Sustainable farming systems integrating soil health water use efficiency and crop productivity for climate resilience

Climate variability and extremes, together with soil degradation, water scarcity, and unstable yields, pose major challenges to global food security and progress towards the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and Land Degradation Neutrality (LDN). This review synthesises evidence on integrated and sustainable farming practices that jointly improve soil organic carbon (SOC) sequestration, water-use efficiency (WUE), agricultural productivity, and resilience to climate shocks. Peer-reviewed literature was identified, screened, and analysed following PRISMA guidelines. The selected studies were classified into four thematic categories: (C1) soil protection and soil health enhancement, (C2) erosion control and water management, (C3) productivity and economic viability, and (C4) emerging digital and technology-driven frameworks. Across agro-ecological settings, conservation tillage, cover cropping, mulching, green manuring, vermicomposting, and biochar application increased SOC stocks and improved soil structure by 10–30% over multi-year periods. Water-management and erosion-control interventions, including contour farming, terracing, mulching, hydrogel application, and optimised irrigation, reduced runoff and soil loss while improving WUE by 15–40%. Diversified and integrated production systems improved yield stability (typically ~ 15–25%) and sand increased yield relative to conventional monocropping. The synthesized comparisons indicate that integrated practice bundles deliver the highest mean gains across core indicators (≈ 25% SOC, ≈ 35% WUE, and ≈ 28% yield over conventional baselines), whereas single-cluster strategies produce more targeted improvements. Adoption remains constrained by upfront costs, infrastructure and training gaps, and uneven policy support. These findings underline the value of integrated practice bundles for advancing SDGs 2, 6, 13 and 15 and LDN targets, and for designing context-specific climate-smart farming systems.