A qualitative investigation of resilience among small farms in western Washington: experiences during the first growing season of COVID-19

Abstract

The 2020 growing season presented new and significant challenges for farmers and farms across the United States as they navigated the COVID-19 pandemic. Washington State has rich and diverse agriculture and as such serves as a microcosm to explore the experiences of farms in the US during the pandemic. The purpose of this study was to qualitatively assess the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on directly marketing small farms in western Washington State, with a focus on farmers' experiences with resilience. I conducted in-depth, semi-structured interviews with 15 farmers and used thematic analysis to explore impacts of the pandemic, responses to the pandemic, and values and perceptions related to small farms. Interviewees provided insights on the impacts of the pandemic on their daily farm operations, marketing channels, demand, and revenue. Farmers also reported shifting personal and public attitudes towards small farms during the pandemic. Product diversity, flexibility, support, values, and access to resources emerged as themes related to drivers of COVID-19 impacts and farm adaptations. In analyzing interview data, farmers’ experiences during COVID-19 were compared to existing frameworks on farm resilience. Farms in this study demonstrated resilience via buffer and adaptive capabilities. Farmers discussed resilience via transformative capability in the context of the collective power of small farms to shape future food systems. Future research on the resilience of small farms should focus on ways to both promote resilience attributes and facilitate the ability of farmers to act on resilience capabilities.