Please make use of the following resources to develop a better understanding of resilience.  Also feel welcome to offer your comments below.

Useful Resilience Primers

Resilience Alliance website

http://www.resalliance.org/564.php 

Birkes, Fikret.  Understanding uncertainty and reducing vulnerabilty: lessons from resilience thinking. Natural Hazards, Volume 41, Number 2, May 2007 , pp. 283-295(13) - Abstract

Indicators of Adaptive Capacity to Climate Change for Agriculture in the Prairie Region of Canada

http://www.iisd.org/climate/vulnerability/resilience.asp.  Section 2 in the paper is particularly useful in outlining the issues of vulnerability and adaptation in agriculture on the praries.

Additional Resources:

Ecology and Society: A journal of integrative science for resilience and sustainability http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/

http://www.wri.org/publication/world-resources-2008-roots-of-resilience

Agri-food system dynamics: pathways to sustainability in an era of uncertainty (STEPS)

http://www.steps-centre.org/PDFs/Final_steps_agriculture.pdf