Building farm system resilience in Canton de Vaud

In the context of climate change, enhancing the resilience of farms is becoming increasingly important to ensure rural development and food quality for all. Resilience is defined as the capacity of a system to respond and re-organise itself when facing both foreseeable disturbances and unexpected events. Hence, resilient farm systems are expected to develop and reinforce their capacity to adapt to climate change, as well as to other shocks. This research aims at both assessing resilience at a farm system level and building resilience through farms adaptive strategies in the particular case of the Canton de Vaud in Switzerland. We did carry both a quantitative and a qualitative survey. In order to carry a representative study on the Canton, we characterised the diversity of the farms and selected a representative sample of 100 farms among all regions. K-means stratified sampling method enabled to group the 3600 farms of the Canton in twenty-two strata corresponding to distinctively different farming systems. Within each strata, we randomly selected a representative number of farms to assess their climate resilience. Resilience was first evaluated through a quantitative survey based on an on-line questionnaire describing and quantifying 13 indicators identified after careful literature review by Cabell and Oelofse (2012)[1]. The SHARP (Self-Evaluation and Holistic Assessment of Climate Resilience of Farmers and Pastoralists) tool designed by the FAO (Choptiany et al., 2016)[2] was used to realize the resilience assessments during ten workshops with 100 farmers. Based on preliminary quantitative results, we have engaged a dialogue with the same farmers during 10 participatory workshops, to comment about their assessment of their own resilience, and to identify mitigation and adaptation strategies, as well as on-going changes and innovations at farm and local levels. Results show which aspects (among the 52 aspects that describe a farm system in the SHARP tool) requires and leaves place for innovations to build its resilience to climate change. The main obstacles slowing down the path to more agro-ecological and resilient farm systems could be identified and discussed, as well as innovations that could be implemented to enhance resilience. Agroforestry appears to the most promising path towards long-term adaptation to climate change in this particular region. In fact, strong imbrications between forest, pastures and cropping exist in the Jura (“pâturages boisés”). In the plains, hedges and groves as well as high-stem fruit trees were until the 60-ties everywhere highlights in the landscape. Revival and renewal of such combination between trees, pastures and crops should be strongly supported in the future, and a participatory research programme begins in 2020.

[1] Cabell, J., & Oelofse, M. (2012). An indicator framework for assessing agroecosystem resilience. Ecology and Society, 17(1). http://dx.doi.org/10.5751/ES-04666-170118

[2] Choptiany, J. M. H., Phillips, S., Graeub, B. E., Colozza, D., & Dixon, J. (2015). Self-Evaluation and Holistic Assessment of Climate Resilience of Farmers and Pastoralists. Retrieved from http://www.fao.org/3/a-i4495e.pdf

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Le «Bouillon d'idées» est un séminaire proposé par le groupe de recherche «Développement, Sociétés, Environnements», dans lequel les chercheuses et les chercheurs sont invité·e·s à présenter une recherche en cours.