  Citation: Ali, B.; Dahlhaus, P. Roles of Selective Agriculture Practices in Sustainable Agricultural Performance: A Systematic Review. Sustainability 2022, 14, 3185. https:// doi.org/10.3390/su14063185 Academic Editor: Hossein Azadi Received: 30 January 2022 Accepted: 4 March 2022 Published: 8 March 2022 Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affil- iations. Copyright: © 2022 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by/ 4.0/). sustainability Review Roles of Selective Agriculture Practices in Sustainable Agricultural Performance: A Systematic Review Basharat Ali 1,2, * and Peter Dahlhaus 1,2 1 Centre for eResearch and Digital Innovation (CeRDI), Greenhill Enterprise Centre Ballarat Technology Park, Federation University, Ballarat, VIC 3353, Australia; p.dahlhaus@federation.edu.au 2 Food Agility Cooperative Research Centre, Sydney, NSW 2007, Australia * Correspondence: basharat.ali2@federation.edu.au Abstract: Feeding the growing global population while improving the Earth’s economic, environmen- tal, and social values is a challenge recognised in both the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals and the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. Sustaining global agricul- tural performance requires regular revision of current farming models, attitudes, and practices. In systematically reviewing the international literature through the lens of the sustainability framework, this paper specifically identifies precision conservation agriculture (PCA), digital agriculture (DA), and resilient agriculture (RA) practices as being of value in meeting future challenges. Each of these adaptations carries significantly positive relationships with sustaining agricultural performance, as well as positively mediating and/or moderating each other. While it is clear from the literature that adopting PCA, DA, and RA would substantially improve the sustainability of agricultural performance, the uptake of these adaptations generally lags. More in-depth social science research is required to understand the value propositions that would encourage uptake of these adaptations and the barriers that prevent them. Recommendations are made to explore the specific knowledge gap that needs to be understood to motivate agriculture practitioners to adopt these changes in practice. Keywords: precision conservation agriculture; digital agriculture; FAIR data; agricultural resilience; sustainability 1. Introduction To feed and combat micro-nutrient deficiency in the escalating global population, a 70% increase in food production (incorporating calorie and nutrient enrichment) is required by 2050 [1]. Most food production is soil based, and as nearly all arable land is under cultivation [2], yield maximisation, soil health, and sustainable productivity within limited natural resources are primary targets of future farming [3–6]. Globally, arable land is projected to decrease by approximately 40% by 2050 [7,8]. Agriculture is projected to encounter several challenges, including sustainable maximised production, limited natural resources, endangered environments and eco-systems, soil degradation, topsoil elimination, and soil erosion [2,9–12]. Importantly, agricultural intensification affects environmental goods and services produced by agroecosystems [7,9,13]; hence, the world needs to adopt enhanced farming methods [5,6] to ensure a better and more sustainable farming future. Economically, temporary profit maximisation needs to be balanced against more sustainable and longstanding profitable agri-business [14,15]. While agriculture and climate change have a causative feedback cycle [16], a resilient farming approach can adapt to these interrelated changes and reduce the socioeconomic and ecological vulnerability of the farming sector [17–19]. As reported by Darnhofer et al. [20], much of the research focus on sustainable agricultural production has been on reducing environmental impacts, ignoring the value of resilience. However, the increasing value of technologies, especially precision agriculture, in increasing farm production while Sustainability 2022, 14, 3185. https://doi.org/10.3390/su14063185 https://www.mdpi.com/journal/sustainability