PhD position - Resilience of food systems; learning from Lighthouse Farm Communities in Indonesia and four other countriesProgress towards the Sustainable Development Goals is challenged by a myriad of disruptions, including climate chaos, price volatility, supply chain disruptions, and pests & diseases. How can we support farmers and other actors in the food system to build resilience to future shocks into the core of their operations? A new approach has emerged that focuses on fostering resilience attributes, also referred to as the intrinsic resilience of food systems, categorized as “ABCD” – representing agency, buffers, connectivity, and diversity. How do these attributes operate, and at which level? How do they relate to sustainability and efficiency? Which resilience metrics can be used to scale the attributes to other communities and value chains?
We expect to learn about these questions from and with farming communities that have many years of experience anticipating and responding to disruptions. These communities have been identified through the
Global Network of Lighthouse Farms (LHFs). This PhD position focuses on the
LHF community in Indonesia.
The position is part of a cohort of in total five PhD positions, which are all part of INTRINSIC (Investigations, Narratives and Teachings on Resilience: Initiating Novel Scaling in an International Context). This is an interdisciplinary program involving five groups of Wageningen University, five LHF communities (Colombia, Cuba, Ethiopia, Indonesia, and Kurdistan Region of Iraq) and five development organisations (Gates Foundation, World Bank, GIZ, Rabo Partnerships and the Rwanga Foundation). INTRINSIC is a Wageningen Global Sustainability Program.
At the Wageningen University, this PhD position is embedded in the Business Economics group and the Soil Physics and Land Management group. This collaboration illustrates the interdisciplinary nature of the program as the resilience attributes cannot be understood from a single domain perspective. As such, there will also be close collaboration with the other INTRINSIC PhDs – and their related groups: Food Quality Design, Soil Biology, and Farming Systems Ecology. In Indonesia, the PhD position is embedded in Brawijaya University. The local project partner is the Integrated Organic Farming System Research Centre. While the in-depth analyses focus on the LHF in Indonesia, joint work on data collected by the other PhDs also enables to analyse resilience questions in the four other LHF communities.
Description and objectives of the PhD projectBefore development organisations worldwide can mainstream resilience attributes, more evidence is needed into how these attributes operate when shocks occur, how they relate to sustainability and efficiency, and which pathways exist for awareness raising. This PhD project aims to assess resilience attributes in agri and food systems in Lighthouse Farm (LHF) communities in Indonesia, and in four other countries. More specifically, the aim of the PhD project is to:
Investigate context-specific resilience attributes for a diversity of shocks, as well as the levels at which they operate, such as the farm, household, or community level Outcomes provide insight into the operationalisation and performance of resilience attributes in the LHF community in Indonesia. Findings also show how these attributes relate to efficiency and sustainability.
Cross-cutting analyses across five LHF communities: Interactions between ABCD resilience attributes, sustainability and efficiencyThrough collaboration with the other PhDs in INTRINSIC, cross-cutting analyses are undertaken. Each PhD addresses a specific cross-cutting question. For this PhD project the cross-cutting question focuses on the interactions between ABCD attributes, sustainability, and economic efficiency.
Design pathways for awareness raising on ABCD resilience attributes. To scale resilience attributes to other communities, sectors and value chains, there needs to be more awareness on the resilience attributes. Pathways are designed in close collaboration with stakeholders.
You will work here The first 10 months of the PhD trajectory are in Wageningen. At Wageningen University, this PhD position is embedded in the Business Economics group and the Soil Physics and Land Management group. You will be primarily affiliated with the Business Economics group, where you will be supervised by prof. Miranda Meuwissen and principal researcher dr Hilde van den Hoorn. The supervisory team is completed with researcher and lecturer dr Karrar Mahdi from the Soil Physics and Land Management group, and dr Uma Khumairoh from Brawijaya University. After the initial 10 months, you will go to Brawijaya University for field work. During this period, the Wageningen supervisors stay closely connected. In the final phase of the PhD trajectory, there is another period of 10 months in Wageningen. Collaboration with the other PhDs occurs through joint meetings throughout the field work phase, especially a one-month joint research stay in Wageningen at the end of the 2nd year.
Hosting arrangements (including the secondment plans)
At Wageningen university, the PhD is primarily integrated in the Business Economics group. In Indonesia, this is with Brawijaya University. The PhD position entails in total 48 months.