A major challenge of our time is to produce sufficient nutrient‐rich food for the ever‐growing human population with limited land resources. There is a huge gap between current yields and genetic potential in many crops, which can be narrowed by enhancing land productivity. High‐input cropping increases crop yields, but heavy fertilizer and pesticide use can lead to land degradation, increase greenhouse gas footprint, and carry significant risks for eutrophication. What efforts can be taken to ‘decouple’ land productivity and the environmental footprint? Can land productivity increase while concurrently minimizing the environmental footprint? Here, we show that an integrated systems approach can minimize the tradeoff to achieve an effective ‘decoupling’ outcome. Some key components that can be integrated into a system include (i) intensifying crop rotations to enhance carbon conversion from atmospheric CO₂ to plant biomass, (ii) diversifying cropping systems to enhance residual soil water and nutrient use and increase systems resilience, (iii) including N₂‐fixing pulse crops in rotations to reduce synthetic fertilizer use, (iv) improving fertilizer‐N use efficiency to lower N₂O emissions, and (v) sequestering more carbon to the soil to potentially offset CO₂ equivalent emissions from cropping inputs. Integration of these proven cropping practices into a system creates a powerful synergy among individual components, thereby improving land productivity and systems resilience for long‐term sustainability. Relevant economic and agro‐environmental policies are needed to reinforce the adoption of a systems approach at the local farm level.

中文翻译：

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土地生产力与温室气体足迹“脱钩”：回顾

我们这个时代的主要挑战是为土地资源有限的不断增长的人口提供足够的营养丰富的食物。许多作物的当前产量与遗传潜力之间存在巨大差距，可以通过提高土地生产力来缩小这一差距。高投入的种植增加了农作物的产量，但大量使用化肥和杀虫剂会导致土地退化，增加温室气体足迹并带来富营养化的重大风险。可以采取哪些措施来使土地生产力与环境足迹“脱钩”？土地生产率可以提高，同时又能最大程度地减少环境足迹吗？在这里，我们表明，集成系统方法可以最小化折衷，以实现有效的“去耦”结果。₂种植生物量，（ii）多样化种植系统，以增加残留的土壤水和养分利用并提高系统的适应力，（iii）包括轮换使用N ₂固定豆类作物，以减少合成肥料的使用，（iv）改善肥料-N的使用降低N ₂ O排放的效率，以及（v）吸收更多的碳到土壤中，从而有可能抵消作物投入中的CO ₂当量排放。将这些行之有效的耕作方法整合到系统中，可以在各个部分之间建立强大的协同作用，从而提高土地生产力和系统的弹性，以实现长期可持续性。需要相关的经济和农业环境政策，以加强在当地农场一级采用系统方法。