Importance of whole-farm risk management in agriculture

Abstract

Risk management is an increasingly important topic. At the farm level, it received little attention in Europe. Research indicates that whole-farm riskmanagement approaches, that is approaches in which multiple risks and farm activities are considered simultaneously, seem more efficient than ‘single risk and commodity strategies’. This chapter first gives an overview of risk management and then it discusses the results of a questionnaire survey among livestock and arable farmers in the Netherlands. The survey deals with farmers’ perceptions of risk and risk-management strategies. Risk-management strategies include both ‘single risk’ strategies as well as strategies for simultaneously covering multiple risks. The latter are restricted to the type of strategies currently available in the Netherlands. Next, opportunities for broadening the scope of risk-management strategies covering multiple risks are discussed. The paper concludes by identifying areas for further research in the field of whole-farm risk management.