Are farms in short food supply chains more resilient to external shocks? The assessment of Polish farmers’ perception

Abstract The aim of the study is to indicate perceived resilience of Polish farms during the COVID-19 pandemic and post-pandemic crisis. Hence, one of our research question is: do farmers involved in short food supply chains perceive their resilience to external shocks higher than others? Our study is embedded in the resilience theory and framework with three resilience capacities: robustness, adaptability and transformability. We interviewed (using semi-structured questionnaire) a group of 199 small- and medium-scale farms in Poland. We used statistical methods to determine the differences between farms involved in SFSCs (SFSC-farms) and not involved (non-SFSC-farms). The analysis reveals a higher total perceived resilience of farms involved in short food supply chains, especially in the case of farms which sell 15–50% of their products using SFSC, hence farms combining extensively short and long chains in comparison with non-SFSC-farms. When considering the three specific resilience capacities, farms participating in SFSCs noted higher perceived adaptability and transformability. SFSC-farms represent (on average) smaller arable land and lower value of farm (assets), but plainly higher land productivity. Moreover, they have higher investment-to-output ratio and are less dependent on subsidies. This indicates that small and medium-sized family farms can develop well as SFSCs participants while achieving relatively high perceived resilience, even in turbulent periods.