Consumption and production patterns for agricultural sustainable development

Agriculture has always played a key role in feeding the world population and ensuringthe development of sustainable food production systems.However, over recent decades, many farmers have over-exploited agricultural ecosystemsin order to increase their production and incomes. This has caused a reduction ordegradation of environmental sustainability, reducing farmers’ profitability and leadingmany producers to abandon rural areas. Moreover, currently, over 820 million people inthe world are hungry, while a third of the food produced is lost or wasted, with negativeimplications on economic, social and environmental conditions at a global level, highlightinghow different production, educational campaigns and consumption approaches areneeded. In this context, the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development aims at eradicatingpoverty in all its forms and dimensions, by ensuring an economic, environmental and socialsustainable development. In particular, every country by 2030 should allocate publicand private financial resources to develop and carry out relevant strategies and programs,by means of 17 sustainable development goals. One of them is represented by “ensuringsustainable consumption and production patterns” in agriculture that, in addition tofeeding the world population, should ensure both the development of sustainable foodproduction systems and promote responsible consumption by consumers. According tothe Agenda, in fact, the sustainable cropping systems, on the one hand, have to increaseproductivity and production, but on the other, they should reduce the negative social andenvironmental impacts, thanks also to a sustainable changes in consumers’ choices.Therefore, the aim of this Special Issue has been to collect scientific studies worldwidedealing with the two main topics of the “ensuring sustainable consumption and productionpatterns” goal: (1) the adoption of sustainable production patterns in the agriculture sector;(2) the study of consumers’ behavior towards sustainable food products. This Special Issuecontains 13 papers that have tried to enrich the literature on agricultural sustainable development,taking into consideration at least one of its three dimensions: the environmental,social and economic dimensions.