Converting maize production with low emergy cost and high economic return for sustainable development.

Promoting more sustainable agriculture while simultaneously meeting the increased demands for food due to the growing population is a great challenge in the 21st century. Here we addressed this challenge by conducting on-farm field experiments at 40 sites across the broad aro-ecological maize region in China during 2017–2018. According to a modern understanding with emergy and economic aspects, a set of new variety-based low emergy system was developed. Compared with the current traditional farmers' system, the new system improved the sustainability (emergy sustainability index) by 19% and increased economic return by 47% while similar productivity (maize yield) was achieved. More than 80% of the modeled yield potential was realized. Moreover, the decrease of nonrenewable materials input in the new system contributed to 88% of the sustainability improvement. As food and resource concerns become more severe in many global regions, this new system is likely to supply a typical case and could be adopted widely to realize the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in agricultural transformation. • The sustainability (ESI) was improved by 19% in the new system. • The total economic return was increased by 47% in the new system. • Compared with the CS, similar grain yield was achieved in LES. • The decrease of nonrenewable materials contributed to 88% of improved ESI. • Crop production will be more sustainable by decreasing nonrenewable materials. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]