Placing resilience in context: Investigating the changing experiences of Finnish organic farmers

Abstract

Understanding how farmers are resilient is critical for effective government and individual management responses in an increasingly uncertain world. Through an inter-temporal focus on Finnish organic farmers, we explore changing identities, attitudes and practices, and reflect on ramifications for farming resilience. Despite the essentialising binaries perpetuated by discussions of conventionalisation and bifurcation in the organic movement, organic production systems are, and always have been, heterogeneous. This paper offers a nuanced analysis of the fluctuating and mixed practices and identities that compose the sector. Considering the experiences of both ‘pioneer’ and ‘contemporary’ organic farmers highlights the multiple, changeable and, critically, contextual nature of strategies for resilience at the farm level. It emphasizes too the fluid, hybrid and strategic subjectivities of the organic producers themselves that are always dependent on the demands of particular contexts; therefore, although ‘best practices’ may offer possible pathways for action, varying spatialities and temporalities cannot be homogenised into an ideal type resilience.