Resilience and peasant economy: A case study in the Colombian Andes

Resilience thinking has emerged as an important tool to understand and analyse social ecological systems, however there are still few analyses of the economic dimension of resilience of small-scale peasant production. To enhance the understating of resilience of these systems, social and agronomic factors such as ecosystem services, production intensification, economic feasibility or the role of institutions should be added. The aim of this research was to perform a complete analysis of the economy of peasant farms as part of resilience, comparing ecological and conventional farms. A mix method approach was employed, including twenty semi-structured interviews and four questionnaires to assess the economic composition and viability of the farms as well as contextual factors. The ecological (agroforestry-based) farms showed lower economic performance than conventional farms. However, biodiversity and diversity of income-generation strategies favour flexibility and self-consumption in the ecological farms. We identified three strategies that could boost resilience at farm level: substitution of external inputs, particularly animal feed; water management; and collective actions. In contrast, factors like land size, capital scarcity and fluctuations of the coffee market limit resilience.