Bouncing Back or MovingForward: Analysing Resilience and Agricultural Policies in the European Union

Summary

Farming systems across the European Union (EU) are facing many challenges, such as instable prices, market shocks, extreme weather events, climate change, environmental degradation, biodiversity loss, or generational renewal.

Scholars and practitioners therefore call for strengthening the resilience of farming systems through EU agricultural policy. However, research to understand the relationship between public policies and resilience has remained scarce.

This PhD research expands our knowledge on how EU agricultural policies, especially the Common Agricultural Policy, influence farming systems’ resilience.

Currently EU agricultural policy is largely focused on ensuring that farming systems can bounce back to a familiar situation in the short-term, whilst many of the challenges require policies that support farming systems to move forward through adaptations or even transformation.

Policymakers need to genuinely reconsider the design of agricultural policies – and the underlying ideas about resilience – to implement adaptations or transformative change that help the long-term resilience of farming systems.