How does the resilience of your farming business affect its viability?
We all know that farming businesses need to stay profitable whilst protecting their resources into the future.
To do this, farmers and their businesses have had to endure, adapt, and grow in the face of turbulent conditions. Whether it be market forces, societal changes, pests, weeds, disease, or weather, farming is uncertain.
So what if there is a relationship between resilience and the viability of your farm business? How might this knowledge help you achieve better and more sustainable outcomes for your farming business into the future?
The organisational resilience of a farming business has been identified as a key factor in how farmers prepare, respond, recover, and improve after disruptions and unforeseen shocks.
PhD student Michael McDonald is researching the organisational capabilities that support farming business resilience and is calling for West Australian farmers and allied industry professionals to get involved in his research.
What has the research revealed so far?
In 2024, Michael conducted a series of 24 interviews with farmers, industry experts, and relevant stakeholders to identify 15 key capabilities that form an Australian farm level resilience framework. The capabilities fit under the key categories of:
- People make things happen – People are the central to the success of the business, with managers and staff playing their respective roles for business success.
- Processes are the way things get done – Processes transform inputs, which may include methods, resources, actions, or operations into outputs to satisfy the requirements of customers.
- Systems support people doing the work – Systems are sets of elements that are coherently organised and connected to achieve a purpose within the business.
What is needed now?
To be able to parameterise the model, the next step involves ranking the relative importance of these 15 resilience capabilities. And this is where you come in.
If you are a farming business owner, manager, former farmer or agriculture allied industry professional from Western Australia, we are keen to hear from you!
Through the completion of a ~15min survey, we want to collect your thoughts on how you rank these capabilities in your own farm.
What is in it for you?
This research aims to develop a tool that provides farmers with a clearer understanding of cost-effective methods that can enhance their organisational resilience.
If you know what capabilities support the resilience of your business, and how developed these capabilities are, then more informed decisions can be made on how and where to adjust.
Getting involved means you can support the production of this model and tool and be at the forefront of utilising it.
All participant responses will be held in confidence in accordance with Curtin University data and privacy standards. These standards and a range of other details about the research are detailed in the participant information statement, which is available here.
How to get involved
The preferred means to get involved is through an online survey that should take approximately 15 minutes to complete. You can access the survey here.
If you prefer to get involved through a telephone or video conference call (which will require the signing of a research participant consent form), you can reach out to Michael McDonald.
For more information on the project and how you can participate, reach out to Michael McDonald at michael.mcdonald@postgrad.curtin.edu.au
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