As a consequence, farming systems address multiple and sometimes competing objectives like increasing production, improving the quality of farmers’ livelihoods, and enhancing environmental sustainability. In trying to meet these objectives, farming systems in Europe are facing an increasingly broad range of environmental, economic, social and institutional challenges . Operating in this complex environment requires stakeholders to anticipate the challenges ahead and to prepare for them by enhancing the resilience of farming systems. One of the many farming systems working towards achieving long-term sustainability in an increasingly challenging environment is the farming system in the Veenkoloni¨en, in the Netherlands. Traditionally, this farming system has been dominated by the cultivation of starch potato in a rotation with cereals and sugar beets. A review of the starch potato production in the region conducted by Bont et al. found that the production of starch from potatoes accounted for up to 50% of the income of arable farms and supported more than 7000 direct and indirect jobs in the region. The presence of Avebe, an agro-industrial cooperative dedicated to starch processing, has resulted in stable prices and demand for the farmers in the area. Avebe is the only company in the Netherlands that processes starch from potatoes and currently has 1400 members that are supplying a steady flow of starch potatoes every year . Avebe receives roughly half of all its starch potato supply from the Veenkoloni¨en. This supply represents about one third of the global market share of the starch potato value chain .
All the starch potato growers in the Veenkoloni¨en own Avebe shares, which come with the obligation to deliver starch potatoes to Avebe . Avebe’s factories process the potatoes that are produced by all shareholders and sell the resulting starch or other products for an added value on the world market. The profits of Avebe then get redistributed back to the shareholders according to the volume and quality of starch potatoes they delivered, and the number of shares they own . So far, this synergy between Avebe and the starch potato farmers in the Veenkoloni¨en has proven successful and has helped farmers to overcome significant challenges thanks to innovation and vertical integration driven by Avebe . However, vertical grow rack there are growing concerns amongst local stakeholders in the Veenkoloni¨en that this success might be reaching its limits and that starch potato cultivation might stop being a profitable economic activity in the region . While the amount of starch potato produced and the cultivated area in the region have kept increasing, since 2000 the number of farms cultivating starch potatoes has decreased significantly. The substantial reduction in the number of farmers, potentially due to poor economic performance of smaller producers, raises questions about how resilient the system is and whether it will be able to withstand future challenges. This paper develops a simulation model to explore how this farming system might respond to future challenges. In simple terms, resilience describes the capacity of a system to absorb a disturbance and to reorganise itself in ways that allow it to operate under new conditions ;. A common way to conceptualise resilience is to think of the system moving about within a particular region in state space in which the system tends to remain within the same “stable state” or “basin of attraction” .
The various basins of attraction that a system may occupy within this region, and the boundaries that separate them, are known as “stability landscapes” . Complex systems are known to have multiple basins of attraction within a stability landscape , and resilience is often conceptualised in terms of the system potential to withstand disturbances without shifting from their current basin of attraction to a different one . When systems are affected by a disturbance, they might alternate between basins of attractions, return to the same configuration after a small disturbance or shift to a different basin of attraction after a large one . Failure to anticipate these shifts between basins of attraction can be costly and sometimes even catastrophic. An alternative to anticipating shifts between basin of attractions is to use simulation models to explore the impact disturbances have in the variables and processes that control the system’s behaviour . Complex systems are characterised by comprehensive mechanisms that push the system toward a particular basin of attraction. When affected by a disturbance, a chain reaction of changes through the system triggers feedback loop mechanisms that either move the system toward a different basin of attraction or help it to remain within the current one . The aims of this study were threefold. First, we aimed to explore the impact disturbances might have on the long-term performance of the starch potato farming system in the Veenkoloni¨en region. Second, we aimed to explore the feedback loops within the system structure that influence/condition the resilience of the system. Finally, our third goal was to use the insights gained to identify potential strategies that might help to increase the resilience of this farming system. The paper proceeds as follow. We start by describing the simulation model developed to characterise the starch potato system in the Veenkoloni¨en. Next, we elaborate on the steps we followed to use this model in the assessment of the resilience of the system. These sections are followed by the results and analysis sections where we summarise and reflect on the main insights gained from our research. The first aim of this study was to explore the impact disturbances might have on the long-term performance of the starch potato farming system in the Veenkoloni¨en region. The results of our study show that environmental challenges reducing starch potato yields were found to have a higher impact in the system and relatively small changes in yields might move the starch potato production and the farmers income to a different basin of attraction.
