Scientists have questioned the concept of “sustainable intensification” in international conversations about agriculture and food security, arguing it focuses too narrowly on food production and does not address access to food. In a new paper, published in the journal Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment, researchers from Leuphana University Lüneburg, AgroParisTech and Washington State University write the concept does not merit the term “sustainable” because it disregards principles that are central to sustainability. Sustainable intensification (SI) seeks to produce more food on less land with the lowest environmental impact and has become a catchword in debates about how to feed a growing world population, particularly in Africa. The authors argue that SI focuses on production and increases in yields while agriculture is producing more food per capita than ever before and enough for everyone already. Simply producing more does not feed more people, as long as 30 per cent of food is still wasted and large amounts are used to produce animal feed and biofuels. The paper argues that sustainable solutions for food security must be holistic and look at how food is distributed and whether small-scale farmers and the rural poor have access to the food produced. Moreover, producing more on less land will not guarantee that less land will be used for agriculture: As yields increase, the potential profits could encourage “more people to enter the market and farm more land”, according to M. Jahi Chappell, one of the authors of the paper. Give the term’s popularity with international organisations, Chappell warns that “there’s a serious danger that it will drain both funds and attention from the larger and altogether different reforms necessary to fight hunger and food insecurity today, and in the future.”