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Sustainable development goals for water use and food production are in conflict, but this could be reduced by proper water management. Here, violations of global environmental flow requirements for rivers are quantified and related to reconciliation potentials in irrigated and rainfed agriculture.

Multiple cropping has a significant impact on environmental and socioeconomic outcomes of farming, but is not fully considered in model-based assessments of sustainable agriculture

Responses of agriculture and fisheries to climate change are interlinked, yet rarely studied together. Here, the authors analyse more than 3000 households from 5 tropical countries and forecast mid-century climate change impacts, finding that communities with higher fishery dependence and lower socioeconomic status communities face greater losses.

There are big uncertainties in the contribution of irrigation to crop yields. Here, the authors use Bayesian model averaging to combine statistical and process-based models and quantify the contribution of irrigation for wheat and maize yields, finding that irrigation alone cannot close yield gaps for a large fraction of global rainfed agriculture.

Simultaneous harvest failures across crop-producing regions are major threats to global food security. A strongly meandering jet can trigger these, however, climate and crop models underestimate effects with consequences for climate risk assessments.

Alternate wetting and drying (AWD) optimizes water use in rice cultivation. This study shows that a soil water potential-based AWD scheme could minimize yield loss while increasing water productivity in 37% of global irrigated rice areas.

Although irrigation expansion during the 20th century masked or even reversed local warming trends over some intensely irrigated regions, the exposure to moist-heat extremes of local population has increased due to higher air humidity.

Calorie availability and extent of food shortages for each nation are estimated following regional or global nuclear war, including impacts on major crops, livestock and fishery production.

COVID-19 and locust swarms have threatened international agricultural supply chains. Here, the possible impacts on wheat, rice and maize trade are modelled, showing that trade restrictions could create food price spikes and localized food shortages.

Mitigation efforts to protect agricultural productivity against flooding focus on areas with high-frequency floods. However, agricultural regions with low-frequency floods experience a larger proportion of flood impacts, highlighting the urgency of prioritizing mitigation efforts in these regions.

Climate change affects agricultural productivity. New systematic global agricultural yield projections of the major crops were conducted using ensembles of the latest generation of crop and climate models. Substantial shifts in global crop productivity due to climate change will occur within the next 20 years—several decades sooner than previous projections—highlighting the need for targeted food system adaptation and risk management in the coming decades.

'Crop growing periods and cultivars are key to crop adaptation. Here, the authors use a modelling approach that integrates farmers decision and biophysical crop models, showing the importance of cultivar, sowing date and growing period adaptation.'

Determining the safe operating space for sustainable food production depends on the interactions of multiple processes within the Earth system. Expert knowledge provides critical insight into how these processes interact that improves Earth system modelling and our understanding of the limits of global food production.

Agriculture transforms the Earth and risks crossing thresholds for a healthy planet. This study finds almost half of current food production crosses such boundaries, as for freshwater use, but that transformation towards more sustainable production and consumption could support 10.2 billion people.

Accurately assessing the impacts of climate change on agricultural productivity is key to the development of effective and sustainable adaptation strategies. This Perspective discusses the main sources of uncertainty in such impact assessments and proposes strategies for improved crop modelling.

Irrigation accounts for a substantial proportion of global water usage and can have biophysical and biogeochemical impacts on Earth systems. This Review outlines key irrigation–Earth system interactions, and discusses the effect of future climate and socioeconomic changes on irrigation patterns and their interaction.

Compound heat and moisture extremes influence crop yield, threatening food security. This Review outlines the mechanisms, projections and adaptation options for compound extreme–crop yield relationships, highlighting an urgency to better understand the impact of joint stresses.

A random selection of six global crop grid models and ten global climate models is sufficient to determine the uncertainty of a model ensemble, but the contribution of each crop model to this uncertainty varies by region and crop type, according to a cluster analysis of future crop yield projections.

The extent and cost of adapting agriculture to climate change depend on regional impacts and past adjustments, but uncertainties associated with a high-emissions scenario persist, according to simulations with a global land-use model based on multiple crop and climate projections.