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The Resilience Assessment Tool (ResAT) builds on broad academic literature that has identified characteristics of resilience-enhancing policies. However, it adds a distinction between policy characteristics that enhance either robustness, adaptability or transformability. This report presents the findings from an application of the Resilience Assessment Tool in eleven case studies across Europe to assess whether and how the current configuration of EU and national policies supports or constrains the capacity of regional farming systems to cope with the range of novel challenges. Understanding the CAP's effects on the resilience of regional farming systems requires an analysis of the interactions between the CAP and various other policies, which occur not only within the sector, but also across sectors and jurisdictional levels. ; GB; en; contact: pxm@aber.ac.uk

AbstractLike many Indigenous people around the world, the original inhabitants of Peninsular Malaysia, the Orang Asli, live predominantly in marginal, remote areas, and have below‐average levels of education, health and living standards. Their customary reliance on natural forest resources and assets to support their livelihood is threatened by modernization and conversion of land for commercial crops. The main challenge facing the Orang Asli communities has been maintaining this livelihood against encroaching land conversion projects. The weakness of land rights, remoteness and limited access to public services and economic opportunities appear to be major contributors to deprivation. The perspective of spatial justice provides an important conceptual tool to explore spatial and territorial problems facing the Orang Asli. The objective of our study is to document and analyse the life experiences of the Orang Asli, interpreting it through the lens of spatial justice to inform policymaking. A participatory approach using focus groups and participant observation reveals the lived experience of Orang Asli in two villages in Pahang State of Malaysia. The findings of Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) reveal the multiple dimensions of deprivation of Orang Asli: income, education, health, nutrition and housing, among others, and underscore the importance the Orang Asli place on education for their individual and community future. The results provide useful insights for policymakers aiming to improve the welfare of Indigenous peoples consistent with preserving their identities and way of life.

We explore elements of resilience on East Anglian farms through analysis of nine farmers' life stories. Using a largely unprompted narrative approach, narrators had freedom to structure their own personal accounts, and later to review our initial interpretations. Transcriptions were organised in timelines, themes were identified, and causes and effects of major farm turning points distinguished. We find that internal drivers such as intergenerational transition, health and family relationships, from the narrators' viewpoint, were cited as producing more change than external pressures such as price volatility or production variation. Robust and especially adaptation responses are prevalent in the stories, transformations are neither particularly radical nor innovative, but widespread piecemeal change through time can accumulate to enhance resilience. Four farmers identified more as businesspeople, with blurred boundaries between their farming and other commercial interests. Farming succession, with occasional conflict and new problems arising from extended working lives, prompts most change. Insights can arise as much from what is unsaid in these stories, and self‐explanation to outsiders can have cathartic effects. This narrative and analysis approach challenges preconceptions and can reframe theoretical perspectives and suggest approaches for policy reform. The focus was on existing farms with some resilience, further work should explore why former farmers were not resilient. Narrative analysis in other European countries showed important similarities in differing system contexts, but also divergences in the overall character of the life‐stories. ; EU; GB; en; contact: pkn@aber.ac.uk

Resilience over time is achieved across the increasingly fundamental attributes of robustness, adaptability and transformability, representing system responses to short, medium and long-term external drivers, respectively. Analysis of narratives can be used to enable researchers to gain indepth understanding of the rationale surrounding farmer decision making when faced with drivers of change, and how farmers manage critical decision points in their farming businesses. This report assesses personal histories of family farms, and business histories of corporate farms, to identify phases in the separate production, demographic and policy adaptive cycles as they have impacted on the individuals concerned and their business enterprises. Biographical stories were collected from nine to ten narrators (early-, mid- and late-career),in each of five case studies chosen to represent a range of regions and farming systems in Europe. A single question was used to initiate the narrators' stories, without qualification beforehand, supported only with expressions of interest and encouragement in the first part of the interview, with subsequent exploratory questions devoted to clarifying the internal structure of the narrative. ; EU; en; contact: pkn@aber.ac.uk

