, land degradation, price volatility and intensification processes, which put their long-term sustainability into question. The University of Basilicata in collaboration with local representatives from various sectors of production in the Basilicata region of Southern Italy has developed an integrated study to define a model system to assess the dynamics at play in rural territories. The study tested the explanatory usefulness of resilience theory for the Basilicata agricultural social-ecological system, applying the adaptive cycle as a diagnostic tool to explore the dynamics and trajectories of change in the coupled social-ecological systems, and evaluating the performance of social, economic and social capitals, which are subject to the same dynamics. The use of dynamic analysis of the social, economic and natural capitals as the key to interpret the various phases of the adaptive cycle of the two agricultural systems proved a powerful tool in analysing the relationships between resilience and sustainable development in rural territories. The adoption of capitals and their inter-relations proved fundamental to the elaboration of adaptation strategies which were compatible with patterns of sustainability. The adaptive cycle heuristic, despite some methodological difficulties, remains useful to describe processes of change in rural socio-ecological systems. There could be enormous potential in adopting these instruments to help identify of the needs of different territories and help the framing and implementation of rural policies. No Label