Enhancing sustainable intensification for people and the planet

As the global population approaches eight billion and climate change threatens farming in varied ways, enabling farmers to produce more food on limited farmland – without exacerbating agriculture’s environmental impact – is one of humanity’s great challenges.

One option for addressing that challenge is to incorporate potatoes into grain-based agricultural systems. Farmers in various Asian countries do this, but they’ve barely tapped the crop’s potential for increasing food availability and diet diversity. The sustainable intensification of rice or wheat farming systems by growing potatoes during the months when that land might otherwise be fallow can increase food production, income, and environmental benefits such as more efficient use of water and soil resources.