Economic resilience of agriculture in England and Wales: a spatial analysis

Abstract

Agriculture has a hugely important role to play in meeting many of the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Ensuring the economic resilience of farms and improving their capacity to respond to a wide range of challenges is key if agriculture is to contribute positively to achieving SDGs and sustainable growth. This paper aims to calculate the economic vulnerability and resilience of agriculture in England and Wales (UK), by analysing individual farm business data and using it to compute an aggregated agricultural resilience index at regional level across the two countries. The results of our analysis are visualised as maps, showing the geographical distribution of the input indicators and the final composite resilience index. We argue that this type of spatio-economic approach is useful for understanding the geography of agricultural resilience at sub-national levels, which could be valuable for helping to inform decisions and formulate strategies for promoting sustainable agriculture.