Chapter 4: Where Do I Start?
Developing farm and farm family risk management and resilience skills is no easy task. The system is complex, and it will take time to determine needs and identify strategies that will help support farms, farmers, and farm families using multiple systemic approaches. Developing risk management and resilience skills is also exacerbated by the lack of resources grounded in the socio-ecological approach. Tools and programming will need to be adapted to take into consideration risk and resilience approaches as well as the socio-ecological systems that support the farms, their families and workers, and the communities in which they live.
So where do you start?
S T R A T E G I C P L ANN I N G
Strategies to build resilience and strengthen resilience thinking and practice include:
1. Consider the value of resilience thinking to the farmers, farm families, and communities with whom you provide education and other professional services. Weigh how the approach might reduce the negative impact of stress and crises among those you serve. 2. Broaden self-understanding of the interconnectedness between the ecological, social, and relational factors that affect farming operations and the human capital and the abilities of farm family members to manage change and stress. Expanded learning can increase professional expertise. 3. Discuss with colleagues the appropriateness for, and feasibility of, incorporating resilience thinking into educational programs and other services. Peer learning can increase confidence in adapting current programming to a resilience framework. 4. Determine how you and other professionals can provide or expand a network of supportive professionals and peers that can support farmers and farm families in good times and in tough times. This approach will help strengthen the social support network and communities of place, in which farming occurs, interest and practice. 5. Begin and/or continue to provide research-based or informed, theory-driven strategies that help build knowledge, confidence, skills, and behavior change with respect to best management practices regarding environmental, agricultural, marketing, financial, production, health, and well-being. The approach needs to recognize it’s not just about the best practice but also about the guidance for planning a nd adopting new practices and resilience capability that will enhance the farm and farm family’s resilience thinking and vitality in the short and long term.
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