16 pages, A Danish pre-industrial farming system is reconstructed and compared to its modern industrialized farming system equivalent to evaluate agricultural performance in a sustainability perspective. The investigated Danish farm system and its contributing elements have undergone significant transformations. The intensity of contemporary agriculture shows that high productivity levels have been achieved by increasing the input of energy using modern machinery. At the same time, the energy efficiency (calculations based on energetic indicators) diminishes over time as the degree of dependence on fossil fuels increases. The results from this study show significant changes in the farming system, specifically inputs from agricultural land use, livestock, and energy systems. From being highly circular, the system changed to being a clear linear farming system with highly increased productivity but less efficient at the same time, questioning the relationship between productivity and efficiency and resource utilization in modern farming systems. Through utilizing an agroecological historical approach by comparing system performance over time, the results offer opportunities to explore how agricultural farming systems evolve over time and help to describe the complexity of the system level in a sustainability perspective.
8 pages, Reducing food waste is widely recognized as critical for improving resource efficiency and meeting the nutritional demand of a growing human population. Here we explore whether the sharing economy can provide meaningful assistance to reducing food waste in a relatively low-impact and environmentally-sound way. Analyzing 170,000 postings on a popular peer-to-peer food-sharing app, we find that over 19 months, 90t of food waste with an equivalent retail value of £0.7 million were collected by secondary consumers and diverted from disposal. An environmental analysis focused on Greater London reveals that these exchanges were responsible for avoiding emission of 87–156t of CO2eq. Our results indicate that most exchanges were among users associated with lower income yet higher levels of education. These findings, together with the high collection rates (60% on average) suggest that the sharing economy may offer powerful means for improving resource efficiency and reducing food waste.
