Farming on the margins : Just transition and the resilience of peripheral farms

This is a self-archived version of an original article. This version may differ from the original in pagination and typographic details. Author(s): Title: Year: Version: Copyright: Rights: Rights url: Please cite the original version: CC BY 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Farming on the margins : Just transition and the resilience of peripheral farms © 2022 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier B.V. Published version Kuhmonen, Irene; Siltaoja, Marjo Kuhmonen, I., & Siltaoja, M. (2022). Farming on the margins : Just transition and the resilience of peripheral farms. Environmental Innovation and Societal Transitions, 43, 343-357. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.eist.2022.04.011 2022 Environmental Innovation and Societal Transitions 43 (2022) 343–357 Available online 29 April 2022 2210-4224/© 2022 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). Farming on the margins: Just transition and the resilience of peripheral farms Irene Kuhmonen * , Marjo Siltaoja School of Business and Economics, University of Jyv¨ askyl¨ a Finland ARTICLE INFO Keywords: Food system Just sustainability transition Peripheries Resilience Restorative justice Transformative capacities ABSTRACT Sustainability transition demands fundamental changes taking place at the farm system level. At the same time, many farms are operating on the verge of financial profitability, especially in geographically disadvantaged peripheral regions with a limited range of production opportunities. These observations raise concerns about the transition’s justice aspects. Using the concept of resilience, we analysed farmers’ capacities for transformation in a peripheral context in Finland. The results from our farmer survey (n =577) indicated that the regime exerts a strong cost-price squeeze on farmers, escaping of which is difficult also for farmers deliberately seeking new pathways beyond it. Due to farmers’ dependence on the regime, drastic changes to ‘the rules of the game’ could undermine their resilience. We argue that for transition processes to be both sustainable and just, proactive restorative justice should aim at promoting resilience at the farm level by deliberately building inclusive and accessible transition pathways. 1. Introduction The current food regime has created a number of persistent environmental problems, such as climate change, environmental degradation and biodiversity loss, while it has also driven many farms to the verge of financial profitability. Addressing these problems through a fundamental reorientation of the food system—a sustainability transition—calls for substantial changes taking place at the level of farm systems. However, farmers have been frequently described as being amongst the least powerful actors in food systems, acting mostly as price-takers, which makes them ill-equipped to act as transition agents (Gottlieb and Joshi, 2010; Glover and Touboulic, 2020; Kaljonen et al., 2021; Tribaldos and Kortetm¨ aki, 2021; Vermunt et al., 2022). The contemporary food system is pushing farms towards more specialisation, intensification and growth to keep up with the cost-price squeeze (van der Ploeg, 2017; Huttunen, 2019; Stringer et al., 2020), while the pressures for a fundamental reorientation in farming are mounting for the sake of environmental sustainability. The traditional approach to confronting sustainability problems as related to production practices (Garnett, 2013) and farm management has been advocated for decades through, for example, agri-environmental policies within the European Union. However, critics argue that many such strategies do not challenge the systemic features that contributed to the problems in the first place (Clapp et al., 2018) and are thus inadequate to address the root causes of sustainability problems. The consumption approach takes a different position, attributing the environmental crisis to consumption patterns, especially overconsumption of high-impact animal-based products (Garnett, 2013; Westhoek et al., 2014). Under this approach, a dietary transition towards more plant-based consumption is * Corresponding author. E-mail address: [email protected] (I. Kuhmonen). Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Environmental Innovation and Societal Transitions journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/eist https://doi.org/10.1016/j.eist.2022.04.011 Received 8 November 2021; Received in revised form 3 April 2022; Accepted 22 April 2022 Environmental Innovation and Societal Transitions 43 (2022) 343–357 344 the most critical solution to address the sustainability problems of the food system. However, the dietary transition translates as a threat to the livelihood of especially many peripheral regions where farms and farmers lack feasible production and employment alternatives due to unfavourable growing conditions and paucity of non-agricultural jobs (Kaljonen et al., 2019; Kuhmonen and Kuhmonen, 2019; Huan-Niemi et al., 2020; Yli-Viikari et al., 2021; Puupponen et al., 2022). The problem with both productionand consumption-oriented perspectives is that they do not address questions of power