The current geological epoch is characterized by anthropogenic activity that greatly impacts on natural ecosystems and their integrity. The complex networks of ecosystem services (ESs) are often ignored because the provision of natural resources, such as food and industrial crops, is mistakenly viewed as an independent process separate from ecosystems and ignoring the impacts on ecosystems. Recently, research has intensified on how to evaluate and manage ES to minimize environmental impacts, but it remains unclear how to balance anthropogenic activity and ecosystem integrity. This paper reviews the main ESs at farm level including provisioning, regulating, habitat, and cultural services. For these ESs, synergies are outlined and evaluated along with the respective practices (e.g., cover‐ and intercropping) and ES suppliers (e.g., pollinators and biocontrol agents). Further, several farm‐level ES trade‐offs are discussed along with a proposal for their evaluation. Finally, a framework for stakeholder approaches specific to farm‐level ES is put forward, along with an outlook on how existing precision agriculture technologies can be adapted for improved assessment of ES bundles. This is believed to provide a useful framework for both decision makers and stakeholders to facilitate the development of more sustainable and resilient farming systems.

This study reviews a variety of “bioeconomy approaches” (BAs) to assess their potential contribution to resilience in agricultural systems, focusing on benefits that can improve multi‐functionality regarding private and public goods. It is based on Meuwissen et al.'s framework to assess the resilience of farming systems. Drawing on literature and expert knowledge, this indicator framework is adapted to develop a new framework which is then applied to seven contrasting BAs (miscanthus, perennial flowering wild plant mixtures, permanent grassland, nutrient recycling, agrivoltaics, urban agriculture, and microalgae). The major outcomes are: 1) the extended indicator framework can help evaluate BAs for their potential to foster resilience in future agricultural systems, 2) all BAs are characterized by their ability to provide multiple private and public goods simultaneously, 3) the strongest contribution of BAs to public goods is their function in maintaining the good condition of natural resources and resource‐use efficiency, 4) all BAs can enhance resilience in agricultural systems by contributing diversity, multifunctionality, environmental sustainability, and autonomy, 5) the mitigation of potential drawbacks of BAs implementation requires ex‐ante assessment, favorable BAs combinations, and stakeholder involvement, 6) context‐specific analysis of each BAs is required to assess their qualitative and quantitative contribution to resilience.

The bioeconomy represents a new way of life for people, but also a responsibility towards the future of the planet. Generating a significant socio-economic impact, it could be viewed as a key element of sustainable development, as the current and future solution for economic processes, based on new development models compelled by climate changes and the economy’s resilience to potential crises. In this context, the paper presents in its first part the Circular Economy description and the Circular Bioeconomy discussion from an interdisciplinary perspective. The second part of the paper aims to explore education as a tool for facilitating systemic changes supporting a real transition to a sustainable bioeconomy. The key aspects discussed refer to the following: (1) European policies, strategies, and action plans for bioeconomy; (2) Circular Economy as a solution for sustainable food systems; (3) main requirements and challenges for developing a (Circular) Bioeconomy, including indicators of sustainability; (4) the links between Circular Bioeconomy and the Sustainable Development Goals; (5) possibilities for integrating the agri-food industry’s needs into bioeconomy education; and (6) pathways for teach bioeconomy concepts effectively.

The bioeconomy has been discussed as a key strategy for addressing sustainability challenges, particularly regarding the transition from fossil-based to bio-based systems, in numerous national and supranational strategies and policy documents related to the bioeconomy. However, public understanding of and engagement with the bioeconomy remains limited. This is partly due to the bias of many bioeconomy strategies and policy documents towards technological solutions that tend to overlook the social, normative, and transformative dimensions of systemic change as well as the necessary knowledge. This opinion paper explores the potential of narratives as a means of communicating bioeconomy research in public policy, with the aim of addressing the communication gap between science, policy, and society. When applied in responsible and nuanced ways that acknowledge their embeddedness and context, bioeconomy (policy) narratives can support sensemaking for science communication, improve public understanding, facilitate stakeholder engagement and behavioural change. We argue that such narrative approaches can help to create narrative ‘boundary objects’ that can support more inclusive and participatory processes, enabling the co-creation of transformative knowledge for bioeconomy transitions with stakeholders as active participants. In summary, we highlight several opportunities, as well as limitations and implications, that could inform future work on bioeconomy narratives.

In agricultural production, land-use decisions are components of economic planning that result in the strategic allocation of fields. Climate variability represents an uncertainty factor in crop production. Considering yield impact, climatic influence is perceived during and evaluated at the end of crop production cycles. In practice, this information is then incorporated into planning for the upcoming season. This process contributes to attitudes toward climate-induced risk in crop production. In the literature, however, the subjective valuation of risk is modeled as a risk attitude toward variations in (monetary) outcomes. Consequently, climatic influence may be obscured by political and market influences so that risk perceptions during the production process are neglected. We present a utility concept that allows the inclusion of annual risk scores based on mid-season risk perceptions that are incorporated into field-planning decisions. This approach is exemplified and implemented for winter wheat production in the Kraichgau, a region in Southwest Germany, using the integrated bio-economic simulation model FarmActor and empirical data from the region. Survey results indicate that a profitability threshold for this crop, the level of “still-good yield” (sgy), is 69 dt ha-1 (regional mean Kraichgau sample) for a given season. This threshold governs the monitoring process and risk estimators. We tested the modeled estimators against simulation results using ten projected future weather time series for winter wheat production. The mid-season estimators generally proved to be effective. This approach can be used to improve the modeling of planning decisions by providing a more comprehensive evaluation of field-crop response to climatic changes from an economic risk point of view. The methodology further provides economic insight in an agrometeorological context where prices for crops or inputs are lacking, but farmer attitudes toward risk should still be included in the analysis.

Crop simulation is a modern tool used to mimic ordinary and extraordinary agriculture systems. Under the premise of continuing foreseeable climatic shift we combine adaptive field-level management decisions with their effects on crop performance. Price projections are used to examine yield and price effects on gross margins of the predominant crops in two specific regions of Southwest Germany into the coming decades. After calibration and validation to historic records, simulated future weather is used to explore how farmer behavior and performance of wheat, barley, rapeseed and maize could develop under anticipated global change. This development is examined based on a comparison of historic and projected gross margin variance. Simulations indicate that when yield levels increase, the relative variability of gross margins may decline in spite of some increasing variability of yields. The coefficient of variance of gross margins decreases even more due to the independence of price and yield fluctuations. This shows how the effects of global change on yields could be offset by economic conditions.