Farms Risk Management to Enhance Resilience

The agricultural sector in Europe faces a broad array of challenges that threaten the functions it provides, its stability but also its survival. Diverse and heterogeneous risks are inherent in European agriculture (European Commission, 2017), especially those concerning environmental factors leading to production losses, such as extreme climatic conditions, local weather events and crop/animal diseases. However, there are also risks related to changes in trade policy, social preferences and markets behaviour (i.e., volatility of prices, financial & macroeconomic factors, competition, other sectors connection…) (Agricultural Markets Task Force, 2016), as well as non-standard threats such as the COVID-19 pandemic. Production losses, logistics issues and unfavourable market prices may unfold into farms’ income fluctuations and may result into farm closure. Unpredictable price movements, foremost changes in volatility, also discourage farmers to invest in productivity improvements (European Commission, 2017) that, in the long run, might improve the farm profitability and resilience. It is clear that the typical farms are missing the holistic Risk Management perception for their overall business entity and operations (a principle well

The key objectives of this project are: • Empower farmers’ risk culture and perception in a plain risk language easily comprehensible from all individuals working in the agri-food sector regardless of their educational background. • Enhance target groups’ resilience, productivity, and competitiveness through the evolution of their risk management competence and capabilities in relation to their business operations and management. • Develop analytical, cross-referencing and deductive reasoning skills of Farmers to help them navigate through the complexities and ever-changing nature of Farming business; • Provide a Point of Reference as an integrated fit-for-purpose approach for Business Resilience and Risk Management for Farmers. • Provide relevant associations, cooperatives and agricultural consultants the tools to assist their members and / or clients – that is, the farmers - enhance their knowledge, maturity and capability to deal with the risks of the environments their business are exposed to. • Provide all the tools required for this integrated approach by preparing the following project outcomes (as part of a joint effort of all related stakeholders): a. The FaRMER Resilience Methodology (including the Risk Management contex