How do farm and farmer attributes explain perceived resilience?

Abstract

Abstract CONTEXT Uncertainty surrounds farming systems across Europe and strengthening their resilience lies at the centre of the European policy agenda. Although farming systems´ resilience has been widely conceptualised, no consensus has been reached about assessing the contribution of farm and farmer attributes to farmers´ perceived resilience by quantitative approaches.

OBJECTIVE The aim of this study was to understand what farm(er) attributes and principles contribute to explain farmers´ perceived resilience. Our specific objectives are to: i) develop a conceptual framework composed of attributes, principles and capacities to assess farms' resilience, including farmer personal resilience as a resilience principle; ii) quantify links between farm attributes and resilience principles with farmers´ perceived resilience capacities.

METHODS We developed a framework that includes different farm and farmer attributes grouped into resilience principles. We designed and conducted a structured survey to allow small ruminant farmers in Spain to self-assess their resilience attributes and capacities. We used structural equation modelling to assess to what extent resilience attributes and principles explain perceived robustness, adaptability, transformability capacities and overall resilience.

RESULTS AND CONCLUSIONS Farmers´ perceived resilience can be explained by several resilience attributes and principles, including farmers' personal resilience. Some attributes contribute similarly to robustness, adaptability and transformability, while others contribute particularly to each capacity.

Farm diversity, tightness of feedbacks and farmers´ personal resilience were key for explaining farmers´ perceived resilience for small ruminant farming systems in Spain. In particular, farmer optimism, and farms' ability to respond in different ways to challenges and to overcome difficulties in the past, were the attributes that most influenced resilience perceptions. Our results highlight the importance of farmer personality, in addition to farm characteristics, for understanding farmers' resilience perceptions.

SIGNIFICANCE This study contributes to the development of quantitative farm resilience assessments by considering multiple farm attributes and also several farmers' psychological attributes. Our framework provides a list of attributes and principles that can be applied to different farming systems. We provide a specific approach to identify the most relevant attributes and principles that drive perceived resilience in a large set of them that could guide farm and stakeholders' decision making.