Finding Common Ground: Defining Agricultural Viability and Streamlining Multi-organization Data Collection

Abstract

In 2011, the state of Washington created the Voluntary Stewardship Program (VSP), a collaborative and incentive-based approach to land-use management with the goal of protecting critical areas while maintaining and improving the viability of agriculture. Agricultural viability is an attractive ideal supported by a variety of stakeholder groups. Narrowly defined, agricultural viability is the ability of a farmer or a group of farmers to maintain an economically viable farm business. Yet, many feel this definition does not go far enough to reflect the long-term viability of agriculture in a community. It is, however, difficult to develop a broader shared definition and strategies to evaluate successful implementation of programs to achieve viability across multiple organizations. This paper explores how one county in Washington state organized a multistakeholder engagement process, employing the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Agricultural and Marketing Service (AMS) Toolkit (Thilmany McFadden et al., 2016) to define and measure agricultural viability. The process included collaborative design and implementation of an agricultural viability survey in San Juan County, Washington. We frame our reflective piece within

Impact assessment of direct payments of EU common agricultural policy on economic resilience of agriculture

“…Viability is a key term in discussions about the survival of farms (Christensen & Limbach, 2019). Viability, in its strictest business definition, is the ability of a business to cover its costs of production as well as provide a rate of return for the capital invested (Besupariene & Miceikiene, 2020); however, there is no universally agreed definition yet (Spicka et al, 2019).…”

“…However, together with profitability, efficiency or productivity, and solvency are the other two dimensions frequently used to assess farm viability (Savickienė & Slavickienė, 2012;. Therefore, this dissertation will follow the majority of authors and use indicators reflecting all three areas, namely, farm profitability (Koleda & Lace, 2010;Boyce, 2000;Miceikienė & Girdžiūtė, 2016;Valko, Fekete & Ildiko, 2017;Blazkova and Dvoulety 2018;Christensen & Limbach, 2019;Baležentis et al, 2019;Tzouramani et al, 2020;Coppola et al, 2020;Volkov et al, 2021), solvency (Boyce, 2000;Argiles, 2001;Scott, 2003;Koleda & Lace, 2010;Savickienė & Slavickienė, 2012;Miceikienė & Girdžiūtė, 2016;Kołoszycz, 2020;Volkov et al, 2021;Cradock, 2021), and efficiency (Scott, 2001;Savickienė & Slavickienė, 2012;Diazabakana et al, 2014;Miceikienė & Girdžiūtė, 2016). The use of those indicators allows for a sufficiently comprehensive and cost-effective evaluation of farm viability.…”