and agency that are fundamental elements of the unsustainability of the contemporary food system (Neufeld et al., 2020). Accordingly, as Garnett (2013, 34) states: “The concern lies not just with production, and not just with consumption: it is the outcome of unequal relationships between and amongst producers and consumers, across and within countries and communities.” Yet the questions of power, agency and social justice have received limited research interest in relation to initiatives promoting sustainability and climate change mitigation amongst food systems (Clapp et al., 2018; Janker et al., 2018). To this end, an emerging area of ‘just transitions’ research has been gaining a stronger foothold amongst the sustainability transitions literature (Newell and Mulvaney, 2013; McCauley and Heffron, 2018; K¨ ohler et al., 2019). In the context of food systems, research on just sustainability transitions draws from existing scholarship on food justice, which is devoted to studying power and agency in food system, food system transformation, and distribution of harms and benefits of food system activities across various social groups and spatial scales (Gottlieb and Joshi, 2010; Cadieux and Slocum, 2015; Kortetm¨ aki, 2019). Despite the urgency of efforts to promote sustainability transition within the food systems, and the observations related to farmers’ weak power position, there is very limited understanding about farmers’ capacities to transform (Darnhofer, 2021; Vermeulen et al., 2018). In this study, we examine the transformative capacities of farmers in a peripheral context to understand how they are positioned relative to the prospective sustainability transition. We operationalise farmers’ transformative capacities through the concept of resilience: by referring to resilience as persistence, adaptability, and transformability (Folke et al., 2010; Meuwissen et al., 2019), we analyse the ‘fit’ of farms with the external system, characterised by rigidity and path-dependency on the one hand and mounting pressures for a disruptive transition on the other. The concept of resilience allows us to move beyond analysis of production lines or practices to be promoted or debilitated and analyse the position of farms as parts of the food system: whether and under which conditions peripheral farms can participate in the main function of food systems—food production. We discuss our findings in the context of just transition, which addresses social inequalities and tensions related to transition processes along the dimensions of distributive, procedural, recognitive, cosmopolitan and restorative justice (Kaljonen et al., 2021). While the uneven consequences of transition processes are usually analysed in terms of distributive justice (e.g., Kaljonen et al., 2021; Tribaldos and Kortetm¨ aki, 2021), we argue that the concept of restorative justice offers a theoretically unelaborated but promising pathway to understand the ways forward from the detected inequalities: how to compensate or restore the actors’ positions shaken by the transition processes (McCauley and Heffron, 2018; Kaljonen et al., 2021). In particular, we elaborate on the recently developed proactive elements of restorative justice (Schiff and Hooker, 2019) and argue that restoration should go beyond only reacting and compensating for harm created but also promoting the actors’ resilience in transition processes. Our empirical context is Finland, particularly its eastern, peripheral regions, where the livelihoods of many farmers (especially those employed in agriculture full-time) and, partly, regional economies are dependent on cattle production. This is due to the region’s climatic conditions and soil properties being particularly suited for grass production, whereas crop cultivation suffers from profitability problems or from a short growing season (Huan-Niemi et al., 2020). Furthermore, crop production does not offer possibilities for full-time employment in peripheral areas, which also lack the abundant job markets of economically prosperous regions (Yli-- Viikari et al., 2021). We base our findings on representative survey data retrieved from farmers in eastern Finland in 2018 (n =577). 2. Conceptual framework Our conceptual framework builds on three key concepts: sustainability transition, agency and resilience. These are interlinked by the concepts of just transition, adaptive and transformative capacities, and transformation pathways (Fig. 1). In the following, we will discuss the framework in more detail. 2.1. Sustainability transition and the resilience of farms Social systems, such as food systems, may accommodate several stability domains. These stability domains (Kauffman, 1993; Kuhmonen, 2016) are analogous with regimes as temporally stable configurations of a social-ecological or socio-technical system. 