Swedish agriculture is facing great challenges and changes. The conditions for animal production and growing plants for the production of food, other biogoods and utilities in Sweden are being affected to an increasing degree by global events and climate change. Scientific knowledge is required to meet these challenges. Future Agriculture is a multidisciplinary research programme where researchers at SLU together with the agricultural sector, authorities and nongovernmental organisations will work to develop future research on sustainable utilisation of our natural resources, with the emphasis on agricultural production and land use
Research platform
Future Agriculture is being driven and coordinated in a hub that has several functions. Research projects of various scales can ‘associate’ with Future Agriculture and participate in activities in various ways. The flower above illustrates the interactive and synergistic effects of the associations and activities within the platform, which provides a hub that fosters and initiates cross-disciplinary synthesis and analyses.
The hub aims to initiate and support:
- Multidisciplinary synthesis and analysis activities, through arranging and supporting thematic workshops, seminars and ‘writeshops’.
- Collaboration with the agricultural sector, authorities, non-governmental organizations and other sectors of society, through arranging seminars and workshops, and supporting joint projects.
- Collaboration between researchers (within SLU and other national and international universities), through thematic working groups, workshops and seminars that lead to joint applications, publications, staff exchanges, etc.
- A ‘Young Researchers´ Forum’. Within the framework of this forum, various activities will be arranged to develop individuals, and the research, and to strengthen different types of networks.
Researchers at SLU who are interested in collaborating within Future Agriculture can refer to the platform in external research applications (Formas, SLF, Sida, VR, EU and various foundations).
Future Agriculture aims to cooperate and co-organise activities with other networks and research programmes (e.g. Future Forests, SLU’s other “Future” initiatives and Agri4D) and with Foma (Environmental Monitoring and Assessment).
Future challenges and research issues
With future scenarios, that have been developed within the programme (Öborn et al 2011), as starting points, a set of challenges was identified that would have to be overcome in order to produce enough food, other products and services for the growing human population, and address other global problems and regional issues, in a changing global context. These challenges are described in Future Agriculture – Livestock, Crops and Land Use. A Strategic Programme for Research (Bengtsson et al, 2010) and below.
Climate change adaptation
Adapting agriculture to climate change requires the development of new skills, strategies and systems, inter alia: more efficient water use and recycling techniques; alternative crops and cropping systems; genetically adapted or modified strains and varieties; measures to improve protection against animal and plant diseases and pests; and robust facilities, e.g. farm buildings, that can withstand extreme weather events such as heat waves, floods and drought.
Responses to societal values
To understand community values and provide a basis for policy decisions, studies on different stakeholders’ ethical concerns related to food production and its environmental impact are needed. Important questions are related to the import of cheap food and export of pollution, impacts of increased food prices and effects of policy instruments.
Reducing environmental impact
In order to reduce the environmental impact of agriculture and its contribution to climate change, research is needed on a range of topics, such as the design of efficient highly productive systems with minimized use of resources, better ways to utilize ecosystem services in agricultural production and land use, the impact of consumption patterns, and the implications of structural changes in the food production chain.
Risk management
Management of actual and potential risks requires more knowledge of hazards, acceptance of new and advanced technology, and advanced studies on the resilience of production systems. Greater knowledge is needed to cope with the diverse changes that are occurring (and will occur in the future), to prepare for extreme situations and pandemics, and to provide opportunities for human populations to produce food self-sufficiently.
Agriculture and rural development
Meeting this challenge requires increased knowledge of the interrelations between rural development and agricultural land use. It calls for increased understanding of the socio-economic organisation of agricultural production and land use, together with greater knowledge of the factors promoting, and barriers hindering, communities and sustainable, productive activities in diverse rural areas. Core issues include ownership, labour requirements, governance of natural resources, synergistic effects of production and other aspects of the rural economy, and the quality of life in rural areas, not least in relation to urban areas.
Resolution of conflicting goals
Solving conflicts of interest related to agriculture requires rigorous research to identify effective approaches for resolving situations where there are conflicting goals, or conclusions differ due to profound differences in stakeholders’ values. Such conflicts may arise from differences in interests or perceptions related to production intensity, impacts of activities on climate and the environment, or animal and human health, land use and land ownership conditions, all of which are also related to values and power relations in society.