Resilient and Sustainable Farming Systems in Europe
Exploring Diversity and Pathways

An investigation of the sustainability of European farming systems in response to economic, environmental, institutional, and social challenges.

Miranda P. M. Meuwissen (Edited by), Peter H. Feindt (Edited by), Alberto Garrido (Edited by), Erik Mathijs (Edited by), Bárbara Soriano (Edited by), Julie Urquhart (Edited by), Alisa Spiegel (Edited by)

9781009098281, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 5 May 2022

0 pages
23.5 x 15.8 x 2.5 cm, 0.76 kg

What exactly is resilience and how can it be enhanced? Farming systems in Europe are rapidly evolving while at the same time being 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. Since the COVID-19 pandemic, the need for enhanced resilience has become even more apparent and continues to be an overarching guiding principle of EU policy making. Resilience challenges and strategies are framed within four main processes affecting decision making in agriculture: risk management, farm demographics, governance and agricultural practices. This empirical focus looks at very diverse contexts, with eleven case studies from Belgium, Bulgaria, France, Germany, Great Britain, Italy, Netherlands, Poland, Romania, Spain and Sweden. This study will help determine the future and sustainability of European farming systems. This title is available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.

1. SURE-Farm approach to assess the resilience of European farming systems
2. The importance of improving and enlarging the scope of risk management to enhance resilience in European agriculture
3. Demographic dimensions of resilient farming systems in the EU
4. Policies and farming system resilience: a bottom-up analysis
5. Constrained sustainability and resilience of agricultural practices from multiple lock-in factors and possible pathways to tackle them: an assessment of three European farming systems
6. Resilience of dairy farming in Flanders: past, current and future
7. Resilience-enhancing strategies to meet future challenges. The case of arable farming in Northeast Bulgaria
8. Historical legacies and current challenges for future resilience of the farming system in the Altmark
9. Opportunities to improve the resilience of extensive sheep farming in Huesca (Spain)
10. Thinking outside the box in the Bourbonnais: transforming the value chain and conserving the landscape
11. The resilience of a farming system at crossroads between intensification and environmental sustainability: the hazelnut case in Viterbo (Italy)
12. Realising transformation in response to future challenges. The case of an intensive arable farming system in the Veenkoloniën, the Netherlands
13. Accelerated adaptability in pursuit of future alternative systems: the case of family, fruit and vegetable farming system in Central-Eastern Poland
14. Towards a better understanding of small farming system resilience in Romania
15. Adaptability of the high-value egg and broiler production in Sweden
16. Managing risks to improve the resilience of arable farming in the East of England
17. Integrated assessment of the sustainability and resilience of farming systems: lessons from the past and ways forward for the future
18. A resilience-enabling environment for farming systems: patterns and principles
19. Lessons learned on resilience from a multi-scale co-creation methodology: From regional to European scale
20. Understanding and addressing the resilience crisis of Europe's farming systems. A synthesis of the findings from the SURE-Farm project.

Subject Areas: Environmental economics [KCN]