Holding On: Agriculture as the Backbone of an Unstable World

This article is taken from the book Le Déméter 2026 – Appétits stratégiques et pivots agricoles (IRIS Éditions, 2026), under the direction of Sébastien Abis.

---

In an unbalanced and inconsistent world, where everything seems to whirl and accelerate to the point of nervousness, drawing horizon lines becomes a delicate exercise. Gaining distance and finding elevation are all the more difficult as indeterminacy advances alongside uncertainty. Presentism dominates thinking; the fog thickens in our fields of vision. Urgency and impatience prevail, often fuelled by the continuous flow of fleeting emotions. A trend that has continued to intensify in recent years[1], even though a pandemic in 2020 was supposedly meant to make us think about the “world after”. Yet immediacy and individualism form the fashionable couple, rising through populism. Projecting oneself into the future with others is, on the contrary, presented as a futile approach, even “why bother”. Let us resist this temptation and persist in an approach that consists in opening up in order to think, thinking in order to act, and acting in order to make progress.

Agriculture, the immortal

Through the analyses offered in this forward-looking and collective work, we strive to fight against instantaneity and enclosure. Resolutely exploratory of possible and contradictory futures, this annual publication may appear, if not counter-cyclical, then at least out of step with other readings[2]. Is it not, ultimately, something singular to have been publishing for more than thirty years a book devoted to agriculture? Without ever denying the transformations of the world or the complexity of these changes, have we not persisted in conveying a message as simple as it is too often underestimated: agricultural and food issues are invariants of human affairs, pillars of development, and unavoidable elements of geopolitics. The point here is not to weave laurels for ourselves. It is simply the desire to calmly state what distinguishes conviction from communication, while specifying that conviction, by nature, refuses fixed certainties. On the contrary, it constantly questions an idea or a subject, consciously and continuously, that is to say with attachment and lucidity. It evolves without breaking at the root, on pain of losing its essential thread and drifting with the prevailing winds.

Let us be clear: if agriculture is rooted in history, it inevitably also turns towards the future. It illuminates, structures and projects time—hence the idea of an immovable backbone. That does not, however, mean rigidity and immobility. Quite the opposite: agriculture is a sum of constant changes and adaptations—progressive, reasoned and sometimes daring. Moreover, without that, it could not be immortal, especially in this century of vertigo.

Beyond the timeless and universal importance of agriculture as a strategic sector, three convictions run through these pages, year after year: see long, see far, see wide. In other words, to think in the medium and long term in order to identify structural issues, without neglecting weak signals; to seek the right altitude like a hot-air balloon to observe the dynamics unfolding across the world map; finally, to cross approaches in order to foster circular, realistic, intuitive and sometimes disruptive thinking. In this perspective, mixing lucidity and enthusiasm, rigour and wandering, the tones and warnings of this editorial have gradually evolved[3]:

• in 2019, we recalled that “Agriculture in the world is seeing its importance strengthened and its power shifted”, highlighting the central role of food in the geopolitics of resources and the persistence of major agricultural needs on a global scale;
• in 2020, we proposed “A mapping of agricultural and food worlds for the decade”, structured around ten cardinal points: Sino-globalisation, water stress, regulatory overdrive, food inflation, demographic ageing, the power of science, social ties in the face of disinformation, the carbon fair, the fragility of European unity, Africas in motion;
• in 2021, we asserted a mobilising triptych, “Security, health, sustainability: when agriculture fully comes into its own”, to place agricultural issues on an orbit of demanding but inclusive progress, over the century;
• in 2022, we observed “Recovery, power, belonging: (agricultural) priorities for all”, three terms with global resonance, three themes for a vital Europe, and three words also with a distinctly French echo;
• in 2023, with “The world’s agricultural rearmament is good news”, we underlined the return of national agricultural policies that are indispensable to stability, in a context of growing geopolitical and climate risks, mirroring a worrying global remilitarisation;
• in 2024, “Europe: globally alone” announced the continent’s entry into a period of discomfort, confusion and potential marginalisation, depending on its ability to preserve its agricultural strengths and food security, while also underlining the desynchronisation of European agendas with much of the planet;
• in 2025, to crystallise the transformative state of international and intersocial relations, we highlighted their ferocity, their velocity and their polygamy, through a zoopolitical metaphor—“Feeding the future in the shadow of hippopotamuses”—the weight of which we have not finished bearing given the most pressing current events.

