Using microworlds for policymaking in the context of resilient farming systems

ABSTRACT

Resilience management of farming systems requires building an understanding of the underlying drivers of the adaptive capacity of the system. In this paper, we use the concept of resilience as a framework to understand how bovine livestock farming systems may adjust to challenging environmental, social, and political conditions. Using an interactive simulation model (microworld), we explored potential developments for livestock farmers in Bourbonnais, France, to the effect of simultaneous changes in the socioeconomic landscape and unpredictable weather conditions resulting from climate change. The results offer insights into the potential trade-offs between systems scale and long-term sustainability by suggesting that sacrificing socioeconomic performance in the short and medium term may increase long-term sustainability and resilience.

KEYWORDS:

• Resilience
• livestock
• dynamic systems
• food systems
• climate change

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Supplementary material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed online at https://doi.org/10.1080/17477778.2022.2083990

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the EU Horizon 2020 Food [727520].