For instance, to shift the farmers income to a different stability domain farm cost will need to double while the same results are seen when yields decrease by 33.4% over a year . These results support the perception of the Veenkoloni¨en stakeholders who participated workshops organised as part of the SUREFarm project and indicated that the number of farmers will decline considerably if extreme weather events significantly decrease yields. These differences between the resilience to economic and environmental factors leads us to our second research question as we use the model to understand the feedback loops within the system structure that influence/condition the resilience of the system. As other authors have hypothesised, see for example Meuwissen et al., , the apparent resilience of the farming system in the Veenkoloni¨en is probably driven by its relation with Avebe. The simulation results indicate that this symbiotic relationship between Avebe and the farmers is indeed an enabler of resilience to economic challenges and that there is a clear difference in the system resilience to those disturbances the ‘cooperative benefit’ can help with and those it cannot. It is important to highlight that resilience resulting from this symbiotic relationship between farmers and Avebe might be bounded by other mechanisms. For example, when considering Avebe’s financial position it can be seen that the same cash reserves used by Avebe to support farmers during difficult times are also needed for innovation that is required to increase product value and maintain farmers’ competitiveness in the future. When yields are low R2 takes priority over R3 and R6. In those years, profit will be invested in paying the right price, rather than in innovation . However, if the disturbances are too severe, Avebe loses its ability to innovate as it depletes its cash reserves. When this threshold is crossed, the system experiences larger impacts for longer times and moves to new basins of attraction that are likely to be unsustainable for both Avebe and the farmers.
While resilience is often associated with sustainability, there are some scenarios in which resilience might undermine the sustainability of the system sustainability. For instance, resilience can be improved in the short term , at the expense of resilience and sustainability in the long term . This phenomenon occurs when the sustainability goals of policy makers are in conflict with the productivity goals of other actors in agricultural systems, including the farmers and agro-industries . Finding a right balance between sustainability and resilience is an important aspect of the dynamics between farmers and cooperatives that is not only relevant to the Veenkoloni¨en but also to other farming systems in Europe. It is also a clear example that decisions actors make regarding their resources are not only relevant for resilience in the short term, but also on the long term.First, it can be noticed that the number of cases in which the system remains within the same basin of attraction increases with the implementation of any of the resilience enhancing strategies that we tested. It can thus can be concluded that all the strategies could be expected to increase,vertical grow table to some extent, the size of the disturbance the system can withstand and hence increase resilience. The results also show that the proposed strategies are less effective for increasing resilience to environmental disturbances than to economic ones . This difference can be seen in the difference between the areas covered by open dots in Fig. 8A – 8F and the same area in Fig. 8G – 8L . For instance, a decrease of starch potato in the crop rotation by over 40%, or a decrease of the average yields by more than 30% , always resulted in a system shift to a different basin of attraction, regardless of how aggressively/successfully the strategies could be implemented. Finally, the results in Fig. 8 also show that S1 and S3 outperform S2 in their effectiveness for increasing resilience to all the disturbances examined.
The only considerable difference between the S1 and S3 was observed when analysing the resilience of the system to an increase in production costs of starch potato . In this case S1 outperforms S3 considerably and even moderate increases in the starch content increased the resilience of the system considerably. An important aspect of our analysis that requires further consideration is the role of randomness in the occurrence of extreme weather events. Currently we assumed equal probabilities for all potential disturbances in the tested intervals of magnitude and duration, but we recognise that some events are more likely than others. Introducing the effect of random events in the analysis might change not only our conclusions about the resilience of the system but also our observations regarding the effectiveness of strategies. Similarly, analysing the impact of stochasticity on innovation breakthroughs could also reveal new insights about the farming system and its potential development. Structural transformation is a fundamental challenge in economic development and key to overcoming food insecurity and poverty for the millions of households that work in agriculture . An extensive literature demonstrates the variety of constraints that hinder the transition of rural farms from subsistence to commercial production. Among these are price uncertainty , access to credit , and a lack of technical knowledge . These constraints affect input demand, as well as yields, sales, and income, contributing to the perpetuation of the agrarian status quo. Vertical coordination has the potential for fostering structural transformation of rural economies . In recent years, contract farming has emerged as a popular mechanism to encourage such vertical coordination . Farm production contracts can shift risk and the need for initial capital from small farming households to medium and large processors who are better able to manage these issues. In return, firms secure a stream of quality inputs for processing. While many see contract farming as a way to spur rural structural transformation and growth in local economies, the view is far from universal.As Bellemare and Bloem and Ton et al. point out, one reason for the lack of consensus on the impacts of contract farming in developing countries is that, up till now, studies have relied exclusively on observational data, and many have been limited to cross-sectional data. We present results from the first field experiment on contract farming in a developing country context.