Comparative Perspectives on Agriculture and Climate (AgriClim)

This research initiative is a collaboration between SLU, Uppsala University, and Stockholm University, bringing together agricultural science, climatology, archaeology and history, to explore the complex interaction between agricultural development and climate change through past-present-future perspectives. By developing cross-disciplinary knowledge on historical and contemporary relations between climate, agricultural productivity and the evolution of societies, the group will unlock diversity and commonalities in these relations over different spatial and temporal scales.

Agriculture has been the core economic activity of most societies from the beginning of farming to the present time. Agriculture penetrates into all sections of society and any threats to the sustainability of agricultural practices can lead to significant transformations. We know today that agriculture is both a cause of, and extremely vulnerable to, climate change and biodiversity loss (IPCC 2022, IPBES 2020). The threats to contemporary agricultural strategies are very real and of global concern. We know that past societies have dealt with very similar concerns, albeit with important scalar differences. We also know, from the past and the present, that climate-induced changes to agricultural practices can be handled in many ways, and that some strategies are more successful than others.

What we still do not understand is what the key features are that decide the vulnerability of agricultural strategies to climate change and to what extent these are transferable across time and space. This is a question that requires a diachronic perspective and an inter-disciplinary environment. It is commonly acknowledged that truly interdisciplinary research can only be achieved when initiated jointly by scholars of different disciplines, yet large-scale centers based on this premise are few. It is also commonly acknowledged that historical perspectives can have a key role to play in contemporary efforts to find ways to mitigate climate change and simultaneously ensure global food security. Nevertheless, scientists focusing on contemporary challenges for agricultural production due to current climate change and scientists with a historical perspective on similar challenges, seldom meet and juxtapose their research findings. The scholarly collaboration by scholars of past and present conditions are rarely formalized. AgriClim aims to provide a common ground that will move interdisciplinary collaboration on the agriculture-climate interlinkages to a new level.

Currently, the group are hosting regular meetings and searching for funding opportunities to develop our research ideas further.