#104 - Resilience in Agriculture: Rethinking Sustainability from the Ground Up
- Pawel Pietruszewski
- 19 hours ago
- 4 min read
Together with Pawel Bietkowski from Demeter Polska, we organised a resilience seminar last week at Juchowo Farm. I wrote about Juchowo in March, so if you’d like to learn more about this impressive rural project, check here: Is Organic Food Only Food?
Over two days, farmers, thinkers, and practitioners came together not just to share solutions, but to ask better questions about the future of agriculture in a changing world.
Today, I’d like to share some key ideas discussed during the seminar, which focused on the topic of resilience in agriculture.
Material Footprint as a Key Sustainability Measure
In my opinion, material footprint per capita is the most important measure of sustainable development. It addresses the root cause of our environmental challenges. CO₂ emissions are an outcome; waste segregation is a response after the fact. Both are valuable, but they allow us to avoid tackling the core issue: a volume-based economy driving excessive consumption.
Since 1970, the global population has grown from 3.7 billion to 8.3 billion [1]. Over the same period, material use per capita has increased by more than 50%. As a result, total material extraction surged from 30 billion tons in 1970 to 106.6 billion tons in 2024 [2].
The average material consumption per person is now 36 kilograms per day. In the chart below, you can see how this varies across countries. High-income nations consume six times more materials per capita—and are responsible for ten times more climate impact—than low-income countries [2]. Switzerland, often praised for its sustainability credentials, consumes over 110 kilograms per person. This suggests that its sustainability reputation is more narrative than substance. You simply cannot consume that much without inflicting significant environmental harm.
Agriculture in the Material Footprint
Biomass—agricultural crops and forestry—accounts for 26% of total material extraction. Although this is down from 41% in 1970, the absolute volume continues to grow at about 1.3% per year.
Biomass is responsible for 28% of global climate impact, 92% of global water stress, and 97% of land-use-related biodiversity loss [2].
This makes agriculture the single largest sector in terms of environmental impact, and one with critical importance for our survival. Under the current agricultural regime, we can feed only 3.4 billion people without breaching multiple planetary boundaries [3]. And this is just one part of the challenge facing our global food system.
The Triple Challenge of Food Systems
According to the OECD, the global food system faces three interrelated challenges:
the sustainable use of natural resources and reduction of climate impact,
ensuring food security and proper nutrition for all, and
supporting the economic development of rural areas [4].
Each of these challenges is complex on its own, but they are deeply interconnected. Solving one while ignoring the others creates fragile systems. That’s why resilience is not just another fashionable word—it’s a necessary foundation for future food systems.
Our current model is built on assumptions of stability: stable weather, stable markets, stable access to resources. But this stability is no longer guaranteed. The ways we grow, distribute, and consume food affect every major natural system. Agriculture, once seen as separate from environmental concerns, is now deeply embedded within them.
We are living in the Anthropocene—a new epoch where human activity has become the dominant force shaping the planet. Nearly every ecological boundary is now influenced by the scale and intensity of our actions. In this context, building resilience in agriculture means adopting systems thinking—recognising that environmental, economic, and social dimensions are inseparable and must be addressed together.
How to Build Resilience Model of the Farm
Until the 1950s and 60s, most European farms were mixed farms, combining animal and plant production while making use of organic manure and crop rotation. The rise of the specialised, high-yield farm is a relatively recent development—and one that is increasingly challenged as environmentally harmful and economically fragile [5].
Specialisation, land consolidation, and cost-reduction strategies have led to impressive increases in land and labour productivity. But they have also caused serious environmental damage—pollution of air, soil, and water—and reduced economic resilience. These farms are highly dependent on volatile commodity markets and require significant capital investment.
This raises a number of important questions, which we explored at the seminar:
Do we understand the requirements of a resilient agricultural model?
What are the alternatives to the dominant, specialised model?
Is biodynamic agriculture, as practiced in Juchowo, one of the viable models for the future?
What knowledge and learning are needed to support this transformation?
I will explore each of these questions in separate articles. There are no simple answers. Over two days, we only scratched the surface—highlighting key considerations and raising new questions.
As one participant wisely said:
“This is how we develop. We ask questions, and then more questions based on the previous ones. If we keep asking—and don’t put the questions aside—we start to improve.”
Agriculture and the Rest of the World
Agriculture is the first sector forced to take the idea of resilience seriously. It has no choice. Other sectors will follow, because they too will soon realise they no longer have a choice.
The volume-based economy is reaching its limits. In the future, business models that succeed will be those built on value rather than volume. That is my perspective—and time will tell.
Notes
United Nations Environment Programme (2024): Global Resources Outlook 2024
OECD (2021), Making Better Policies for Food Systems, OECD Publishing, Paris.
De Roest, K., Ferrari, P., & Knickel, K. (2018). Specialisation and economies of scale or diversification and economies of scope? Assessing different agricultural development pathways. Journal of rural studies, 59, 222-231.
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