Abstract
Farmers are facing an increasingly turbulent context, driven by volatile markets, shifting policies, and new societal expectations. Insights into farmers’ adaptive capacity are helpful to understand how farmers perceive various options, and what they think is necessary to enable their farms to persist through uncertain times. We focus on dairy farmers, who have faced strong market volatility in the last few years. We conducted interviews with 20 dairy farmers who were starting their conversion to organic farming in Aveyron, France. The analysis showed that the interviewed farmers perceived organic farming as less risky, especially given stable prices and positive consumer perception. Also, they expected organic farming to increase their autonomy, especially regarding feed, thus reducing their farm’s exposure to volatile input prices. Interviewed farmers were aware of technical risks linked to new production practices but were confident in their ability to manage them. Organic farming was also perceived as stimulating their learning, especially through a collective dynamic and an open exchange of experiences. The interviewed farmers expected that the higher prices of organic milk would enable them to reduce the number of cows, thus reducing their workload. This would give them more time to observe, reflect, experiment, and learn, thus not only increasing their professional satisfaction but also enabling them to better cope with changes. Overall, they perceived organic farming as an attractive option to maintain the viability of their family farm, an important motivation given their rootedness in the territory. The interviews thus showed that their decision to convert to organic farming was driven by their expectation that it would enhance their adaptive capacity, thus enabling them to better face current turbulences and future changes in the broader context.
Highlights
Farmers are facing an increasingly turbulent context
While looking for a way out of the crisis in conventional dairy farming, the interviewed farmers perceived organic farming as an attractive option, because it can enhance their adaptive capacity. They regarded organic farming as a way to enhance their adaptive capacity through four mechanisms: reducing risks, stimulating learning, increasing professional satisfaction, and enabling them to maintain their family farm
While farmers were aware that on the short term they would face technical risks linked to implementing new, unfamiliar production practices, they felt that converting would lower their long-term risks, as organic farming is in line with consumer expectations
Summary
Farmers are facing an increasingly turbulent context. They have to cope with policy shifts, volatile commodity markets, global competition, increasingly stringent environmental regulations, and more frequent extreme climatic events, as well as changes in consumer preferences and societal expectations. Whether a farm is vulnerable to these changes or whether it is able to adapt and cope with them depends to a large extent on its adaptive capacity (Darnhofer et al 2010). Vulnerability is generally understood as dependent on a system’s exposure to hazards, its sensitivity to these hazards, and its adaptive capacity (Smit and Wandel 2006; Marshall et al 2014). While exposure and sensitivity determine the potential impacts of a hazard, adaptive capacity enables to mitigate these impacts (Marshall et al 2013). Adaptive capacity refers to the potential to cope with novel situations and enable adaptation, without losing options for the future (Nelson et al 2007)
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