Resilient Farmers

This chapter considers resilience. In the context of this chapter, resilience is the capacity of an agricultural value chain and its elements to withstand or recover from stresses and shocks and thus bounce back to the previous level of growth and development. Resilience can be strengthened in many ways and at different levels in the value chain through political, economic, sociological, and technological interventions. The chapter shows that there are solutions that combine a range of sustainable inputs, including organic technologies and limited amounts of selective synthetic inputs, combined in an integrated fashion appropriate to the local conditions. These include integrated pest management, integrated soil management, and climate-smart agriculture. Higher up the value chain are technologies for resilient storage and resilient markets. An opportunity also exists for businesses to invest in resilience technologies. African smallholders are businesspeople capable, at least potentially, of making profitable returns from their smallholdings.