1 We understand regimes as dynamically stable configurations of social systems prevailing over specific timeframes. Sustainability transitions can thus be conceptualised as regime shifts (Runhaar et al., 2020) or moves into new stability domains. These systemic transformations affect the subsystems residing within larger-scale systems, such as farms as parts of food systems. The specific transformation pathways that farms take can be conceptualised in terms of resilience. Resilience refers to the capacity of social-ecological systems to fulfil their function in changing conditions, thus withstanding disturbances and being able to adapt and transform while delivering on their main goal (Gunderson and Holling, 2002; Walker et al., 2004). Although resilience is sometimes portrayed as stability, resilient systems can—and should be able to—transform. The strategies 1 A food system can be conceptualised both as a social-ecological and a socio-technical system. The schools of thought behind these concepts have developed largely isolated from each other, but they also share some common vocabulary and research topics, and similarly embrace system dynamics as giving rise to processes of social change. I. Kuhmonen and M. Siltaoja Environmental Innovation and Societal Transitions 43 (2022) 343–357 345 through which a social-ecological system may retain its resilience can be characterised in terms of persistence or robustness, adaptability, and transformability (Fig. 2; Walker et al., 2004; Folke et al., 2010; Darnhofer, 2014; Meuwissen et al., 2019). Robustness refers to the capacity of the (farming) system “to withstand stresses and (un)anticipated shocks” (Meuwissen et al., 2019, 4). Adaptability, in turn, entails “the capacity of actors in a system to influence resilience” (Walker et al., 2004, 5) by, for example, changing “the composition of inputs, production, marketing and risk management in response to shocks and stresses but without changing the structures and feedback mechanisms of the farming system” (Meuwissen et al., 2019, 4). Lastly, transformability is about “the capacity to create a fundamentally new system when ecological, economic, or social structures make the existing system untenable” (Walker et al., 2004, 5). Such changes can imply a changing function of the farming system (Meuwissen et al., 2019). A farm system may employ different resilience strategies over time. The food system and the embedded farm systems are in a flux of constant interaction: the dynamics on both levels condition each other. The employed resilience strategy depends on the transformative capacities of the farm and the farmer—what they can do with the resources they have. This makes resilience a question of agency and power. In a situation where the regime is strongly locked-in, farmers’ choice space becomes substantially limited (Kuhmonen, 2020). The pressures are manifest in how farmers are acting mostly as price-takers and carry the responsibility for mitigating environmental impacts in the food system (Glover and Touboulic, 2020). However, not all farmers are similarly affected by transition processes, which calls for analyses of the transformation pathways accessible to farms. 2.2. Resilience, agency and adaptive capacities Agency and power are longstanding areas of research in social sciences. Agency can be seen as the actors’ capacity to act, and it constitutes power, intentionality, freedom of choice and reflexivity (Dietz and Burns, 1992; Teerikangas et al., 2021). Power, in turn, is understood here as “the capacity of actors to mobilise resources and institutions to achieve a goal” (Avelino, 2017, 507). When resilience is understood as the capacity of a system to achieve its goal, the notion of power in achieving that goal is central to the analysis of resilience. Resilience requires adaptive capacity, which refers to the potential of system agents to fulfil their goals, act independently, and exert their own agency (Folke et al., 2010; Berkes and Ross, 2013; Olsson et al., 2014). As such, the concept of adaptive capacity is practically identical to the concept of social power. Analyses of resilience and adaptive capacity at the level of farm systems require identifying the kinds of goals farmers hold regarding food production, the resources available, as well as the capacities to utilise them to achieve those goals (Rauschmayer et al., 2015). Thus, even though the concept of resilience has sometimes been used without being attentive to the societal context, questions of regime reproduction, or social power (MacKinnon and Derickson, 2013; Taylor, 2018; Darnhofer, 2021), it holds potential in analysing questions of agency, power, and social justice related to systemic transformations (Olsson et al., 2014; Ingalls and Stedman, 2016; Popke et al., 2016) As systems may employ very different strategies to retain their resilience, it is presumed that system actors also employ different capacities in accordance with their resilience strategy. Avelino (2017) argues that transformative capacities are different from capacities that reproduce the existing structures, as in the case of persistent or adaptive versus transformative types of resilience. According to Patterson et al. (2017, 9), “Transformative adaptation approaches take as a starting point that power relations condition the options available to marginal and vulnerable groups to shape their own desirable futures, thus requiring keen attention to issues of social difference, power, and knowledge.” Tribaldos and Kortetm¨ aki (2021) see capacity development as a criterion for a just transition in the sense of whether food system actors can respond