The document explores farmers' adaptation strategies during crises, specifically focusing on Danish mink farmers affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. It discusses the interplay between social reproduction, resilience, and regional economic structures, highlighting the importance of local networks and central advocacy groups in preserving livelihoods. The conclusion emphasizes that resilience should prioritize social connections and material investments, illustrating how geographical and economic peripheries can be navigated through relational approaches.

1. Jumping scales and producing
peripheries
Farmers’ adaptation strategies in crises
Sania Dzalbe (Sania.dzalbe@umu.se)
Rikard H. Eriksson
Emelie Hane-Weijman

2. Begränsad delning
Regional Economic Resilience: Resilience for
who? And to what end?
• RER - A conceptual lens to study the effects of economic crises in shaping regional development
trajectories (Simmie and Martin, 2009; Martin, 2012; Bristow and Healy, 2014; Boschma, 2015;
Martin and Sunley, 2015; Evenhuis, 2017; David, 2018; Kurikka and Grillitsch, 2020).
– Macro-perspective on the regional structural features, and a focus on economic growth;
– Regions as administrative units or containers;
– Economic production and output at the regional scale through a mostly firm-centric perspective.
• The role of agency in shaping regional development trajectories? (Bristow and Healy, 2014)
• Does regional economic growth benefit all? Confining the individual adaptation objectives and
strategies within administrative regional borders.
• Focus on economic production yet neglecting to consider social reproduction.

3. Begränsad delning
Theoretical interventions: placing people in the
centre
• Social reproduction as everyday practices (Katz, 2004);
• Relational understanding of regions (Massey, 2005);
• Politicizing resilience (MacKinnon and Derickson, 2013);
• Research Question
What social structures do individuals seek to preserve and reproduce during crises, and
how do they accomplish this?

4. Begränsad delning
Networks and Social Reproduction
• Accounting for the cross scalar networks (Cox, 1998)
– Spaces of dependence (resilience to what end?) - immediate material and localized
social relations upon which actors depend for the realization of their needs and
interests. Spaces of dependence also highlight the emergence of networks within
immediate geographical contexts, highlighting the everyday practices and
relations that hold significance for individuals or communities.
– Spaces of engagement (resilience by what means) Spaces of engagement are produced
when actors “experiencing a problematic relation to a space of dependence, construct
through a network of associations a space of engagement through which to achieve
some mitigation” (Cox, 1998: 3–4). They are needed to secure the space of dependence
and might be at another scale, which would imply “jumping scales” to more distant
geographies.

5. Begränsad delning
Story of mink farmers in Denmark
• One of the biggest exporters of mink skin pelts in the world;
• 798 mink farms in 2020. Most were located on the West coast of
Jutland, in the "rotten banana areas” (Winther and Svendsen, 2012)
• 3rd largest animal export in Denmark (24.5 million pelts in 2019);
• Average full-time employment ranged from 1-2 workers (Kjær, 2020).
• Cooperative industrial structure.
• Local, regional, and national Danish Fur Breeders' Associations;
• National Fur Breeders' Association – central advocacy group;
• Feed production centres.
• Family business - spouses, parents, and children involved.
• On November 4, 2020, the Danish government issued an order to cull
all the mink in the country (17 million mink).
• Compensation deal by the government.
• Only 13 farmers will reassume the business (Byskov Svendsen and Dam,
2022).
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/04/health/covid-
mink-mutation.html

6. Begränsad delning
• 13 semi-structured
interviews
• Farm visits
• 13 male and 1 female
respondent
• Age range (26-62)
• Snowball sampling
• Abductive thematic
analysis
Source: https://www.dst.dk/da/Statistik/nyheder-analyser-
publ/bagtal/2020/2020-10-28-fakta-om-minkbranchen-i-Danmark

