Drought, pests, soil fertility depletion, environmental challenges, and the limited use of agricultural inputs continue to plague food production in many developing countries such as Mozambique. As a response to these production constraints, sustainable strategies must be defined to cope with these problems. One strategy, largely applied worldwide, is the combination of the usage of plant growth-promoting microorganisms, conservation tillage, intercropping, and crop residue management. The above can help smallholder farmers to become more resilient, sustainable, and productive, in a framework where the limitations imposed by global climate change are being exacerbated. The impacts of these strategies are less known and lack studies in Mozambique. Here, we provide a comprehensive review based on the relevant scientific literature published in the last three decades which evaluated the effects of diverse sustainable alternatives for crop production, mainly oriented to enhance crop tolerance to drought. The use of these strategies and their promising potential to increase crop yields under drought conditions emerge as one of the most sustainable approaches, leading to both an increase in agricultural productivity and the amelioration of soil properties in Southern Mozambique. However, to achieve this goal, it is critical to perform studies that enable positive impacts and also take full account of the specific socio-economic and environmental contexts in which agricultural production is developed in the semi-arid areas of Southern Mozambique. Hence, future field studies assessing conservation agriculture practices effects on yield productivity and environment under drought conditions are suggested to address issues concerned to sustainable agricultural productions which allow us to achieve Sustainable Development Goal 1 (SDG 1) and SDG 2.

The effects of instream sediment mining have been widely described in the literature. Although this activity has been strictly regulated in some countries, other countries still register an increasing number of sediment mining extractions, as is the case of Chile. The goal of this work is to study the current state of instream gravel mining in Chile, describing the current legislation in the country. The results showed an increasing trend in the number of approved projects, and although present in the whole country, a large proportion were located in the central and southern regions, led by Ñuble Region. The regulation of mining activities in the country is currently managed and evaluated by the municipal government where the extraction is located, after an evaluation from the Department of River Works, which has led to an over-extraction situation in some rivers. Within this context, there has been a raise in the Chilean society awareness regarding environmental issues, accompanied by the identification of the main negative impacts of sediment mining from fluvial systems. Recently, the Chilean government has been discussing a new instream sediment mining law, with the aim to standarise the regulations and incorporating a socio-environmental vision in the evaluation of these projects.

Microbial inoculants are increasingly proposed within ecological-intensification strategies, yet their performance under heterogeneous commercial conditions remains uncertain. We evaluated a tripartite consortium of Funneliformis mosseae, Naganishia albida, and Bacillus tequilensis across six tomato production sites in central Chile using a 2 × 2 factorial randomized complete block design (irrigation × microbial management; three blocks per site; 72 plots). Normal irrigation was compared with reduced irrigation designed to receive 38% of the nominal irrigation depth. The same plots were followed across two growing seasons differing in fertilization and crop-management practices. Soil properties, arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM) colonization, enzyme activities, substrate-induced responses, plant physiology, biomass, and yield were assessed. Site and growing-season context strongly structured responses. Consortium application increased total AM colonization from 46.18% to 52.47% (p < 0.001; partial η² = 0.176) and altered substrate-use composition (p = 0.009). The simple-sugars-to-other-substrates ILR balance increased under consortium application (Holm-adjusted p = 0.005), while the glucose-to-fructose balance decreased (Holm-adjusted p = 0.004), without increasing overall respiratory activity. Total and commercial yield showed no significant consortium response, and reduced irrigation did not enhance agronomic responses. Field evaluation of microbial inoculants should therefore prioritize agronomic outcomes across production contexts rather than colonization alone.