to transition pressures. Thus, resilience capacities depend on what people can do and be with those resources and goods they possess or have access to (Nussbaum, 2003; Sen, 2009). How farmers as system actors employ their capacities is a function of their internal goals and the external conditions defined by the food system (Eakin et al., 2016). When the distributive effects of external conditions fall unequally upon the food system actors, restorative justice can reveal new perspectives on mitigating these effects. Fig. 1. The conceptual framework of the study. I. Kuhmonen and M. Siltaoja Environmental Innovation and Societal Transitions 43 (2022) 343–357 346 2.3. Restorative justice in the sustainability transition Restorative justice approach is traditionally understood as a non-adversarial response to harm and conflict that derives from violations of law, rules, ethics, or a general sense of moral obligation (Walker, 2003). The concept originates from criminal justice studies seeking to repair the damage and restore the dignity and wellbeing of all those involved in causing harm (Eglash, 1977). However, restorative justice has increasingly been acknowledged in the field of sustainability, particularly from the perspective of energy transition, nature conservation, food transition and human rights (Figueroa and Waitt, 2010; Heffron and McCauley, 2017; Schormair and Gerlach, 2020; Hazrati and Heffron, 2021). The common characterisations of restorative justice emphasise face-to-face dialogue between different parties configured as offenders or perpetrators of harm and the subjects-of-harm (Hazrati and Heffron, 2021). The latter is often conceptualised as a “victim”, a condition under which agency and relationship with offenders are to be transformed. The Fig. 2. Modes of resilience: a) persistence, b) adaptability and c) transformability (after Meuwissen et al., 2019). Fig. 3. Location of the research area in Finland. I. Kuhmonen and M. Siltaoja Environmental Innovation and Societal Transitions 43 (2022) 343–357 347 process of restorative justice involves a reactive mechanism to address the damage already done. In other words, the process seeks to restore justice within the structures of the existing system. Accordingly, the individual is expected to undergo a transformation process (to move from the position of victim into non-victim) while the surrounding system does not change. Recent proactive approaches to restorative justice have emphasised more anticipatory elements of restorative justice. This means involving a range of actors and adopting a forward-looking approach that is both preventive and strategic (Hazrati and Heffron, 2021). However, to be genuinely proactive and transformative, justice cannot be achieved by restoring the status quo ex ante (Schiff and Hooker, 2019). We further argue that the main challenge of restorative justice during systemic changes is that the transformation is not only about individuals but the system itself. Thus, individuals cannot be easily ‘restored’ with the logic of a system on the move. In systemic transitions, this would mean that those at risk of becoming ‘transition victims’ should also have the opportunity not to become ones. However, the application of the restorative approach to sustainability transition is not unproblematic, as the actors who fall victim to the transition processes have at the same time contributed to the problems that call for a transition in the first place. To what extent this contribution can be credited to the deliberate choices of the actors or just to them operating by the rules of the game remains debated. However, the current financial position of farmers suggests that the system itself is the most crucial factor in delimiting their choice space. The just food transition poses a fundamental challenge to restorative justice; the food system itself is enduring a major transformation which is also expected from the actors within the system. We argue that a genuinely transformative and proactive approach to restorative justice should aim at resilience and capacity building not only in terms of the existing system, but also in terms of the systemic transformation. We now move on to examine farmers’ transformative capacities and then discuss our findings from the perspective of restorative justice. 3. Research design In this section, we present the research design through which we explore the transformative capacities of farmers. We base our exploration on farmers’ self-stated goals and development intentions, which reflect their resilience strategies within a given moment in time. By analysing the resilience profiles against various background variables, we describe the source and content of farmers’ adaptive capacities. Finally, we discuss the justice implications of our findings against the backdrop of the contemporary food regime, as well as the pressures exerted by the sustainability transition. Our study area is a peripheral region with limited livelihood options, thus highlighting the pregiven power imbalances of the socio-economic system. 