Farm Resilience to Climate Change: The role of farmer entrepreneurship, farmer organizations and value chain collaboration

Summary

This PhD thesis entitled “Farm Resilience to Climate Change: the role of farmer entrepreneurship, farmer organizations and value chain collaboration” identifies and examines the opportunities for strengthening farm resilience to climate change. Three pathways of improving farmer adaptive capacity are identified; (a) taking advantage of farmer entrepreneurship, (b) membership of farmer organizations (FOs) and (c) exploiting the value chain collaboration such as the farmer-buyer relationships. The findings are three-fold, first, that farmer entrepreneurial orientation matter enhances farmer adaptive capacity which is exhibited by the adoption of climate-smart agriculture practices. Second, membership in FOs is necessary but not sufficient for improving farmer adaptive capacity, for membership to be effective, member-farmers need to access and use the services provided by FOs. Third, the farmer-buyer relationship when mediated by farmer EO improves farmer adaptive capacity. The thesis concludes that there is a need for policies and interventions that develop farmer entrepreneurship; incentivize membership and support FOs to provide services to members; and improve value chain collaboration.