Acceso usuarios
Barcelona, España
The European agricultural sector faces growing economic, environmental, and social challenges threatening farm viability, including market volatility, climate change, and crises such as the COVID-19 pandemic. Adapting to these pressures requires dynamically operationalising farm resilience, yet research on resilience in EU farming systems remains limited, particularly in the case of Catalan farms. This study examines the interplay between social, economic, and environmental sustainability pillars and farm resilience using structural equation modelling for cereal, rice, grape and olive farms in Catalonia (2012-2022). The results reveal unexpected patterns across crop types, contradicting conventional sustainability theory; specifically, economic sustainability strongly drives resilience in cereal, rice, and olive farms, while environmental factors predominantly influence grape farm resilience. Contrary to theoretical expectations, social sustainability has negative direct effects on cereal and rice resilience, while showing positive influences in the case of olive farms, challenging assumptions about universal sustainability-resilience synergies. Furthermore, the empirical models indicate strong relationships between sustainability dimensions and resilience. These findings offer a holistic, crop-specific perspective to help policymakers develop targeted resilience strategies that support sustainable agricultural development in Catalonia amid changing global conditions.