3.1. Research area and data collection The research area in Eastern Finland comprises three provinces: North and South Savo and North Karelia (Fig. 3). The area is characterised by a sparse settlement structure and rather unfavourable socio-economic development patterns. The area adds up to 18% of the total area in Finland and 10% of the total population, with 557,000 inhabitants. On average, the farms in Eastern Finland are smaller than the national average, and the fields tend to be fragmented into small plots. The share of utilised agricultural area (UAA) in Eastern Finland is 5% of the total area in comparison with the Finnish average of 7.4% (Natural Resources Institute Finland, 2021). The climatic conditions and soil properties are particularly suitable for grass production, and consequently, the role of cattle production is pronounced with 33% of all farms in Eastern Finland being cattle farms in comparison with the Finnish average of 20% (Natural Resources Institute Finland, 2021). A significant share of the yields produced on crop farms are used for feed on cattle farms in the area (A. Huuskonen, personal communication, February 2022). Regarding farm sales, in Eastern Finland 68% comprises animal products in comparison with the 58% average of mainland Finland (Natural Resources Institute Finland, 2021). This study is based on survey data collected during the mid-term evaluation of the 2014–2020 Rural Development Program (RDP) of Eastern Finland (Kuhmonen et al., 2018). The programme addresses a wide range of social, economic, and environmental issues of farms and rural areas by channelling the funds of the second pillar of the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy for farmers, rural firms, and non-profit organisations. A survey request was sent to all farmers in Eastern Finland who had received agricultural support from the programme and who had registered an email address in the IACS farm register (7796 farmers). All active farmers in Eastern Finland with at least 5 hectares of arable land are entitled to LFA support, and in Finland, the support encompasses nearly all agricultural land (Niemi and V¨ are, 2018). As a result, 577 responses were retrieved, with a response rate of 9% despite several requests to fill out the questionnaire. The low response rate was partly due to unfavourable timing of the survey at the beginning of spring but is in line with many recent farmer surveys conducted in Finland. The survey addressed issues related to the farm and its production activities, the farmer and the farming family, farming as a livelihood, environmental aspects related to farm management, and the main types of subsidies received and their perceived effectiveness. The basic characteristics of the surveyed farms are presented in Appendix 1 in comparison with all farms in Eastern Finland and all farms in mainland Finland. The survey respondents farmed slightly larger farms than farmers in the area on average but were broadly representative of farmers in the area. Most of the survey respondents (30%) were cattle farmers (dairy and beef), followed by other crops (typically hay production; 29%) and cereal production (22%). Garden crops, especially strawberry and currant, are typical crops in eastern Finland and had a share of 9% in the dataset. 3.2. Analysis We performed an analysis to understand the farms’ adaptive and transformative capacities as contributing to their resilience. I. Kuhmonen and M. Siltaoja Environmental Innovation and Societal Transitions 43 (2022) 343–357 348 Farms’ resilience was operationalised based on the farmers’ goals and future plans for farming, thus reflecting three distinct resilience strategies: persistence, adaptability, and transformability. The resulting farmer groups were then profiled against a set of background variables to make sense of the various resources and capacities that gave rise to the observed resilience strategy. By multivariate analysis, we identified the factors most strongly contributing to the adaptive and transformative capacities of farms. In what follows, we will present these steps in more detail. 3.3. Operationalisation strategy for resilience We operationalised the concept of resilience according to the three dimensions of resilience: persistence, adaptability, and transformability. In addition, we also identified a non-resilient group. The operationalisation strategy was based on three variables: 1) the future strategic orientation stated by the farmer (closed question), 2) an additional open question related to the farmer’s strategic orientation asking the respondent to specify his or her plans, and 3) freely expressed goals for farming (open question). Out of the 577 responses, 575 were analysable in terms of resilience; thus, the final dataset consisted of 575 responses. Coding farm resilience was an iterative process between the three variables. Table 1 presents the coding principles for each resilience group. In short, a farm was coded as persistent when the farmer aimed at business-as-usual and did not indicate development intentions. Those farms that aimed at developing the farm within the existing operations were coded as adaptable. Transformable farms indicated a deliberate search for a new direction for the farm business by diversifying the farm operations or doing something new in comparison with the existing operations. Non-resilient farms aimed to quit farming by retirement or moving into another business; they did not have successors and their intention was to lease or afforest the fields. 