The Horizon 2020 project Towards Sustainable and Resilient EU Farming Systems (SURE-Farm) defines resilience as maintaining the essential functions of EU farming systems in the face of increasingly complex and volatile economic, social, ecological and institutional risks: Meuwissen (2018) suggests that resilience over time is achieved across the increasingly fundamental attributes of robustness, adaptability and transformability, representing system responses to short, medium and long-term external drivers, respectively. Maxwell (1986) also recognised that external drivers vary significantly in time and space and distinguished four different types of perturbations: noise, shocks, cycles and trends. Analysis of narratives (Rosenthal, 2004; Riessmann, 2008) can be used to enable researchers to gain indepth understanding of the rationale surrounding farmer decision making when faced with drivers of change (e.g. MacDonald et al., 2014), and how farmers manage critical decision points in their farming businesses. This understanding is crucial for developing the tools and policy measures needed to support the sustainability and resilience of European agriculture. We have used personal histories of family farms, and business histories of corporate farms, to identify phases in the separate production, demographic and policy adaptive cycles (and consequences of interactions between them) as they have impacted on the individuals concerned and their business enterprises. Biographical stories were collected from nine to ten narrators (early-, mid- and late-career), in each of five case studies chosen to represent a range of regions and farming systems in Europe. These included large scale family and corporate arable farms in Northeast Bulgaria (BG) and the East of England (UK); dairy farms in Flanders (BE); small-scale perennial crop (hazelnut) farms in central Italy (IT) and high value egg and broiler systems in Southern Sweden (SE). A single question was used to initiate the narrators' stories, without qualification beforehand, supported only with expressions of interest and encouragement in the first part of the interview, with subsequent exploratory questions devoted to clarifying the internal structure of the narrative. Narratives were transcribed and analysed to identify the drivers and responses to critical decision-making points in the stories. Comparisons across the five regional farming system cases have also been made to generate wider insights into how the narrators responded to different challenges. The drivers leading up to critical decision points in the narratives were grouped according to themes which followed a spectrum ranging from internal (those arising from within the farm system), to external (those acting on the farm system). Internal drivers included health, relationships, intergenerational change, retirement, redundancy. The more intermediate drivers included financial pressures, skills, labour, disasters, land issues, water. External drivers included supply chain factors, markets, technology, policy and regulation. Some drivers and responses were observed to relate to the farmer whilst others related to the farming system. Key findings from cross-narrative analysis distinguished inertia as the predominant response to system challenges, and that incremental changes (or creeping change, as we have termed it) in the system over a long-time frame rather than a definable critical decision point, is widely evident in the narratives. Climate change was not identified as being a driver and was only mentioned at all in two of the 45 narratives. Farmer identity ranged broadly across the narratives with the extremes being represented by those who farmed because it was their vocation, to those who perceived themselves first and foremost as business operators. To an extent, these identities reflected the degree of attachment to land, with the more vocational farmers having a strong attachment to their farmed land (particularly in the Flemish case) and the more business-minded (particularly in Northeast Bulgaria and the East of England) having less attachment. The long-term nature of the hazelnut crop in Central Italy meant that attachment to the land was strong, regardless of farmer identity. Family support, whether perceived as positive or negative by the narrator, was found to influence decision-making, and changing work/life balance expectations, particularly amongst early-career farmers with young families, was also influential. The narratives revealed different approaches to risk alleviation, both within and across case studies. In instances where land availability was not restricted (for example, Northeast Bulgaria, and to some extent, East Anglia), scale enlargement was predominant, but where land was restricted, diversification was the predominant response (for example, in the Flemish narratives). There were strong similarities and distinctive differences across the narrative contexts. Similarities included the dominance of internal drivers, intergenerational change as a major critical decision point, the perception of many external drivers as noise, and more frustration with policy drivers compared with weather events. There were few mentions of insurance by the narrators. The findings indicate that robustness is demonstrated in response to many drivers classified as cycles and shocks, whilst prolonged trends result primarily in adaptation. Transformations were relatively infrequent in the narratives and those identified were not radical in nature. The main policy related conclusions from the study suggest that farming systems are ill-equipped for a rapid move from direct payments to income insurance. They also appear to be unprepared for climate change. Long-term, coherent strategies required for dealing with intergenerational change were not apparent, confirming parallel literature that suggests that legal, social welfare and policy obstacles to farm succession need to be addressed.

Risk and risk management are essential elements of agriculture and affect the wellbeing of farm households. Farmers react to production, market and institutional risks and challenges by taking measures on or off the farm. Such risk management measures are often costly and have implications for up- and downstream industries as well as the environment. The risk exposure of European farms is increasing. For example, climate change will increase the frequency and magnitude of extreme weather events like droughts, heatwaves and heavy rainfalls that potentially have detrimental effects on agricultural production. Thus, the adaptive capacity and risk management options in European agriculture need to be improved. Policy shall support this process. Policies are needed to support a diversity of risk management solutions and not only focus on a few solutions. Strategies to cope with risk often go beyond the level of the individual farm. Cooperation, learning and sharing of risks play a vital role in European agriculture and shall be strengthened. Thus, coordinated policies targeting beyond the individual farm and considering all the stakeholders involved in the risk management strategies are needed to ensure their effective implementation. Moreover, policies need to facilitate to take full advantage of the rapid technological progress and improved data availability (e.g. based on satellite imagery) to develop a wider set of risk management strategies. ; EU; en; contact: miranda.meuwissen@wur.nl

Europe's agricultural sector faces a range of economic, environmental and social challenges. The accumulation of these uncertainties and their potentially complex interconnections lead to concerns about the long term viability of production of private and public goods, the sustainability of agricultural systems and the vitality of rural areas. Importantly, these risks and uncertainties differ widely across regions, different types of farms and different farming systems, requiring a differentiated response. Responses might try either to reduce stressors or limit their impact, enhance the robustness of farms and farming systems against disturbances, or increase their ability to adapt to changing circumstances. No framework currently exists for a comprehensive assessment of whether policies and governance arrangements effectively enhance the sustainability and resilience of EU farming systems and improve the risk management of EU farms ; EU; en; contact: yann.demey@wur.nl