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Climate extremes increasingly threaten global crop production stability. This study quantifies drought sensitivity for major crops worldwide, identifies production hotspots, and suggests that irrigation expansion and crop switching could reduce losses by 62% and increase median production by 14%.

Production stability depends on both yield and harvested area. Swapping rice for climate resilient cereals such as millets, maize, and sorghum in India could reduce climate-induced losses by 11% and increase farmer profits by 11%, achievable through targeted economic incentives.

The current expansion of oil palm in India is occurring at the expense of biodiversity-rich landscapes. This study shows that on the national scale India has the potential to become self-sufficient in palm oil production without compromising either its biodiversity or its food security, while economic, social, political and nutritional factors will require attention at finer spatial scales.

Assessing linkages between irrigation expansion and child diet diversity in the global south revealed larger diet diversity improvements in water-stressed regions. Future irrigation planning should explicitly incorporate nutrition-sensitive strategies to ensure food security of local communities while maintaining sustainable water withdrawals.

Widespread switching of cereal crops in the Indo-Gangetic Plain from paddy/wheat to millet/sorghum will result in water savings with the co-benefits of improved nutrition, calorie production and increased farmers’ profits.

Irrigation is an important component of agricultural productivity, but its influence on health and nutritional outcomes—especially those of children—remains unclear. This study examines the links between irrigation expansion and child diet diversity across 26 countries in the global south.

Tropical deforestation rates are linked to large-scale land investments, according to georeferenced land deal records and remote sensing of forest loss over the past two decades.

Water scarcity is intensifying in China, India, and the USA, with growth in unsustainable water demand equaling or outpacing that of total water demand. These nations are increasingly relying on water in already stressed regions to meet their needs.

An integrated subnational environmental and nutritional optimization approach indicates that, with a transition from current production and consumption patterns, India has the capacity to achieve national food self-sufficiency goals while reducing regional cropland use, water demand and GHG emissions.

More than 2 million hectares of Cambodian land have been leased to investors since 2000. Combined satellite and local records show that deforestation on leased land is 29% to 105% higher than in comparable unleased areas.

Food production stability depends on yield, and planted and harvested areas, but most research has only studied yield response to climate. This study finds that planted area and harvestable fraction contribute substantially to US crop production shocks, emphasizing their key role in food system stability.

Farmer livelihoods and food production are impacted by water shortages in many regions globally. These shortages can be mitigated by changing the mix of crops produced in water-scarce regions, potentially resulting in reduced irrigation needs of 28–57%.

Spatial optimizations of high-resolution data from China on crop-specific yields, harvested areas, environmental footprints and farmer incomes shows that crop switching can enhance environmental sustainability and farmer incomes, and contribute substantially towards China’s agricultural sustainable development targets.

Half of irrigation expansion in the twenty-first century has taken place in water-stressed areas, offering a mixed picture for simultaneously achieving future food security, water sustainability and climate resilience in global agriculture.

Water use in river basins is an age-old resource-management question, but it is rare to quantify consumption by specific sectors. The Colorado River is being overused for beef and dairy production, endangering the entire river ecosystem.

Understanding the propagation or attenuation of environmental variability and shocks along food supply chains is key to food security. This scoping review identifies entry points for variability, the main factors for variability diffusion, research gaps in terms of food items and types of shock studied, and risk reduction responses at individual, company and governmental levels.

Reliably predicting where crop yields may stagnate in the future can offer a suite of benefits for food system sustainability.

Water scarcity associated with large-scale land acquisitions is exacerbated by adoption of water-intensive crops and expansion of irrigation, which in turn increases rival water uses.

The current distribution of crops around the world neither attains maximum production nor minimum water use, according to a crop water model and yield data. An optimized crop distribution could feed an additional 825 million people and substantially reduce water use.

Accurate and timely food production data are needed to promote food security and sustainability, but data scarcity exists across national and international levels. This Review examines data availability and reliability for crops, livestock and aquatic food production and recommends solutions to address data scarcity.

Comprehensive accounting for consumptive water uses in the Colorado River Basin, United States indicates that irrigated agriculture consumes half of all river flows; nearly two-thirds of agricultural water goes to cattle feed crops.

In an inter-laboratory study, the authors compare the accuracy and performance of three optical density calibration protocols (colloidal silica, serial dilution of silica microspheres, and colony-forming unit (CFU) assay). They demonstrate that serial dilution of silica microspheres is the best of these tested protocols, allowing precise and robust calibration that is easily assessed for quality control and can also evaluate the effective linear range of an instrument.

Designing restoration projects requires integrating socio-economic and cultural needs of local stakeholders for enduring and just outcomes. Using India as a case study, we demonstrate a people-centric approach to help policymakers translate global restoration prioritization studies for application to a country-specific context and to identify different socio-environmental conditions restoration programs could consider when siting projects. Focusing, in particular, on poverty quantified by living standards and land tenure, we find that of the 579 districts considered here, 116 of the poorest districts have high biophysical restoration potential (upper 50th percentile of both factors). In most districts, the predominant land tenure is private, indicating an opportunity to focus on agri-pastoral restoration over carbon and forest-based restoration projects.