3.4. Profiling farms according to the resilience typology The resulting four farm groups with diverging resilience orientations were profiled in terms of variables concerning the farm and its production activities (e.g., farm size, forest acreage, line of production, business model), the farmer and the farming family (e.g., age, gender, children, education), farming as a livelihood (e.g., share of farming income, assessment of profitability, past development strategy), environmental aspects related to farm management (e.g., soil condition, existence of wetlands and seminatural habitats), and the main types of subsidies received and their perceived effectiveness (adoption and perceived effectiveness of agri-environmental scheme (AES), adoption of agri-environmental (A-E) contracts, investment support, organic farming, extension support). These variables reflect the availability of resources, as well as how farmers make use of them and how they relate to environmental management at the farm level, reflecting the mobilisation of environmental values and motivations. A complete list of the variables included in the analysis is given in Appendix 2. To determine whether the differences between the resilience groups were statistically significant, ANOVA tests were performed for continuous variables for the comparison of means, and contingency tests (X 2 ) were performed for categorical and dummy variables for comparison of the distributions. A set of variables representing farmers’ goals, the perceived barriers in achieving their goals, problems related to soil condition, and the approach for preventing waterway eutrophication were derived from content analyses, as these questions were open-ended. The responses were analysed with conventional content analysis, in which the coding categories were derived from the data (Hsieh and Shannon, 2005). Content analysis allows the qualitative organisation of large amounts of text into a restricted number of categories (Weber, 1990), which may then be analysed using quantitative methods. The categories were retrieved iteratively; thus, the coding categories were detailed during the coding process. The codes for each category derived from the content analysis were given as 0/1; 0 indicated that the category was not mentioned in the response, and 1 indicated that it was mentioned. Thus, it was possible to observe more than one category in one response. A more detailed description of the content analysis is provided in Appendix 3. Table 1 Coding principles for the resilience typology. Future development strategy Specification of the development strategy;goals for farming Persistent farms Business-as-usual With no development orientation Adaptable farms Growth within existing line of production (All) Business-as-usual With a development intention or farm succession Downsizing By giving up extra workforce or giving up animal production; coinciding with a development orientation Major turn But search for a new direction missing Transformable farms Diversification strategy (All) Major turn With a deliberate search for a new direction Non-resilient farms Quitting farming within the next ten years (All) Business-as-usual; downsizing With the intention to move into another business, lease the fields, or retire I. Kuhmonen and M. Siltaoja Environmental Innovation and Societal Transitions 43 (2022) 343–357 349 3.5. Regression analysis To differentiate the strongest predictors for the resilience groups, we performed multinomial logistic regression analysis. With this method, it is possible to describe the relationships and interdependencies of one research variable with several explanatory variables simultaneously. Logistic regression is feasible in cases where the dependent research variable (the resilience typology) is categorical and the independent variables are categorical or continuous. A forward stepwise method with 18 explanatory variables was used with an entry probability of 0.05. Out of this group of variables, the analysis indicated predictors for the membership of the farms in the resilience groups step by step, starting from the strongest predictors. The analysis was based on 489 observations when cases with missing values were excluded. The regression function can be written as follows: logit(p) =log(p/1-p)) =β 0 +β i X i ; i =1…n, where p is the probability of a given value of the research variable, β 0 is the constant term (intercept), and β i is the set of parameters (regression coefficients) for the set of the independent variables (X i ) (Hosmer and Lemeshow, 2000). Maximum likelihood was utilised for the estimation, and the statistical significance of the coefficients was evaluated by Wald statistics. The results are given as regression coefficients (β). 