The development of this methodological approach was inspired by the need to address the challlenges and risks facing the agricultural sector in Europe. Diverse and heterogeneous risks are inherent in European agriculture, especially those concerning environmental factors leading to losses in production, such as extreme climatic conditions, local weather extreme events and crop/animal diseases, most of them exacerbated by global climate warming. But there are also risks related to changes in trade policy, changing social preferences and market behaviours (i.e. volatility of prices, financial and macroeconomic factors, competition and connections to other sectors). Production losses and unfavourable market prices may unfold into a farms’ unfavourable income fluctuations, and as a final consequence, the farm closure. Unpredictable price movements, foremost changes in volatility, also discourage farmers to invest in productivity improvements that, in the long run, might improve the farm profitability and resilience.
Risk management becomes a necessary strategy for improving the ability of farming systems to cope with these economic, social, environmental and institutional challenges. The main assumption is that promoting and applying risk management strategies strengthen farming systems’ resilience.
The methodological approach has a two fold aim: i) to assess whether and to what extent risk management enables/constrains farming system resilience and ii) to address how risk management enables/constrains farming system resilience.
To achieve these objectives, a multi-stakeholder approach was followed considering two different regional scales:
- at the local level to involve stakeholders with experience and knowledge at the farming system level. For this purpose focus groups were held in 11 case study regions (11 farming systems) across Europe;
- at the European level to engage the participation of the stakeholders with experience and knowledge at the European level. A dedicated virtual co-creation platform was developed to enable the on-line participation of EU stakeholders across Europe.
As a result of this multi-stakeholder approach, more than 600 ideas on improving risk management strategies and 500 ideas explaining the risk management contribution to resilience have been provided by more than 80 stakeholders across Europe. Ideas were coded and categorised to reach conclusions on how to improve risk management and on the role of different actors in this context.
