Category: News

What exactly is resilience and how can it be enhanced?

Farming systems in Europe are rapidly evolving while being at the same time under threat, as seen by the disappearance of dozens of farms every day. Farming systems must become more resilient in response to growing economic, environmental, institutional, and social challenges facing Europe’s agriculture.

The aim of this book is to show an in-depth resilience assessment of European farming systems in response to economic, environmental, institutional, and social challenges that will determine the future and sustainability of farming systems in Europe. Four novelties explain the added value of this book: i)  It provides a unique insight into the resilience challenges of Europe’s diverse farming systems, consisting of eleven case studies; ii) It considers numerous stakeholders and their role in making farming more resilient, offering a more integrated and wider view; iii) It addresses components both separately and collectively to create an integrated synthesis; and iv) It provides policy and business recommendations to make farming systems more resilient.

Click here and read the book!

Find in this press release the 6 key principles to enable resilience of farming systems in Europe !

Challenges that threaten the performance of farming systems have put resilience high on the agenda. Actions and strategies to stimulate the resilience of farming systems should follow six key principles that describe how actors in the farming system and its environment (governments, value chain businesses, banks, advisors and others) should act. How these principles translate into concrete recommendations is specific to regions and sectors. A co-creation process such as a policy dialogue should be created to develop roadmaps towards supporting resilience.

Click here and read the press release.

Find the press release translated into 9 languages by clicking here

SURE-Farm has reached its ends.

We would like to thank the partners for all for your great service in the SURE-Farm project, the immense work carried out by all the case studies, nice coordination, and hard work!

We would also thank all the stakeholders who have been participating in SURE-Farm in the case study activities and on the digital co-creation platform.

.. and to all SURE-Farm followers on social media! Without you it would have been extremely difficult to reach such a large audience!

Finally, and specially a big thanks and congratulations to our coordinator, Miranda Meuwissen; for her leadership, empathy, capacity to take care of every detail and reach every goal succefully.

We hope that SURE-Farm team can collaborate again in future projects.

The 178 EAAE Seminar  “Future challenges and resilience of farming systems in Europe” will be held online the 18th-20th May 2021.

Find all the information and register at https://178eaaeseminar.org/

Registration is free!

We are happy to announce that a new paper is out! Miranda Meuwissen with a large team of researchers from SURE-Farm have assessed the impact of Covid-19 on farming systems in Europe through the lens of resilience thinking.

The assessment reveals that there has been a limited impact of Covid-19 on the production and delivery of food and other agricultural products. This was due to either little exposure or the agile activation of robustness capacities of the farming systems in combination with an enabling institutional environment.

Please click here to read de article

Authors: M.P.M. Meuwissen, P.H. Feindt, T. Slijper, A. Spiegel, R. Finger, Y. de Mey, W. Paas, K.J.A.M. Termeer, P.M. Poortvliet M. Penev, J. Urquhart, M. Vigani, J.E. Black, P. Nicholas-Davies, , D. Maye, F. Appel, F. Heinrich, A. Balmann, , J. Bijttebier , I. Coopmans, E. Wauters, E. Mathijs, H. Hansson, C.J. Lagerkvist, J. Rommel, G. Manevska-Tasevska, F. Accatino, C. Pineau, B. Soriano, I. Bardaji, S. Severini, S. Senni, C. Zinnanti, C. Gavrilescu, I.S. Bruma, K.M. Dobay, , D. Matei, L. Tanasa, D.M. Voicilas, K. Zawalinska, P. Gradziuk, V. Krupin, A. Martikainen, H. Herrera, P. Reidsma

Contact author:

Miranda Meuwissen, miranda.meuwissen@wur.nl

SURE-Farm partners have just published the paper “Participatory assessment of sustainability and resilience of three specialized farming systems” in Ecology and Society Journal.

They present the Framework of Participatory Impact Assessment for Sustainable and Resilient FARMing systems (FoPIA-SURE-Farm). FoPIA-SUREFarm investigates farming system functioning, dynamics of main indicators, and specifies resilience for different resilience capacities, i.e., robustness, adaptability, and transformability. Three case studies with specialized farming systems serve as an example for the used methodology: starch potato production in Veenkoloniën, The Netherlands; dairy production in Flanders, Belgium; and hazelnut production in Lazio, Italy.

The authors found that FoPIA-SURE-Farm results seem a good starting point for raising awareness, further assessments, and eventually for developing a shared vision and action plan for improving sustainability and resilience of farming systems.

Click here and read the paper!

Authors: 

Wim Paas,  Isabeau Coopmans, Simone Severini, Martin K. van Ittersum, Miranda P. M. Meuwissen and Pytrik Reidsma

Contact author:

Wim Paas: wim.paas@wur.nl

The SURE-Farm researchers, Willemijn Vroege and Robert Finger, and other co-authors have just published a new paper entitled “Satellite support to insure farmers against extreme droughts” in the Journal Nature Food .

They conclude that agricultural insurance is a valuable strategy to cope with extreme weather risks. Improved satellite observation capabilities can be particularly helpful with droughts, but will not translate into better insurance unless key challenges are overcome.

Click here and read the article!

How can farming systems adapt or radically transform to cope with challenges? What resilience-enhancing strategies can be followed? Who is taking the lead in enhancing resilience of a farming system?

If your research addresses some of these questions we strongly encourage you to submit a paper to the 178th EAAE  Seminar. Future challenges and resilience of farming systems in Europe. The seminar will be held online the 18-20th May 2021.

Register and find all the information in this link.

Registration for presenters is 100 Euro. For all other participants attending the seminar is free of charge.  You can find at the EAAE website the  advantages of an EAAE membership.

See bellow the important dates:

Abstract submission: 5th April 2021 (to: miranda.meuwissen@wur.nl)
Author notification: 13th April 2021
Extended abstracts: 3rd May 2021 (to: miranda.meuwissen@wur.nl)
Registration for presenters: 5th May 2021
Registration for attendees: 18th May 2021

A new SURE-Farm policy brief is out!

SURE-Farm researches have found that the resilience of EU farming systems is perceived to be low to moderate.

To make more resilient farming systems in the future a more balanced attention is needed for economic, social and environmental dimensions, and for an enabling environment. All involved actors inside and outside the farming system need to collaborate in order to make a change towards business models that tackle long-term challenges.

Clear here to read the policy brief

Clear here to have a look at the infographic

Contact author: Pytrik Reidsma; pytrik.reidsma@wur.nl 

Do you want to be informed about policy recommendations to improve resilience of European Farming Systems?

Please, click here  and register in the next EAAE webinar!

The webinar consists of four policy-oriented contributions. The first presentation provides policy recommendations to support risk management decision making in EU farming systems. The second policy-oriented contribution delves into farms demographics and intergenerational renewal and provides policy options that may enable resilient farm structures. The third contribution shows a critical analysis of how the current CAP and adjacent policies constrain/enable resilient European agriculture and suggests recommendations for the CAP. The last policy-oriented contribution examines past and future strategies and policy interventions that promote resilient farming systems. The webinar will be closed by an intervention of the DG-Agri and CEJA-Young farmers representatives to share their opinion about how the policy recommendations would work.

Click here to read the programme