Farm resilience to climate change : The role of farmer entrepreneurship, farmer organizations and value chain collaboration

Abstract

The concept of resilience has gained traction in academic, policy and development discourse in recent years, yet its conceptualization and application at the farm level has received little attention. For instance, recent policy recommendations present farm resilience as a silver bullet in dealing with agricultural risks and uncertainty, and in achieving sustainable agri-food systems. Yet, the question of what determines farm resilience in a smallholder farming setup remains fuzzy. To address this knowledge gap, we, first, develop a novel conceptual framework based on farmers' adaptive capacity as a determinant of farm resilience. The emphasis on adaptive capacity responds to a conceptual weakness inherent in studies that present socio-ecological systems such as farms as static systems. Second, based on a literature review we propose farmer entrepreneurship, membership in a farmer organization and farmer-buyer relationship as potential pathways for improving the farmers' adaptive capacity and thereby farm resilience. Based on our conceptual understanding, we recommend approaches that augment farmer entrepreneurship, support farmer organizations and strengthen farmer-buyer relationship.