In the wake of these editorials, a question is emerging with particular acuity, which could be summarised as follows: how can we hold on over time, withstand the shock and hold together? For it is no longer only a matter of understanding the imbalances at work, nor even of anticipating them, but of getting through an era in which tensions have fully set in and trade-offs have become permanent. In this agitated context, where the cluttering of thought intensifies to the detriment of lucidity, where reason and science are also often battered, it is therefore worth asking what truly holds when everything is rocking around us, and what truly connects us when too many movements are working to set us against one another. In this maelstrom that draws in so many, where are the reference points that resist the whirlwinds and invite us to strategic concentration?

If holding on is the refusal of shock and paralysis, the capacity to make choices and the possibility of keeping one’s course, then agriculture stands out as a powerful revealer of the world. It crosses seasons and eras: a very old activity still carried by the future. Certainly, it is an economic sector requiring technical skills and a magnifying mirror of climate vulnerabilities. But by focusing the lens on agriculture, we lay bare power games and confessions of powerlessness; we discover social fractures and territorial breaks and better understand the investment strategies pursued by public or private actors. We also find ourselves at the heart of this geopolitics where nationalism has, alas, taken command over patriotism. Let us go further regarding this new reality that is spreading: sovereigntism, transactionalism, brutalism, imperialism, and so on—terms invading narratives in an attempt to describe the world’s current course. Let us not contest them; let us ask what their consequences are in this agricultural and food sphere that resists time and calls upon the intelligence of interdependencies to move forward. Holding on is not only producing. It is knowing how to endure. Holding on is not simply preserving. It is continuing to innovate. Holding on is not only resisting. It is gaining robustness. Holding on is not an ephemeral or isolated act, but rather a continuous and collective effort. It is having a backbone that holds in a world in fusion. Put differently, agriculture offers us a test of truth—particularly for us Europeans.

The junctions of the European Union

After many hesitations about keeping it on the horizon line, we now find ourselves on a particularly perilous ridge within the European Union (EU). We entered this millennium with the flower but without the rifle, seeking to moralise international relations with an anachronistic arrogance and declaring the end of a productive era without giving ourselves the real means of an ecology of progress, except through the conduit of offshoring or a programmatic decline in living standards. Where China embarked on an industrialisation of decarbonisation[4], we reduced our carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions by deindustrialising. Where History teaches us that there is no solid democracy without an economy, we undermined durability through deterrent measures and mixed green with colours that were too radical. Where it would have been possible to capitalise on enlargement to new member states in terms of power and influence, the EU lost its way on the path of expressing its strength and its difference. As a result, after a quarter-century crossed, Europe must get back to work, fund its own security and avoid being marginalised—or worse, vassalised tomorrow. Unless it wishes to move backwards like a crayfish, as a famous Italian philosopher already feared twenty years ago[5], or to accept fatalistically being seated at the top of a slide, the EU is approaching a geopolitical bend that is certainly steep.

During this period, stretching from the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 to Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, agriculture did not disappear from the European continent. But it shifted away from forward-looking attention and was downgraded in the order of priorities, as if Europe, in order to modernise, had to shed its traditional clothing and embrace the twenty-first century in an immaterial productive attire. And yet, despite these changes, we still had a European budget primarily devoted to this agricultural sector, without explaining in an intelligible way to the citizen-consumer that they were its first beneficiary. A crucial error, difficult to correct, unless one imagines that there will be no more public support tomorrow for agriculture—either in a scenario of a disunited and deconstructed Europe, or in that of a cash-strapped Europe, or one forced to place its spending on the military field in the face of proliferating threats. It will then become obvious to Europeans how precious and inexpensive this Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), developed over decades, actually was[6]. Another European error vis-à-vis its agriculture: having underestimated the effects of climate change under its own latitudes, as well as the increase in certain risks. In short, no urgency and no concern: here everything will be better than elsewhere and for ever. Yet already no sector is sheltered from a bad harvest year; animal and plant diseases are increasing; and delays are accumulating in preparing agricultural systems for new geographical conditions within Europe. We have invested a great deal in mitigation, very little in adaptation. We even had the audacity to explain to certain countries in the world how to produce in agroecological forms, whereas they have long been experimenting with resource scarcity and climate variability, not to mention other sociopolitical instabilities harmful to agricultural development.

