At the Climate Change Summit hosted by the Biden administration in late April 2021, a number of countries updated their greenhouse gas reduction targets. According to the Climate Action Tracker, which is run by a group of researchers who estimate the effect of limiting temperature rise based on countries' greenhouse gas emission reduction targets, taking into account recent commitments, temperature rise by the end of the 21st century could be limited to 2.4°C. However, the Paris Agreement's 1.5°C goal will require further greenhouse gas emission reductions.

In Africa, there are large differences in topography and soil conditions even within a very small region, creating large variations in the yield response to a certain amount of fertilizer recommended within the region and reducing the efficiency of fertilizer use. In response to this, recent attempts have been made to develop decision-making tools for pinpointing and implementing appropriate fertilizer applications using drones and other remote sensing technologies to determine differences in soil conditions within a region at low cost. A JIRCAS paper published in Plant Production Science in 2019, provides a comprehensive review of the problems of insufficient fertilizer inputs and nutrient-poor soils in rice production in Africa, as well as measures to improve them, and received the 18th Japanese Society of Crop Science Best Paper Award.