Introducing The Agricultural Resilience Impact and Innovation Hub (AGRIIH)

Cultivating collaborative research to enable agriculture respond to a changing world

Why Agricultural Resilience, Why Now?

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Agriculture sits at the heart of human civilisation. It nourishes over 8 billion people, supports livelihoods globally, and fundamentally influences biodiversity, rural economies, and planetary health. Our current agricultural systems are under increasing strain from multiple, converging risks—climate change, market volatility, geopolitical uncertainty, biodiversity loss, and more.

Making agriculture more resilient — able to adapt, recover, and thrive in the face of disruption, without harming the systems it relies on—is now a global priority. Resilience goes beyond sustainability. It is dynamic and systems-based, and forward-looking, addressing both immediate shocks and long-term pressures. It recognises that agriculture operates within interconnected supply chains, policy frameworks, ecological contexts, and financial systems.

This is where the University of Oxford can play a transformative role. With world-leading strengths in plant science, ecology, food system, social science, and policy influence, Oxford is uniquely positioned to catalyse collaborative research and drive systemic innovation that strengthens agricultural resilience—at home and abroad.

AGRIIH: A Hub for Agricultural Resilience Impact and Innovation

Oxford is developing a new interdisciplinary initiative: the Agricultural Resilience Impact and Innovation Hub (AGRIIH). AGRIIH will act as a catalyst for agricultural resilience research and innovation at Oxford—bringing together diverse disciplines, external partners, and global stakeholders to drive practical, system-informed solutions.

AGRIIH’s mission is to enable strategic, co-created research, real-world partnerships, and systems-based innovation that increase the resilience of agriculture to rising global risks—social, environmental, and economic.

AGRIIH will:

  • Bridge disciplinary boundaries across Oxford and beyond
  • Engage with industry, policymakers, investors, and civil society to co-develop relevant research
  • Address barriers to the uptake and application of resilience-oriented innovations
  • Use systems thinking to understand cascading risks and opportunity spaces
  • Stimulate collaborations that deliver meaningful and measurable impact
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Geographical scope: UK and Global South, with Global Relevance

AGRIIH has a dual geographic focus on the UK and the Global South—two regions that present contrasting but complementary challenges and opportunities for building agricultural resilience.

In the UK, agriculture faces growing regulatory shifts, labour shortages, supply chain complexity, biodiversity-depleted landscapes, and the urgent need to respond to climate pressure. It operates within a higher-income, policy-intensive context, yet remains vulnerable to climate shocks and economic disruptions.  

In the Global South, agriculture faces greater structural vulnerability. Farmers and food systems must contend with limited infrastructure, constrained access to finance and technology, more extreme climate volatility, and a heavy reliance on agriculture for livelihoods and national development. At the same time, the Global South is home to the highest densities of biodiversity globally, as well as critical natural carbon sinks. However, these regions are also sites of innovation under constraint, with diverse agroecological knowledge and increasing experimentation with low-input, sustainable practices.

These regions present distinct but interconnected challenges—and valuable opportunities for learning. While the UK and Global South are our strategic focus areas, the systems-based approach and collaborative model that AGRIIH promotes are designed to be adaptable and globally applicable. We welcome partnerships that extend this impact across regions.