Add to this a European competitiveness crisis given a deeply reshaped global agricultural and agri-food landscape, and we obtain a growing shock of mistrust towards the future on the part of a sector that was nevertheless the main engine of European construction and can claim to be, a priori, immortal compared with many fields of activity doomed to disappear. Let us be clear here: the world cannot do without agricultures, given food necessities and also energy needs through biomass mobilised to reduce dependence on hydrocarbons; Europe could end up without agricultures at home, but it would still have to have solutions to procure supplies from other continents. And when speaking of solutions, in an era of new geographical fragmentations[7], we are of course thinking of appropriate economic, logistical and diplomatic means. Yet we know they are not unlimited at European level, to say nothing of how thin they are at the scale of each member state. Join forces with one another or disappear slowly and separately: Europe, is that your destiny[8]?

By forcing such hypotheses, we wish to feed our argument about this imperative need to hold on. Hold on to unity among Europeans and between generations[9]. Hold on to the values that underpin the EU and must continue to animate it against all odds. Hold on also to European interests, however, so as not to see it devoured by carnivorous powers or placed on the menu of particular appetites. And thus, for all these reasons, keep agriculture at the centre of the European project again and again. Hold this sector in consideration, so as not to be surprised to see it erupt at the slightest regulatory reform, trade agreement or environmental decision. Hold agriculture and its infrastructures—physical, immaterial and human—in all their diversity of function and expression, not to prepare a future exhibition about Europe’s past, but to build the future, with ambition and a course that matches the challenges of our era. The economic profitability of a farm or a company is not an objective incompatible with social and ecological sustainability. What do we want to keep, strengthen, pass on and defend in Europe? Holding on implies preserving horizon lines, to be reached and conquered, between convictions and visions, so that societies can remain upright without hardening, absorb shocks without fragmenting, move forward without betraying themselves. It is under this condition that agriculture will be able to continue to illuminate the EU’s future: not as an adjustment variable, but as a backbone of the worlds to come, for itself as for others. The war in Ukraine will not fail to remind us of this[10]. When agriculture goes badly, it is never an isolated agricultural problem.

CUBITA : the choice of six pivotal states

Let us return to a broader view and set aside our European peninsula, which by no means holds a monopoly on pivotal moments. Many other regions of the world are exposed to potential tipping points[11]—geopolitical, economic and/or climatic—likely to weaken their agricultures and generate new insecurities, food-related or otherwise. Such a diagnosis could be made everywhere, even if the intensity and scope of the issues are neither homogeneous nor comparable[12]. We have nonetheless chosen to pause on forward-looking omens by focusing on six countries with distinct characteristics, whose future trajectory is not necessarily what we perceive today. By their territorial and demographic size, by the abundance of their natural resources, but also by their potential seismicity, these states are called upon to play a pivotal role—for better or for worse—by 2050. On their determination, their orientations and their actions will depend agricultural, food and environmental balances that far exceed the framework of their own borders alone. This is what justifies their inclusion in a restricted register of pivotal states, our agrostrategic hexagon, composed as follows: Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ukraine, Brazil, Indonesia, Turkey and Australia (CUBITA), an acronym deliberately geometric, embracing the idea of volume and structure.

CUBITA are the states that will give substance to the agricultural and food openings or breakthroughs of tomorrow. Not exclusively, but because they constitute, in our view, a critical mass whose evolutions warrant sustained vigilance. What links the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ukraine, Brazil, Indonesia, Turkey and Australia is not a single indicator, but the combination of several strategic masses: land and ecological, demographic and cultural, productive and export-oriented, logistical and conflictual crossroads, climate and political vulnerabilities. Taken separately, these factors exist elsewhere. Combined with agricultural and food issues, they produce potential instabilities with global tipping effects. CUBITA account for 15% of the world’s land surface, 10% of the population and 30% of global agricultural exports. If they slip, they will be multipliers of risk or instability. If they hold, politically and climatically, they become planetary shock absorbers.

