FADN

The comprehensive risk analysis of a business such as farming entails questions on what is at stake, how important is the risk concern and how to deal with it. We performed a sequential mixed method, with the in-depth interviews in the first stage (n = 35), followed by a survey on the Flemish FADN (n = 614) in the second, to investigate the farmers’ risk perception, the attitudes towards risk and the perceived usefulness of the risk management strategies. We find that, rather than the short-term volatility in prices, the longer term co-evolution of expenses versus receipts is of a major concern to farmers, next to the land availability and the policy risks. Farmers are shown to be only slightly risk averse, rather risk neutral even. Further, our results suggest that farmers do not consider extensively studied risk management strategies such as contracts, futures and insurances, a valid option for their farm, and put more faith in internal strategies such as the debt management...

The impact of business transfer on family business performance is widely explored in the literature, but is neglected for agriculture although family farms are key players in the economy. We investigate whether the succession changes the economic performance of family firms for Italian family farms during the period 2008–2014. Our results show that succession on these family businesses has a negative effect on their economic performance related to capital, due to an increase in capital after succession. A policy
implication is that support for investments of farm new entrants should be improved.