Sustainability—Risk—Resilience: How Does the Case of the Good Agricultural and Environmental Conditions Measure up?

Abstract

Farmers are challenged to reconcile the demand for environmental goods, food security, and the viability of rural societies, by negotiating price volatility, land use drivers, climate change, and demographic issues. Alongside such challenges, a new, widely discussed concept of farm resilience has emerged. The triangle of sustainability, resilience, and risk enables the basis to be set for a conceptual framework of Good Agricultural and Environmental Conditions (GAEC). Herewith, it is demonstrated how the proportions of this triangle change; reasons for the implementation of GAEC as sustainability standards for EU farms are analysed. Firstly, ways in which its principles have evolved over the past two and a half decades are investigated. The question of whether and how the GAEC framework reflects its own starting points linked to sustainability, risk, and resilience is also examined. These have evolved into something different, due to success having created new economic actors, seeking more complex, open economic, and political institutions than those provided by a state-centric model of development.

Sustainable Agriculture and Its Implementation Gap—Overcoming Obstacles to Implementation

“…• conceptual frameworks [25][26][27][28][29][30]; • studies about the dimensions of sustainability, including how they are defined and what they comprise [31][32][33]; • methodological issues addressing assessment of sustainable agriculture, including indicator selection, aggregation, and weighting [1,4,[9][10][11][34][35][36][37][38][39][40][41][42][43]; • descriptions of the assessment methods that have been developed [20,[44][45][46]; • comparison or reviews of methods for sustainability assessment [2,[47][48][49]; • case studies and examples of how methods have been applied [12,[50][51][52].…”

Resilience in Mountain Farming in Norway

“…In agrarian studies there is a substantial and increasing body of literature on the sustainability of farming, structural changes in farming, and environmental issues, as well as a focus on the social and cultural aspects of farming and the farming community. In the last decade, a new concept has been introduced into this literature: farm resilience [1][2][3][4]. Resilience thinking is seen as a conceptual framework that points to processes of change and transformation in a new and more dynamic and holistic way, and it recognizes the intertwined nature of social and ecological systems [5,6]).…”

“…Wilson et al [7] add to the concept by writing about 'the five resilience domains': economic, social, cultural, political, and natural. The literature points to resilience as a concept that is able to include perspectives of transformation and change, risks, and uncertainty to a greater extent than can the concept of sustainable development, and that resilience can represent a further development of the sustainability concept [2,4,7]. This paper aims at contributing to the literature on farm resilience through a study in the context of a Norwegian mountain community.…”

Assessment of Resilience of Pistachio Agroecosystems in Rafsanjan Plain in Iran

“…Alongside such challenges, a new, widely discussed concept of farm resilience emerged to meet the risks facing agriculture [2]. Resilience evokes evolutionary narratives, beginning with unexpected events, changes in transient effects, shocks, price volatility, uncertain market access, and complex sectorial policies.…”