7. Begränsad delning
Results: Spaces of dependence among mink
farmers: Resilience to what end?
Material and Social investments
• Homemaking and familiarity
• Farms, machinery, equipment
• Family life (schools for kids, jobs for spouses)
I built this house here in 2012. I’m a nature guy. I’m living in
the middle of the nature. I have a big lake out here and we’re
going there swimming every day, so, no, I am never going to
move from here. And our children have a really good school
here. My wife has a really good work here in the town. [i9]
Family Habits
• Shared conversations
• Integration of materiality of farming life and social family life
• Involving children - reproduction and continuation of mink
farming.
• Spouses doing care labour during busier periods at farms
When we were in the season when we selected [the mink] and
when we were eating dinner, maybe we could talk twenty
minutes about one male mink and what quality he had. You
know, you can do it with children, you can talk about football,
but it is just so special to talk about something that you have
on your own farm. [i10]
Close bond with nearby mink farmers
• Companionship and routines
• Information exchange
• Resource sharing
When we had the farms, every Friday at 12:00 o’clock we had
the meeting. Maybe five, six, seven mink farmers. We were
sitting together and eating every Friday and when we had
minks we were, of course, talking about minks. How the
breeding was? What were we doing now? How can we do it
better? [i9]

8. Begränsad delning
I. Spaces of Engagement during smaller scale
adversities: Resilience by what means?
Sharing information across scales
• FB groups
• Personal contacts
• Exhibitions
• Courses
• Working groups
Some groups are national, some are only local. Mostly it’s local but
also sometimes, you know, the farmers in the other end of the
country are perhaps bigger and it’s really good to speak with them to
see how they do it, because here locally we nearly all do the same.
The same way, but down in Holstebro, maybe they do it differently.
[i5]
Central advocacy group (the DFBA)
• Information retrieval on bigger picture issues
• Resource allocation
• Dealing with the press
• Dealing with animal welfare protocols
Copenhagen Fur made some estimates. They had the finger on the
pulse on how many skins are being produced in the world. And they
had an idea of how many minks there are. But China they can make
five million or maybe ten million, nobody knows. But Copenhagen Fur
they knew, they were traveling a lot and they were talking to people,
you know. They made estimates every year. [i9]
Local networks
• Contesting public ideas of mink farming
• Resource sharing
As far as I can remember, we always had schools and kindergartens
coming and it was always fun to have them. And we also had all the
tourists, that came to look. And some of them thought it was terrible
to have mink and they came in their big Mercedes with leather seats
and everything. [i9]
Informal and institutionalized networks

9. Begränsad delning
II. Spaces of engagement during shocks.
Resilience by what means?
Central advocacy group
• The power of negotiation and the agency to
influence decision-making regarding the situation
remained within the DFBA, in Copenhagen
• The informal networks were not as effective during
the handling of the crisis, because the crisis affected
all the farmers simultaneously
• Geographical, but also economic and political
peripheries
• A need for a centralized and institutionalized power
to deal with the consequences.
After the press conference [announcing the governmental decision to
cull off all the mink] we had a Zoom meeting with Copenhagen Fur,
where the chairman talked about things we have to do and what we
could look forward to, also the prices for the skin and what we looked
at that time was 199 DKK per skin... Copenhagen Fur they wanted to
be sure we know what was going on. [i4]
At that time, if you had a big farm or a small farm there were two
dates. The first date was the 9th of November for the small farms
and for the big farms 16th of November for when you have to be
done with killing mink. That was the first big question a lot of
breeders called me about if they have a small farm why they should
do it faster because, maybe small farmer has one wagon to kill and
big farmer has five. Why shouldn’t they get the same time? Then the
Copenhagen Fur got it changed. [i4]
When everything is closed down, I miss... Of course, I can just call
my colleagues, but we don’t have the same things to talk about. So,
that I miss today, just to grab the phone and say, “hey how is it
going today?” because all of us, we are going different ways now. We
don’t have the mink that is holding us together. [i7]

10. Begränsad delning
Concluding thoughts
• Resilience to what end? Farms as proxies. Preserving mink farming or preserving the livelihoods of
people in left-behind areas.
• Resilience by what means? In left-behind areas, socio-spatial networks serve as resources for individual
adaptation strategies.
• The materiality and active maintenance of the networks.
• Social reproduction understood as daily habits and social relations support economic production and
increase individual resilience.
• A central advocacy unit in the capital city provides distant actors with political, financial, and social
leverage, reducing their peripheral perception.
• In resilience studies, a relational approach to regions reveals that network detachment amplifies
peripheralization for actors in declining activities in geographically distant areas.
• Peripherality as produced and a relational position rather than an inherent feature.

11. Thank you!

12. Begränsad delning
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