Journal
JOURNAL OF RURAL STUDIES
Volume 59, Issue -, Pages 211-221Publisher
PERGAMON-ELSEVIER SCIENCE LTD
DOI: 10.1016/j.jrurstud.2017.07.008
Keywords
Resilience strategies; Persistence; Transformability; Adaptability; Rural resilience; Agricultural development; Rural development
Categories
Funding
- European Commission
- RURAGRI ERA-NET [CA 235175]
- Israel Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development [603031616]
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The limited resilience of agricultural and food systems, and of rural communities, has become an important concern in rural and agricultural policy. However, while the term has been heavily theorised and discussed, particularly in the natural and environmental sciences, it is sufficiently ambiguous to support divergent and even contradictory policy goals and farmers' strategies. This paper focuses on the more encompassing notion of social-ecological resilience and contends that among the causes of this divergence are the disparate spatial and temporal scales used to assess and plan enhancing resilience. Based on empirical evidence, we show that strategies that may increase farmers' abilities to persist in a difficult economic environment may undermine the resilience of the wider region, while decisions that enhance farmers' resilience in the short term may lock them onto a path that weakens their future resilience. Using case studies from 14 different countries across Europe and beyond, we address two main questions. Firstly, how the notion of resilience is being operationalised at a farm or regional level. That is to say, what are the different strategies that farmers, rural residents and other decision-makers in rural areas are using to enhance resilience? Secondly, we look at how the outcomes of implementing these strategies vary according to spatial and temporal factors. (C) 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
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