From soil to solidarity: Lessons on agroecology and diversity from Agri4D 2025

This blog post is written by Loukas Christodoulou, Master's student at the Rural development and natural resource management programme.  

Something that gave me a lot of joy during the Agri4D conference was seeing the old farm machinery hanging from the timber beams of the old Swedish barn where the speeches were held. People had come here from as far as Nigeria, Rwanda, Burkina Faso, to discuss the global challenge of a regenerative agriculture that can feed us despite the climate crisis. But at the end of the day, we are still rooted in that same soil our ancestors farmed here in northern Europe. We face the same challenges they faced. And when the global polycrisis seems too much, we should also remember that we are also building on thousands of years of their wisdom. 

This suitably grounded reminder for us to stay literally down to earth reminded me why I had chosen to do my Master’s degree here. As a veteran journalist and researcher, I am very familiar with theories, discourses, rhetoric. What has frustrated me is how we can connect these beautiful castles in the sky with everyday life. 

I think it was at Agri4D 2025 where I got my best clue of how it all fits together. One example is in the agroecology described by keynote speaker Miguel Altieri (of the University of California at Berkeley). Agroecology is an approach about how we cultivate, and what we can allow to grow wild. It is about how when we foster space for the sake of insects and birds we create diversity. This then means different ecosystems can work together to enhance the resilience of our cultivation against shocks. But agroecology is also an approach that must always be part of a social ethos, rooted in how we communicate and cooperate with each other. To put it another way: our relations to each other as collaborators should reflect and be reflected in how we relate in a similarly harmonious way to natural systems and soil regeneration. 

So this very dynamic mixing of the social and the ecological, to produce a sustainable way of making food, was very much on display during the conference. And while Agri4D is a world gathering, my own priority is how we can get Swedish agriculture growing, through fostering more community. What surprised me was how speeches and comments from practitioners rooted in Chile, India and Ethiopia challenged my own approach to Swedish agriculture. 

For example, if we take agroecology seriously, we see rural development less as something specialists with degrees do ‘to’  undeveloped farmers. Instead it becomes more of a cooperation where we as researchers have certain specialised and formalised knowledge, which can interact with the wisdom which local practitioners have. And they have wisdom we must also learn from!  This hence challenges me: I need to resolve to listen more to Swedish agriculturists and understand the rationality of their traditions and knowledge. For thousands of years animals, their skins, meat, wool and their manure, have been central to Swedish agriculture. This challenges me - as a vegan, to accept that there is wisdom in Sweden’s animal agriculture which must be listened to.

And where specialised knowledge, university-rooted expertise can make a contribution is exactly in drawing together lots of local lessons and making them available for practitioners worldwide. Shout-out here to the work on comparative agroecology which SLU researchers Cristián Alarcón and Paul Egan are doing, bringing together people from different countries.The stated aim is ‘to share experiences and identify next steps’, and whose conference report I am helping to edit. This is also related to how I also see my own role as a researcher-communicator: as a facilitator for those who actually know far more than me, and for those whose voices need to be heard. 

But now we bump up against the issue of power. As a white British-born person, I have a voice far louder than others. Do I really have more wisdom than others? Probably not. At the conference Professor Nitya Rao of East Anglia University reminded us that women, and gender power dynamics are still major issues which mean voices are not heard, and participation in food systems is unequal. The problems that Agri4D aims to face include how ‘vulnerable groups who are often left out of decision-making but are hit by the severe impacts of such crises.’ Here I need to be self-critical again. Academic and industry systems which I participate in and benefit from may sometimes involve the vulnerable in a shallow and performative way. Young people may be present, but how much power do they have? Are we youth-washing decisions that we as privileged older people would make anyway?

And so, I will end by thinking about diversity, as discussed by keynote speaker Shakuntala Thilsted, (Director for Nutrition, Health and Food Security Impact Area Platform, CGIAR). She spoke of how diversified inputs to decision making, and diversified food systems, can be a strength and help to protect against the shocks we can expect from an ever-more stressed climate system. But some elements of diversity: those from the most vulnerable, the marginalised, women, disabled people, those who are poorer, are not systematically included. So my conundrum is how we can build (or reinforce) a food system that systematically includes the vulnerable. One which structurally diverse. For me the answer has to loop back to agroecology as model for how diversity works: diversity makes us stronger as a form of solidarity and mutual aid. 

We do not leave wild margins by our fields as charity but because they attract pollinators and boost the cultivated field. Likewise, we need to build forms of collaboration that do not include vulnerable people for the sake of the optics, but because the presence of this diversity means we reach our goals better. For me, as a privileged person, this also means I need to be ready to give up elements of my own loud voice, and listen more instead.