Regional agricultural diversity for preparedness and resilience to extreme weather: Evidence from Sweden

Resilient agricultural systems that encompass diversity at both farm and regional scales are essential for mitigating climate change and extreme weather events. While most agricultural policy instruments aim to enhance diversity at the farm level, policies addressing regional agricultural diversity remain underdeveloped. This paper investigates the impact of extreme weather events on regional agricultural diversity in Sweden. I study different components of regional agricultural diversity—gamma (overall regional diversity), beta (diversity across farms), and alpha (average farm diversity). Using a long-term regional panel dataset covering the period 2001–2021, I estimate a series of fixed-effects models. Years marked by extremely dry growing seasons tend to exhibit lower levels of gamma and beta diversity, while moderately wet years are positively related to both. This pattern suggests that extreme weather events are related to lower regional agricultural diversity. In contrast, alpha diversity is resilient to extreme weather, remaining largely uninfluenced by extreme weather events. The findings underline the need for policy interventions to deal with climatic extremes. Policies should focus on enhancing agricultural diversity through measures across farms, where farmers cooperate on enhancing diversity (e.g. crop-livestock integration across farms) and at the regional level (e.g. regional incentives for collaborative farming practices) to enhance overall preparedness to extreme weather.