Nature-Based One Health Approaches to Urban Agriculture Can Deliver Food and Nutrition Security

Abstract

The increasing global human population is projected to reach 9.7 billion people by 2050. This population growth is currently linked to the trends of world-wide urbanization, growth of megacities and shifting dietary patterns. While humankind faces the daunting challenge of feeding and providing healthy lives for its teeming populations, urban agriculture holds promise for improving the quality of life in cities. Fortunately, policymakers and planners are accepting the need to support peri-urban farmers to increase the resilience of food systems while efficiently managing already strained natural resources. We argue that for urban agriculture to significantly increase food yields, it is crucial to adopt a One Health approach to agriculture and environmental stewardship. Here, we propose six nature-based and climate-smart approaches to accelerate the transition toward more sustainable food systems. These approaches include reducing the reliance on synthetic agricultural inputs, increasing biodiversity through producing locally adapted crops and livestock breeds, using probiotics and postbiotics, and adopting portable digital decision-support systems. Such radical approaches to transforming food production will require cross-sectoral stakeholder engagement at international, national, and community levels to protect biodiversity and the environment whilst ensuring sustainable and nutritious diets that are culturally acceptable, accessible, and affordable for all.

Insights into Circular Horticulture: Knowledge Diffusion, Resource Circulation, One Health Approach, and Greenhouse Technologies

“…The actions promoted by One Health include improvements in antimicrobial use regulation and policy, infection surveillance and control, and animal husbandry and sanitation [51]. One Health has also fostered the supply of probiotics and postbiotics to manage viral diseases in animals and humans and increased biodiversity by producing of locally adapted crops and livestock breeds [52]. From a research perspective, the integration of quantitative indicators of human health and animal welfare into life-cycle sustainability assessments has been reported.…”

Health-Related Challenges and Programs Among Agriculture Workers: A Narrative Review

“…Every year, between 500,000 and 1 million people worldwide experience health problems due to pesticide poisoning, according to the World Health Organization [ 7 ]. In low and middle-income countries like India and Nepal in Asia, there has been a gradual decline in the yearly consumption of food calories, ranging from 0.8% to 2.2% annually [ 8 ]. In terms of farm outputs, India ranks second globally.…”

“…This is crucial given current zoonotic research that predicts climate changes and further socio-ecological drivers will probably worsen the current illness burden, especially in developing countries like India with poor health structures [ 11 ]. This review aims to Identify the diverse array of health-related problems agricultural workers encounter, including physical, mental, and infectious disease-related challenges, and also understand the impact of hazards on agriculture workers [ 8 ].…”

Wettability of Probiotic Powders: Fundamentals, Methodologies, and Applications

“…Often used as functional ingredients, probiotics find their potential applications in foods, feeds, cosmetics, pharmaceutics, and agriculture sectors [35][36][37][38][39]. Belonging mainly to lactic acid bacteria (LAB) such as Lactobacilli and Bifidobacteria, or yeasts, probiotics are among the most investigated research topics today, owing to their beneficial effects on our overall ecosystem, involving activities and interactions among human, animal, and plant species, soils and the environment [40].…”