Research released in 2019 found that performance of farming systems, and resilience capacities and attributes can be measured (Soloviev & Landau, 2016). Other research (Darnhofer et al., 2016) reinforces the need to view farm resilience from three points of view:
1. Roles of farm types and dynamics, for example, size of the farm, number of employees, diversity of production, etc.
2. Primary and secondary actors including farmers, agency personnel, and social forces
3. Relationships between structure, capacity to act, physical environments, and social processes
Other studies of farms as businesses, and especially of new ventures, document the need to focus on resilience and on personal, business, community, and policy relationships to increase the likelihood of a viable business and a healthy family (Yang & Danes, 2015).
The challenge of the 21st century is not to increase agricultural productivity but to strengthen the resilience of our food production in the face of ever-increasing stress on systems.
Community Resi l ience
Individuals, families, farms, and other businesses are embedded in communities of place, interest, and practice. What happens in those communities impacts their members and other communities. The resilience of farming communities is the capacity to absorb stressors and collectively take action. That capacity will not only affect the community but the resilience of the farming population and farming enterprises in that community. For this guide, community resilience is defined as“... the capability to anticipate risk, limit impact, and bounce back rapidly through survival, adaptability, evolution, and growth in the face of turbulent change(Patel et al., 2017 p.10.)
There are many lists of traits of resilient communities. These summarized traits, if fully functioning, should enable a community to prepare, prevent, respond to, and recover from shocks and stresses (Arup, 2011):
1.
Can assess, manage, and monitor risks
2. Can identify problems and establish priorities
3. Is flexible, resourceful and can accept uncertainty and respond proactively to change
4. Has strong physical infrastructure systems
5. Values, protects and enhances natural assets
6. Has strong, well-connected relationships to access support
Community resilience can be viewed from the social-ecological perspective with relationships and actions distributed within and across levels within levels. Resilient communities find ways to adapt through feedback, shared memory, reacting collectively to disruptions, and seeing windows of opportunity (Berkes & Ross, 2013).
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