4. Results In this section, we first present the profiles of the farms as classified in the four-group resilience typology based on the distribution of the explanatory variables, and then identify the strongest predictors for group membership with multinomial logistic regression. The results thus indicate how the resilience of the surveyed farms in Eastern Finland was composed of their adaptive and transformative capacities, as well as their robustness, as in the case of persistence. Table 2 Resilience profiles of the surveyed farms in Eastern Finland based on the distribution of explanatory variables. Persistent Adaptive Transformable Non-resilient n 212 176 48 139 Share 37% 31% 8% 24% Description Satisficing; aims at business as usual Regime aligners; aims at continuous improvements, development strategy Experimenting at the outskirts; looking for new paths, aims at multifunctional strategy, major turn Quitters that aim at giving up farming Farm Smallish farms Cereals, other crops Produce raw materials only Large farms Dairy and cattle farms, garden crops and other animals emphasised Also upgrading activities Large farms Other animal production, special crops and garden crops emphasised Also upgrading activities Small farms Garden crops and other crops emphasised Produce raw materials only Farmer and the farming family Vocational education Living alone No children emphasised Younger farmers Higher education Farming couple with children Younger farmers Higher education No children emphasised Oldest farmers Vocational or basic education Have children Farming as a livelihood Farming not that important source of livelihood, small farming income Business-as-usual in the past Satisfied with profitability emphasised Economic and personal goals, barriers in markets and physical environment Farming important source of livelihood, relatively high farming income Growth in the past Satisfied with profitability emphasised Economic and social goals, barriers related to markets, policies, economic performance Farming important source of livelihood, farming incomes are both small and large Diversified or changed in the past Not satisfied with profitability Economic and social goals, barriers in markets and the farm Farming not that important source of livelihood, small farming income Business-as-usual or downsizing in the past Not satisfied with profitability Economic and personal goals, personal barriers, social barriers emphasised Environmental aspects related to farm management Moderate soil condition Good soil condition emphasised, hydrological problems. Prevention of eutrophication through runoff prevention and farming methods. Good soil condition emphasised, hydrological problems. Prevention of eutrophication through runoff prevention and farming methods. Wetlands and semi-natural habitats most commonly identified Moderate soil condition (also weak); nutrient and pH related problems. In the prevention of eutrophication, reducing input use emphasised. Subsidies When assigned to agrienvironmental scheme (AES), perceived no effect, not assigned emphasised Effectiveness of AES: done something new Adoption of subsidy schemes larger than average apart from A-E contracts Effectiveness of AES: done something new Most likely to have opted into A-E contracts, organic farming, extension support, investment support When assigned to AES, perceived no effect, not assigned emphasised Least likely to have opted into subsidy schemes apart from A-E contracts. I. Kuhmonen and M. Siltaoja Environmental Innovation and Societal Transitions 43 (2022) 343–357 350 4.1. Resilience profiles of farms The largest proportion of farms in Eastern Finland were categorised as persistent (37%), followed by adaptable (34%), non-resilient (24%), and transformable (8%) farms. In Table 2, we summarise the farm profiles according to the resilience typology in terms of the background variables. The distributions upon which the profiling is based, along with test results for the statistically significant deviations of the distribution amongst the entire survey population, are provided in Appendix 2. The main strategy of the persistent farms can be characterised as satisficing: doing the things that have been done previously without major attempts for development, let alone trying out new things. These farms were small farms typically producing cereals or other crops (typically hay). Farmers on these farms most often received less than 50% of their total income from farming (typically less than 5000 EUR annual income). However, the farmers were relatively satisfied with the profitability of farming. Environmental aspects did not play a major role in this group, and the persistent farmers were less likely than average to have signed into any of the subsidy schemes observed here. Their farming goals were related to the economy, but also personal goals, such as living on the farm, or a general surrender mentality in which there were no longer any grand goals identified, were relatively common in this group. The farmers of these farms typically had their educational background from vocational schools, and relatively many of these farmers lived alone and did not have children. In sum, the robustness of the persistent farmers arose from them not being dependent on agricultural income, which also meant that they did not have major ambitions for the farm development neither in terms of economy nor the environment. Adaptable farms aimed at continuous development of the farming business while having a good fit with the existing food regime. The farm size was the largest in this