Agriculture

Agriculture encompasses the full system of cultivating plants and raising animals, from production to processing and distribution. It underpins food security, rural livelihoods, and national economies, while facing major challenges such as climate change, water scarcity, and soil degradation. As the sector evolves from traditional practices to advanced technologies, innovations like AI and biotechnology are increasingly central to improving resilience and productivity.

Agriculture emerged around 12,000 years ago as warming climates reduced wild food sources, building on the deep ecological knowledge of foragers. It developed independently across multiple regions, enabled permanent settlements and social complexity, and was likely pioneered by women due to their foraging expertise and plant knowledge. However, it also introduced new hierarchies, private property, and environmental pressures that continue to shape human societies today.

Agriculture in the US depends heavily on climate and natural resources, making it highly vulnerable to climate change, which alters crop and livestock productivity, degrades soil and water through heavier rainfall and runoff, threatens farmworker health through heat and extreme weather, and undermines food security. These challenges can be particularly great in small island contexts where rising seas and stronger storms endanger culturally and economically vital food systems.

As the world’s population grows, agriculture needs to produce more food without using more land or increasing emissions. However, investing in sustainability is difficult for farmers operating on tight margins where a few weeks of bad weather can make or break a business. Stronger, trustworthy soil‑based carbon credits and a better-aligned carbon market could help address unavoidable emissions and create incentives for agriculture to become a major driver of natural climate solutions.

Traditional agricultural systems, rooted in landscapes, seeds, knowledge, and cultural practices, have sustained communities for millennia and often offer environmentally resilient solutions, especially in wetlands where modern drainage has caused major ecological losses. Recognising and protecting these Agricultural Heritage Systems, such as China’s Hani Rice Terraces or Bangladesh’s Floating Gardens, is vital for safeguarding ecosystem services, food security, and innovations that can guide future sustainable farming.

Traditional farming knowledge (such as agroforestry, crop rotation, intercropping, polycultures, and water harvesting) supports biodiversity, strengthens food security, protects natural resources, and helps farms adapt to climate variability by improving soil health, stabilising yields, and reducing the risks of crop failure.

Climate change has already reduced global agricultural productivity, strengthening the case for food sovereignty. This is a movement led by farmers and Indigenous communities that rejects industrial, productivity‑driven models and instead calls for democratic control of food systems, localised governance of land and resources, agroecological methods, and culturally appropriate diets. Pathways to food sovereignty include revitalising traditional farming, promoting climate‑resilient “Future Smart Foods,” and using preserved and fermented foods to build community‑level resilience.

Black agricultural traditions show how farming has long been a form of resistance and self‑determination, from enslaved Africans carrying seeds and knowledge across the Middle Passage, to slave gardens, freedom colonies, and civil‑rights‑era farms that sustained activism. Thinkers like Leah Penniman and bell hooks frame reconnecting with land as ecological and cultural healing, reminding us that agriculture sits at the frontline of struggles against colonialism, capitalism, and dispossession, and that eating itself is a cultural act tied to land, care, and liberation.

Gender inequality in agriculture remains deeply rooted in discriminatory norms, laws, and institutions, but progress is possible through approaches that strengthen women’s agency and skills, expand access to inclusive technologies and services, ensure women’s participation in decision‑making, and challenge restrictive gender norms in partnership with men and boys.

Queer farmers in the US are challenging the cisheteropatriarchal and racialised norms of American agriculture by creating LGBTQIA+ and BIPOC‑affirming farming spaces, building community, redefining relationships to land through care and regeneration rather than extraction, and resisting exploitative labour practices. Despite being underrepresented, lacking nondiscrimination protections and facing heightened risks (especially for queer BIPOC farmers), they are reshaping farming into a place of belonging, mutual support and collective transformation.