2015, Volume 18, Paper 108
ISSN: 1442-6951

Are we @Risking too much?

Bill Malcolm – University of Melbourne and Department of Environment and Primary Industries, Victoria

Alex Sinnett – Department of Environment and Primary Industries, Victoria

With grateful acknowledgment for title and inspiration for content from the much-cited ‘Are we risking too much? Perspectives on risk in farm modelling’ by Pannell D, Malcolm B and Kingwell R (2000), Agricultural Economics, 23: 69-78. An earlier version was presented as a contributed paper at the 59th AARES Annual Conference, Rotorua, New Zealand, February 10-13, 2015. Copyright 2015 by Authors. All rights reserved. Readers may make verbatim copies of this document for non-commercial purposes by any means, provided that this copyright notice appears on all such copies.

Introduction

Managing farm risk is a task as old as farming. The aim of farm management analysis and planning, whether for research or decisions in practice, is to try and anticipate the shape of things to come. The brutal fact is that when it comes to the knowing about the future we simply do not know (Bernstein 1994). All we can do is have expectations and judgments about the likely size and shape of important components of things to come. This makes a role of the farm management analyst one of imagining a wide range of futures in a rigorous way, and pointing out the possibilities. Farm management analysis and planning is a way of preparing for and implementing the timeless adage of risk management: act now as if the future we expect was already here.

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