Towards Sustainable and Resilient Farming Systems in Norway: Impact of Scenarios for Agriculture in Europe

In a context of increasing interconnectedness between environmental, economic and social challenges it can no longer be taken for granted that the agricultural sector as a whole and its various farming systems are able to become more robust, to adapt to structural changes and to transform the nature of their operations when being affected by these challenges. This implies that the sustainability and resilience of farming systems is at stake. SURE-Farm Norway complements the EU Horizon 2020 project SURE-Farm and assesses how future environmental developments (e.g., climate change; land degradation), economic developments (e.g., globalisation; incentivisation in the sector) and social developments (e.g., migration; consumption diets) might affect the sustainability and resilience of low-intensity farming systems in Norway. For this purpose, environmental, economic and social developments described in the SURE-Farm scenarios are specified for the context of low-intensity arming systems in Norway. By doing so, tentative implications of the scenarios on the development of sustainability and resilience of low-intensity farming systems in Norway are derived, generating data and insights that are directly useful for Norway in that they facilitate a discussion on possible dynamics originating from various scenarios for European agriculture and food systems. The proposed reinforcement project also strengthens the Norwegian contribution to the SURE-Farm project by assuring leadership in the design and implementation of case studies and by enriching the empirical database arising from the various case studies.

In a context of increasing interconnectedness between environmental, economic and social challenges it can no longer be taken for granted that the agricultural sector as a whole and its various farming systems are able to become more robust, to adapt to structural changes and to transform the nature of their operations when being affected by these challenges. This implies that the sustainability and resilience of farming systems is at stake. SURE-Farm Norway complements the EU Horizon 2020 project SURE-Farm and assesses how future environmental developments (e.g., climate change; land degradation), economic developments (e.g., globalisation; incentivisation in the sector) and social developments (e.g., migration; consumption diets) might affect the sustainability and resilience of low-intensity farming systems in Norway. For this purpose, environmental, economic and social developments described in the SURE-Farm scenarios are specified for the context of low-intensity arming systems in Norway. By doing so, tentative implications of the scenarios on the development of sustainability and resilience of low-intensity farming systems in Norway are derived, generating data and insights that are directly useful for Norway in that they facilitate a discussion on possible dynamics originating from various scenarios for European agriculture and food systems. The proposed reinforcement project also strengthens the Norwegian contribution to the SURE-Farm project by assuring leadership in the design and implementation of case studies and by enriching the empirical database arising from the various case studies.