Other countries could have been included in such grids of reading, given their geo-economic weight on the global agricultural and food chessboard. Think of Mexico, Vietnam, Russia, Morocco, Nigeria, Canada and, of course, India. How could one not also consider South Africa, Argentina, Kazakhstan or Japan as heavyweight candidates for our geometry of the future? And if it needs repeating, the EU is also very much part of it, as we set out above. But let us embrace the acronym CUBITA, which is not a club of high-performing countries nor a static snapshot of today’s world. It is a hypothesis that these states, by their volumes, their positions and their potential instabilities, will weigh disproportionately on global agricultural and food balances. In other words, they are less leading countries than determining ones. CUBITA is not a prophecy but an observation post, a watchtower to discern possible tremors on a planet that will hold less well without them and without their agricultures.

Moreover, Sino–US rivalry has agricultural dimensions that should not be underestimated. But to better see them, we must first and foremost properly measure the gradual and global confrontation into which Beijing and Washington have entered. Multilateral institutions are struggling, as the United Nations (UN) has just quietly marked its 80th anniversary. And it must be acknowledged that international trade, as well as the global development agenda, are stalling in the face of such international paralysis. We no longer move forward; we manage disputes. We make little progress; we salvage what we can. In parallel, new forums—such as BRICS or the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO)—bring together countries that agree on nothing, except on accelerating the end of US hegemony or the uselessness of a stopover on European soil. At the same time, ever more assertive appetites for agricultural and food affairs are emerging: from financial behemoths unknown to the general public or sector professionals; from commodities whose power is now considerable; from spaces openly coveted for their resources, as in the Far North; or again from that narcobusiness whose agricultural origin we cannot conceal.

There is always a geopolitical element in every agricultural story: let us no longer ignore this evidence. So let us dare a forward-looking provocation, on which we should reflect seriously: will there still be, tomorrow, an agricultural element in every food story? With the GLP-1 revolution, the surge of appetite suppressants plunges us into an unknown universe. Fasten our seatbelts, certainly. But above all, hold on to our agricultures, insofar as food could, for the first time, detach itself partially or progressively from its link to land and sea. A still-silent medical rupture, which would shift both the nutritional boundaries of our metabolisms and the ancient foundations of our sociologies.

---

[1] See François Hartog, Chronos. L’Occident aux prises avec le Temps (Paris: Gallimard, “Folio histoire”, 2024 [2020]); and Clément Tonon, Gouverner l’avenir. Retrouver le sens du temps long en politique (Paris: Tallandier, 2025).

[2] Readers are also invited to consult or discover the French journal Futuribles, a European pioneer in futures studies and an international reference since its creation half a century ago.

[3] This forward-looking editorial, by the publication director, was initiated in 2019 when a new layout was introduced, the result of a partnership between Club DEMETER and IRIS, co-publishers each year of Le Déméter.

[4] Dan Wang, Breakneck: China’s Quest to Engineer the Future (London: Allen Lane, 2025).

[5] Umberto Eco, À reculons comme une écrevisse (Paris: Grasset, 2006).

[6] Take France as an example. For the 2022–2027 period, the country receives €65 billion from the EU under the CAP. If this amount is converted into a cost per inhabitant per day—whether in its food and non-food component, but also as a contribution to rural development, the management of natural resources and the maintenance of landscapes—it comes to €13 per month per French person, or 43 cents per day.

[7] Edward Fishman, Chokepoints: How the Global Economy Became a Weapon of War (London: Elliott & Thompson Limited, 2025).

[8] David Marsh, Can Europe Survive? The Story of a Continent in a Fractured World (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2025).

[9] Tim Ingold, Le passé à venir. Repenser l’idée de génération (Paris: Seuil, 2025).

[10] See Sébastien Abis, Arthur Portier and Thierry Pouch, Russie-Ukraine : la guerre hybride. Aux racines agricoles d’un bouleversement Mondial (Malakoff: Armand Colin, 2026).

[11] Neil Shearing, The Fractured Age: How the Return of Geopolitics Will Splinter the Global Economy (London: John Murray Business, 2025).

[12] Peter Frankopan, The Earth Transformed: An Untold History (London: Bloomsbury, 2023).