9Allocation and management of agricultural land is of emergent concern due to land scarcity, diminishing 10 supply of energy and water, and the increasing demand of food globally. To achieve social, economic 11 and environmental goals in a specific agricultural land area, people and society must make decisions 12 subject to the demand and supply of food, energy and water (FEW). Interdependence among these 13 three elements, the Food-Energy-Water Nexus (FEW-N), requires that they be addressed concertedly.14 Despite global efforts on data, models and techniques, studies navigating the multi-faceted FEW-N 15 space, identifying opportunities for synergistic benefits, and exploring interactions and trade-offs in 16 agricultural land use system are still limited. Taking an experimental station in China as a model 17 system, we present the foundations of a systematic engineering framework and quantitative decision-18 making tools for the trade-off analysis and optimization of stressed interconnected FEW-N networks. 19 The framework combines data analytics and mixed-integer nonlinear modeling and optimization meth-20 ods establishing the interdependencies and potentially competing interests among the FEW elements 21 in the system, along with policy, sustainability, and feedback from various stakeholders. A multi-22 objective optimization strategy is followed for the trade-off analysis empowered by the introduction 23 of composite FEW-N metrics as means to facilitate decision-making and compare alternative process 24 and technological options. We found the framework works effectively to balance multiple objectives 25 and benchmark the competitions for systematic decisions. The optimal solutions tend to promote the 26 food production with reduced consumption of water and energy, and have a robust performance with 27 alternative pathways under different climate scenarios. 28 (Efstratios N. Pistikopoulos ), jie.li-2@manchester.ac.uk (Jie Li )Agricultural land is the largest ecosystem to provide food for human (Ellis & Ramankutty, 2008). 32 Agricultural production accounts for ∼30% of the global energy consumption, ∼92% of the human 33 water footprint, and over 20% of global greenhouse gas emissions (Alexandratos et al., 2012; Sims, 34 2011). The Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) estimates a ∼60% increase of food demand 35 (compared with that of 2005/2007) for feeding 9.7 billion people by 2050, but the contribution of 36 cropland expansion to the increase is expected to reduce from 14% to 10% due to environmental reasons 37 at that time (Alexandratos et al., 2012; Ramankutty et al., 2018). Several countries, particularly in 38 the Near East/North Africa and South Asia, have already reached or are close to the limits of land 39 resource (FAO, 2009). Thus, there is an increasing pressure to meet the food demand of current and 40 future human populations with limited land expansion while minimizing the consumption of energy 41and water and conserving the environment.
42Typically, agricultural food production is a w...