“Business as usual is not an option” – this was the wake-up call of the “International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science and Technology for Development” (IAASTD) when first published in 2009. Seven years later, this message is still valid. Meanwhile, the global discussion on the future of food and farming has come a long way. Some of the key messages of the IAASTD seem to be taking root at last and have been reflected in the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The Foundation on Future Farming’s new brochure “Agriculture at a Crossroads: IAASTD findings and recommendations for future farming” summarizes these messages and links them to present challenges and goals ahead. On behalf of the United Nations and the World Bank, more than 400 scientists from all continents and disciplines had worked together in a four-year-process to assess the state of global agricultural knowledge, science and technology. Looking back some 50 years and trying to anticipate the challenges of the coming decades, the authors arrived at a clear-cut conclusion: A radical change in global agriculture is needed in order to cope with a growing population and climate change while avoiding social breakdown and environmental collapse. The IAASTD clearly debunked the myth that industrial agriculture was superior to small-scale farming in economic, social and ecological terms and argued for a paradigm change that recognizes the pivotal role small-scale farmers around the world play in feeding the world, while also maintaining natural resources and being the backbone of rural development. The 52-page-brochure, released by the Foundation on Future Farming on the occasion of World Food Day, presents and revisits the IAASTD’s main messages enriched with updated facts and figures, charts and maps as well as new insights from subsequent scientific publications. It covers a broad range of topics such as hunger and health, meat and animal feed, industrial and small-scale farming, agroecology, climate and energy, soil fertility and land grabbing. Interspersed throughout the text are key quotes from the original report and a collection of flagship projects and promising approaches of emerging sustainable agriculture and food systems. The brochure also connects the IAASTD’s findings to the Sustainable Development Goals adopted by world leaders in 2015. “The IAASTD has kicked off a paradigm shift away from productivism towards sufficiency,” says Benedikt Haerlin, director at the Foundation on Future Farming in Berlin and former NGO representative on the IAASTD Bureau. IAASTD co-chair and world food prize winner Hans Herren says in the brochure: “Agriculture must change from being a contributor to a solver of problems such as climate change, public health, environmental degradation, loss of farmers and rural to urban migration. The key option for action that came from the IAASTD report is that agriculture, on a global scale, needs to transition to agroecology as the way ahead to deal with the challenges of sustainable and equitable development.” Herren added: “It is now imperative that the SDGs are implemented without delays focusing on the food system, sustainable agriculture and agroecology.”