Structured foresight reframes risk around transitions towards sustainable and resilient farming in a volatile world

Farmers manage almost 5 billion hectares of land globally, deliver food security and underpin cultural and economic life in rural areas. Farming policies typically prioritise stability and incremental change to mitigate risk. Yet scientific evidence points to a need for transformative change across the land sector to effectively tackle the climate and biodiversity crises. Meanwhile, climate and geopolitical volatility underscore the need for resilient farm systems. Reconciling multifaceted objectives within long-term strategic policymaking for farming and land use is a major challenge, requiring multi-dimensional evidence. Using Ireland’s land sector as an example, we employ structured foresight combined with quantitative back-casting to explore alternative climate-neutral farming pathways under different future contexts. Bioeconomy and diversified protein pathways score better across key sustainability and resilience criteria compared with business as usual (BAU). Well-intentioned policies supporting existing farming practises may underestimate the risks of BAU, and could lock farmers into unsustainable and non-resilient investments.