Farmer Responses to Brexit: Adoption of Risk Management Behaviours – Briefing Note 1

The UKs proposed withdrawal from the European Union presents multiple uncertainties for farm management planning. However, as farmers have to deal with nature and fluctuating input and output prices, a number of tools and practices are available to help producers manage short term production and market uncertainties. This Briefing Note, written by colleagues at SRUC and the James Hutton Institute,  outlines the results of a survey of 2,494 farmers, crofters and smallholders, run during the summer of 2018, on their intentions towards Brexit uncertainty and adoption of risk management tools.

Findings reveal that most farmers, crofters and smallholders were uncertain around the potential impacts of Brexit on their business meaning they were not proactively engaged in risk management behaviours. Those who had made changes to manage Brexit risks tended to focus on making changes to their production systems, though some were looking to contracts with supply chain agents as a means of ensuring more business stability against Brexit uncertainty.

This briefing note can be downloaded in full  below, and any questions or comments get in touch with us via our contact pages, or email Professor Andrew Barnes (andrew.barnes@sruc.ac.uk)  or Jenny McMillan (jenny.mcmillan@sruc.ac.uk)

Farmer Responses to Brexit: Adoption of Risk Management Behaviours – Briefing Note 1

This work was funded under the Scottish Government’s Strategic Research Programme under the Rural Industries work package, specifically the Resilience of rural economies to key external drivers (RD 2.4.1) and How rural economies can adapt to key external drivers (RD 2.4.2) work.