1. Understanding the resilience of NSW farmers:
Findings from the 2015 Regional Wellbeing Survey
Jacki Schirmer & Ivan Hanigan
University of Canberra

2. The importance of resilience
Farming is unpredictable – at the best of times
Changing weather, markets, pest & disease, technology, consumer preferences…
Resilient farmers can cope successfully with challenges, and take advantage of opportunities
Resilience farmers are more successful in their business – and happier and healthier in their lives

3. What is resilience?
The ability of a person, household or community to successfully adapt to adversity and to capitalise on opportunities
A process in which individuals adapt and move forward in a positive direction despite experiencing significant adversity
A process, not a ‘state’
Depends on:
Number and type of changes person is having to cope with
How these changes impact a person’s life
Not just about on-farm – what is happening off-farm just as important

4. This project NSW DPI Rural Resilience Program
Importance of monitoring resilience & factors influencing resilience of NSW farmers
Commissioned University of Canberra
Identify best practice approaches for measuring and monitoring NSW farmer resilience
Profile resilience using data from 2015 Regional Wellbeing Survey
Not all indicators able to be analysed using available data & not in all regions

5. Collaborative, accessible
In-depth data
13,000 participants annually
Annual – track change
Many topics
Local to national scalability
Collaborative, accessible
Many partner organisations
Results made publicly available
Focus on rural & regional Australia
Analysis of different regions
Sample cities through to remote areas
Greater insight into regional issues
The Regional Wellbeing Survey

6. Understanding and measuring resilience - Exposure - Resilience resources - Resilience outcomes

7. Exposure What types of challenges are farmers experiencing?
How many at the same time? (cumulative exposure)
On-farm – climate, market, pest, technology …
Off-farm – economic downturn, loss of services/schools, illness, family stress…

8. Resilience resources
Do you have access to resources you can draw on to help you cope with and adapt to change?
Resilience resources together provide you with ‘adaptive capacity’

10. Resilience outcomes
How many & which types of farmers are achieving positive outcomes that indicate positive resilience processes?
Farmer wellbeing
Farm financial performance

11. NSW farmers in 2015 – what did we find?
We measured a number of resilience indicators using 2015 Regional Wellbeing Survey data
Produced a partial picture of resilience
Identified gaps in data
Produced recommendations for addressing these

12. Exposure to climate related challenges in the last 5 years
Drought (severe rainfall deficiency, 12+ months)
Cold snaps (e.g. unseasonal frosts)
Heatwave
Bushfire
Severe storms
Floods
Cumulative score 0 to 6

13. Exposure to climate related challenges in the last 5 years
0-1 challenges: 23% NSW farmers
2-3 challenges: 39%
4+ challenges: 38%
More challenges:
Dairy, mixed beef-crop, fruit/nut
Farmers aged 40-54
Western & North West
Less challenges:
Rice growers, sheep graziers
South East
We didn’t look at exposure to market change, pest/disease outbreak, etc – future measures of exposure should include these

14. Exposure to climate related challenges in the last 5 years

15. Resilience outcomes: Farmer wellbeing
Subjective wellbeing measures examine a person’s overall quality of life
We use validated survey measures shown to have strong correlation with mental health outcomes and life expectancy

16. Wellbeing varied more by age & enterprise size than by region – farmer age

17. Wellbeing varied more by age & enterprise size than by region – farm enterprise size

18. Adaptive capacity depends on resilience resources you can access in your household, on the farm, and in your community
Individual adaptive capacity
(Household/farm-scale resilience resources)
Financial resource: farm and household finances
Human resources: health and ‘self- efficacy’
Natural resources: availability of key natural resources on the farm e.g. soil health, water storage
Social resources: access to support from family and friends
Community adaptive capacity
(Community resilience resources)
Financial resources: a healthy local economy providing job opportunities
Human resources: strong local leadership
Institutional resources: local government and local organisations that respond to the needs of farmers
Physical resources: availability of infrastructure and services such as good quality roads, access to health services

19. Adaptive capacity (access to resilience resources) of NSW farmers, by region, 2015

20. Community adaptive capacity, by Local Land Services region

21. Adaptive capacity varies by age
Farmers aged 65+ report best access to community, social and natural resources
Younger farmers report better access to human resources (health and skills)
Farmers aged report poorest access to 6 of 8 resources (particularly social, community resources)

22. Community scale resilience resources Financial (blue), Human (green), Physical (brown), Institutional (pink) Western poorer access to all four. Central Tablelands higher access to most.

23. Supporting personal resilience Which resilience resources best predict high farmer wellbeing?
The resilience resources that contributed most to farmer wellbeing were (i) human resources – self-efficacy, (ii) social resources, (iii) institutional resources, (iv) human resources – health, and (v) financial resources.

24. Supporting personal resilience What actions are important?
To increase the personal resilience of farmers, our results suggest it is particularly critical to help farmers build and maintain self-efficacy (skills, knowledge, and capability) and a wide range of social networks. While supporting farmer health and farm finances in difficult times is also important, building self-efficacy and social resources provides resources farmers can draw on to help maintain other resilience resources in difficult times, including farm finances and health.

25. Supporting business resilience What helps support positive farm business performance?
Having good access to financial resources, self-efficacy and social resources, and living in a safe community, predict positive business performance
What about specific interventions to improve farm planning and management processes?

26. Supporting business resilience Forward planning for risks, monitoring outcomes and updating plans, and discussing farm planning with others all matter

27. Monitoring and evaluation What is needed going forward
Rapid assessment of emerging ‘exposure’
We developed recommendations
Proposal to trial these and further develop
Monitor access to resilience resources
This changes more slowly
Monitor regularly to identify change
We have suggested multiple indicators
Intervention
Design interventions to build farmer self-efficacy, social connections, health and financial resources
More research into monitoring effectiveness of existing interventions, and applying learnings to designing future interventions