group, as these farms had also previously proceeded on the growth track. Half of the adaptable farms practiced animal husbandry—mostly dairy or cattle; garden crops were also a typical production line. Farming was an important source of income for the adaptable farms, typically constituting 75–100% of their total income. On over half of the farms, the income from farming was more than 15,000 EUR. These farmers perceived the profitability of farming most positively. Farmers in this group were younger than average, and they farmed typically with a spouse and had children. Approximately half of farmers on adaptable farms were highly educated. Almost all adaptable farmers identified economic goals, but also social goals such as continuity over generations, sustainability, and contribution to food provision within the society were prevalent. Environmental management played an important role in this group. Larger than average share of farmers managed wetlands and semi-natural habitats on their land. They described the soil condition as good, indicating a tendency for active soil management. These farms had most often opted into the agrienvironmental scheme, which the farmers also perceived as effective. Other subsidy schemes, including the organic scheme, extension support and investment support, were relatively widely utilised by the adaptable farms. The group was by and large characterised by a commitment to farming as a source of livelihood, and a focus on operating by the rules of the regime. To make a living from farming, they had enlarged their farming business in order to keep up with the cost-price squeeze, as well as committed to agri-environmental management on various fronts. Transformable farms also held a development strategy. However, instead of developing the existing business, they were looking for a new path for their farm-based ventures. Transformable farms were large, and they represented all lines of production, but special crops (such as pulses, oil plants, potatoes and seed crops) and animal husbandry other than cattle and dairy (such as sheep, pig and poultry) were overrepresented within this group. Farmers in this group were young, had the highest education level of all groups and typically had a spouse but farmed alone. For these farms, farming was either the primary source of income or constituted less than 50% of income. Most transformable farmers evaluated profitability as weak, and they were driven by a search for better profitability. However, such a search had been ongoing in the past as well, as these farms had diversified or applied major changes to farm operations also in the past, indicating the difficulty to find a profitable direction fitting the goals of the farmer. These goals were related not only to the economic performance, as a substantial proportion of transformable farmers also mentioned social goals such as sustainability. Indeed, the environmental aspects played the biggest role in this group, encompassing management of soil condition and nutrients, identification of wetlands and management of seminatural habitats, important for agricultural biodiversity. Transformable farmers were the most active in utilising the available subsidy measures. Transformable farms encompassed the largest share of farms (10%) that also practiced upgrading of products by on-farm processing instead of only producing raw material. In short, transformable farms were trying to do things differently. The need for transformation stemmed from the efforts to increase the profitability of farming, to make farming a full-time profession, and to reconcile economic aspects with environmental ones. Their perceived barriers were mostly related to markets but also to the farm and its management, entailing issues such as lack of time due to being employed at the farm only part-time or lack of fields. Non-resilient farmers—who form a strikingly high proportion of all farmers—faced a dead-end in terms of agriculture and had the aim of running down the farming business altogether. Non-resilient farmers had a low education level, and they were the oldest in all groups. Even though they were likely to have children, they did not have successors interested in taking over the farm, and thus they aimed at retirement, afforesting, or leasing the fields. The farms were small, and they typically farmed other crops or were in other production. The farmers were mostly part-time farmers, with agriculture constituting less than 50% of their total income, and the farming income was less than 15,000 EUR in 71% of cases. Over half of these farmers had proceeded on a business-as usual track previously, and a substantial proportion had downsized their production in the past. Most non-resilient farms assessed the profitability of farming as weak. Although the majority held economic goals, their frequency was clearly lower than in other groups, and the largest share of farmers in this group identified personal goals such as retirement or maintenance of good health. On the barrier side, social and personal barriers prevailed. Social barriers typically included the lack of a successor or a buyer, and personal barriers included high age and poor health. 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