CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2021
| Author | Voora, Vivek Anand |
|---|---|
| Title | Agricultural Voluntary Sustainability Standards and Farming Resilience: Opportunity or Contradiction? |
| Summary | As humanity is approaching and surpassing critical thresholds, agricultural production systems will need to become resilient to face more frequent, precipitous and unpredictable disturbances. The COVID-19 pandemic clearly highlights this need. Although focused on sustainable agriculture, Agricultural Voluntary Sustainability Standards (AVSS) have potential for enabling farming resilience as they have grown significantly in number and market share. This research addresses this unexplored potential by tabling and testing the AVSS resilience analytical framework which provides a spatially bounded way of thinking about farming resilience via the following three interconnected resilience dimensions: 1) intelligence – the farming decision maker’s mindset, 2) conditions – the farm’s tangible features, and 3) collaborations - the farming operation’s relationships. These dimensions are further disaggregated into eighteen indicators to assess how AVSS designs and implementation affect farming resilience. AVSS designs are first examined by benchmarking the eighteen farming resilience indicators against the production criteria of 11 AVSS. The benchmarking effort revealed that very few production criteria require farmers to experiment, develop adaptation strategies and manage the diversification of agricultural production and economic activities supported by the farm. Incorporating AVSS production criteria that support these farming resilience aspects could significantly contribute towards building the general resilience of farming systems. For instance, managing the diversification of agricultural production and economic activities supported by the farm is especially important for dealing with known and unknown disturbances. On the other hand, the AVSS examined also support farming resilience in terms of requiring the conservation of ecosystems within and surrounding farms, the preservation of the growing environment and the continuous capacity building of people involved in the farming operation via training as well as monitoring and recording various aspects of the farming operation. AVSS implementation is then examined by undertaking a case study of the Better Cotton Initiative (BCI) program in the Adoni Mandal located in the state of Andhra Pradesh, India. The study revealed that the BCI training was largely ineffective as only 13% of the cotton farmers who participated were favorable to implementing the lessons learned. Furthermore, cover crops, potassium application and fertilization based on experts were the only farming practices clearly implemented by more treatment farmers. An analysis of the water and food security organizational networks in the study area, revealed that the BCI program had a limited network function and positioning to enable farming resilience. Consequently, the BCI program was found to have limited effects on capacity building and engagement with external governance structures in the study area. These limitations highlight the need for AVSS capacity building efforts to be effective and oriented toward building farming resilience and to link stakeholders into polycentric governance systems by integrating vertical and horizontal governance structures for resilient agriculture, both requiring a deeper engagement with farmers. This research provides a stepping stone for AVSS to enable sustainable and resilient farming systems by examining how AVSS designs and implementation affect the general resilience of farming systems. It makes an analytical contribution by developing and applying the AVSS resilience analytical framework for assessing their effects on farming resilience so they can be re-imagined for building the general resilience of farming systems. It makes an empirical and methodological contribution by providing a multi-level assessment of the BCI program’s resilience effects on cotton farming in the Adoni Mandal using network analysis which has never been used to assess the effects of AVSS on farming community resilience. Lastly, it makes a policy contribution by benchmarking AVSS production criteria against resilience indicators, providing guidance for their revision towards farming resilience. Keywords: Resilience, Agricultural Voluntary Sustainability Standards (AVSS), Cotton, India |
| Supervisor | Pintér, László |
| Department | Environment Sciences and Policy PhD |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2021/voora_vivek.pdf |
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