Data from 1,000 farms over 13 years prove that agricultural survival depends on being flexible without losing stability

A study by UCO's Department of Agricultural Economics, Finance and Accounting identifies stability and flexibility as the two components of farms' economic resilience and underscores the need for more targeted agricultural policies to ensure their effectiveness

In the current scenario of climate change and economic instability, agricultural policies are increasingly focusing on improving the adaptive capacity and resilience of farms, and not only on promoting their sustainability. This capacity, known as resilience, is actually highly heterogeneous. Thus, if public policies are to be effective, they need to be more specific and focus on their two components: stability and flexibility. This is the conclusion of a study carried out by the Department of Agricultural Economics, Finance and Accounting at the University of Cordoba and published in the journal Environmental and Sustainability Indicators.

Through a novel theoretical framework, the team formed by researchers Jaime Martín García, José A. Gómez Limón, and Antonio Menor Campos found that farms have two components of economic resilience that are, to a degree, opposites. Some farms are more stable over time and have difficulty adapting in the long term, while others find it easier to transform in the face of external disturbances, but are not as stable in the short term.

Given that, based on the two components of resilience identified, farms can respond to external changes in two ways, remain unchanged, or apply changes in the short term (for example, modifying the crop mix from one year to the next) or the long term (moving from rain-fed to irrigated or from conventional agriculture to organic), the key to better design public policies is for them to be more specific and take into account the wide variety of factors that, in a positive or negative way, influence the two components of farm resilience. Thus, taking into account the circumstances of each sector and/or region, policies should be aimed at promoting farms' stability or focusing on further developing their flexibility.

Spanish arable crops as a case study

To test the theoretical framework proposed for assessing the resilience of farms, the researchers relied on data from Spanish farms dedicated to arable crops. These crops, which include cereals and legumes, represent more than 30% of the useful agricultural area in Spain, being fundamental for society, as they are essential producers of food for both people and animals.

Using a database of 947 farms in this agricultural sector, the team analyzed factors ranging from the size of the company, the farms' workforces and the ages of their farmers, to the organic production regime, fertilizers and payments under the Common Agricultural Policy. With this data, collected over 13 years by the National Agrarian Accounting Network (an instrument belonging to the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food), the team verified that Spanish arable crops featured partial resistance, as they showed good stability, but low flexibility.

Thus, factors such as payments decoupled from the Common Agricultural Policy, land ownership, and summer cereal crops were more related to stability. Ecological conversion ensured better flexibility, while farm size, land value, farmers' ages and the proportion of household labor negatively affected the flexibility needed to cope with external shocks over time.

The study shows that not all public policies are equally effective in improving the economic resilience of farms, requiring instruments that are designed to measure and duly adapted. Policymaking must take into account the complexity of this multidimensional concept. According to the results, boosting stability (static resilience) could impair flexibility (dynamic resilience), and vice versa. Therefore, adapted and specific policy instruments are needed that take into account both components of resilience.

Given that the ultimate objective of the study is to encourage farms to continue producing and maintaining their functions over time, policies that consider the complexity of the concept of resilience would result in benefits for society. Jaime Martín García, a researcher at the UCO's WEARE group and author of a thesis that, focused on the ecological transition of agriculture, includes this study on resilience, explains that the benefits would include "more stable food production, lower environmental impact by the agricultural sector, and greater rural development, helping to anchor populations in rural areas that often suffer depopulation."

The study was funded by the TRANSECOag projects (ProyExcel_00459, Research projects aimed at the challenges of Andalusian society, 2021 call) and FARMPERFORM (PID2022-136239OB-I00, Knowledge Generation Projects, 2022 call).

Reference:

Jaime Martín-García, José A. Gómez-Limón, Antonio Menor-Campos, “Farms’ economic resilience: assessment, drivers and policymaking”, Environmental and Sustainability Indicators, Volume 27, 2025, 100740, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.indic.2025.100740.