Farm system resilience during the COVID-19 pandemic: A survey-based analysis of impacts and adaptations among farmers in Washington State

Abstract

The shock of the COVID-19 pandemic caused many impacts in Washington’s farmingsystem including labor, distribution, processing issues coupled with changing economic and consumer practices. In order to cope with these unforeseen issues, the farming sector had to adapt their business practices accordingly. Resilience, or ability of a farm to continue business functionality, is rooted in three primary capacities: robustness, adaptability and transformability. To identify what impacts were most experienced by farms in WA state and adaptations they instated to continue operation a survey was developed and deployed to farm owners and operators in WA state between December 2020 to January 2021. This survey attempted to identify how impacts and adaptations varied amongst farms in WA state based on specific characteristics rooted in resilience attributes blanketed under the three primary resilience capacities. Primary themes from collected data included how impacts varied greatly amongst farms and how different farm characteristics could influence the flexibility, adaptability and rapidity in which businesses were able to respond and/or adapt to these impacts.