The Augures! Project responds to the EU’s call for a more resilient agricultural sector, powered by cutting-edge science.
Focusing on agricultural resilience in an age of uncertainty
Across Europe, farmers and agricultural decision-makers are navigating growing uncertainty. Climate volatility is increasing, markets are less predictable, and long-term investments carry higher risk than ever before. Making the right decisions today requires looking beyond the next season and preparing for multiple possible futures.
Against this backdrop, Europe is entering a critical period for agricultural policy and investment planning, with climate pressures and food security concerns rising simultaneously.
In December 2025, members of the Augures! project team attended the European Commission’s EU Agri-Food Days in Brussels. The event brought together farmers, researchers, entrepreneurs, financial institutions, policymakers and civil society to discuss the future of Europe’s agri-food system. Across panels and side exchanges, discussions consistently returned to one core challenge: how to safeguard food security while navigating climate challenges and global economic uncertainty.
Priorities highlighted by EU institutions—food security, resilience, competitiveness and fairness—are becoming more urgent as Europe looks ahead to the next phase of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) and long-term investment strategies. This urgency was reinforced by a recent extraordinary meeting of EU agriculture ministers, which positioned agriculture as a cornerstone of Europe’s economic resilience and strategic autonomy.
Towards systemic resilience: why foresight matters now
The conference highlighted that, while climate extremes are already affecting yields, food security is no longer only about production volumes, but a matter of systemic resilience: how well farms, supply chains and institutions are prepared for shocks, and how quickly they can adapt.
This need directly echoes the objectives of Augures!, our project focusing on improving agricultural foresight to support effective decision-making.
Europe’s agricultural sector is operating under conditions of heightened uncertainty. Climate variability is increasing, historical baselines are shifting, and farmers face simultaneous environmental and economic pressures. As highlighted throughout EU Agri-Food Days, navigating this complexity requires better foresight: helping practitioners prepare for different possible futures rather than trying to predict a single outcome.
Augures! focuses on the 10-year decision-making horizon—a critical timescale for farm investments, infrastructure planning and policy design. By combining advanced climate analysis, crop modelling and socio-economic insights, the project helps build a robust picture of agricultural risks and resilience options over the coming decade.
What Augures! helps stakeholders do in practice:
- Reduce climate and market risk by exploring how different scenarios may affect crops and incomes
Design better CAP measures and insurance instruments grounded in forward-looking evidence - Improve access to climate-resilient finance, helping align investment with long-term sustainability
- Plan farm investments over 5–10 years, such as infrastructure, machinery or diversification choices
“This winter, the project will provide a first European-wide assessment of climate impacts on wheat and maize crops,” observes Terry Nipp, Policy Lead at AgMIP and Augures! partner. “These insights will be relevant not only for farmers and decision-makers, but also for advisors, insurers and financial actors seeking to direct capital toward resilient farming systems aligned with EU objectives.“
Cultivating trust through collaboration
As discussions at EU Agri-Food Days turned to the future of the CAP and agricultural investment, trust emerged as a critical value to safeguard. Europe’s agri-food sector is a complex ecosystem, bringing together farmers, cooperatives, advisors, policymakers and insurers—each with different needs, incentives and constraints. Turning scientific evidence into action depends not just on better data, but on how that knowledge is developed and shared.
Augures! builds trust in practice by embedding co-design and stakeholder dialogue throughout the research process. This approach helps ensure that foresight tools are usable, credible and relevant on the ground.
“The EU Agri-Food Days conference showed that the foundations for Europe’s agricultural transition are already in place,” reflects Hina West, Managing Director at Climate Strategies. “The task ahead is to strengthen the links between research and action, so that foresight meaningfully supports the long-term strategic decisions required for a resilient, competitive EU agriculture.”
As Europe is preparing to update the CAP amid growing climate risks and major investment decisions, Augures! will help decision-makers prepare for what lies ahead.
What’s next
Our upcoming decadal outlooks on maize and wheat yields will be published soon on the Augures! website. We also regularly publish seasonal forecasts, estimating how likely it is for European regions to experience warmer or colder and wetter or drier than average conditions in the coming months. Follow Climate Strategies’ channels to follow the latest news from the project and join the conversation!
Gaia Campanelli is a Project Officer at Climate Strategies. She holds a BSc in Anthropology from UCL and a MSc in Medical Anthropology from the University of Oxford, where she focused on the political ecology of health and industrial pollution. She has worked in climate education, youth engagement, innovation and public health research, gaining experience in project coordination across the public, private and charitable sector.