How to build a more resilient global food chain

At no other point in history has agriculture been faced with such an array of familiar and unfamiliar risks, interacting in a super-connected world and fast-changing landscape. According to a new report by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the Unit

Agriculture underpins the livelihoods of more than 2,5 billion people worldwide. Given the sector’s innate interactions with the environment, its direct reliance on natural resources for production, and its significance for national socio-economic development, urgent and ambitious action is needed to build more resilient agricultural systems. Hazardous events need not devolve into full-blown disasters; risks need not become insurmountable. Disaster risk can be reduced and managed.

Disasters threaten all three pillars of sustainable development: social, environmental and economic. This is happening more rapidly and unpredictably than anticipated, across multiple sectors, dimensions and scales. Agriculture continues to bear the brunt of disaster impacts as new risks and correlations emerge. Urgent efforts are necessary to build disaster-, diseaseand climate-resilient agricultural systems that will be capable of improving the nutrition and food security of present and future generations, even in the face of mounting threats.

Since its onset, COVID-19 has had a profound impact on food prices and national, regional and global food systems. Movement and trade restrictions have interrupted agricultural labour migrations, affected international food prices and reduced overall production and food chain viability throughout the agriculture sector. Moreover, changing agroecological conditions, intensifying food production systems and expanding global trade are among the factors increasing the likelihood of transboundary pest and animal disease outbreaks and their reach. This brings to prominence the need for coordinated, systemic multi-hazard disaster risk reduction and prevention mechanisms within and across all industries.

MEASURE ACCURATELY, RESPOND APPROPRIATELY

In a rapidly changing environment, it is difficult to quantify the exact impact of COVID-19related containment measures on the agriculture sector at large, and on production in particular. However, it is clear that the sharp contractions in output, farmer income, agricultural markets and trade already under way will continue in the near future. Quantifying and assessing the decline in agricultural production enables policymakers to determine the magnitude of ripple effects along the supply chain, as well as the effort required to restore capacities and build a more resilient agriculture sector.

The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) provides a set of tools and approaches to identify and monitor risks for overall food security and food systems stemming from the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as to assess its impact along the entire food chain. In line with this corporate global approach, the FAO’s damage and loss assessment methodology can present a useful means to help understand how the crisis affects overall agricultural outcomes, and the production stage in particular. While originally applied to assess the impacts of natural hazards and extreme events, it can further serve as a valuable tool to assess the overall production outcomes of agricultural seasons in areas affected by COVID-19.

For the past three years, the FAO has supported partner countries in developing and implementing information systems to assess disaster-related damage and loss in agriculture. The process equips countries with an information system to regularly collect, record and analyse the impact of disasters ranging from large-scale shocks to small-scale, localised events, such as abnormal weather fluctuations. This is reported in terms of damage to inputs and assets, and loss in production flows in all agricultural industries, including forestry, fisheries and aquaculture. Disruptions in the factors of production

ultimately result in a decline in agricultural output and potential food deficits, particularly of high-value, perishable commodities, within affected areas, if not compensated by an increase in food imports.

other IMPENDING DISASTER S

While the COVID-19 pandemic is in full swing, other impending disasters such as hurricanes, earthquakes, floods and pests can compound the already significant effects on agriculture. In such situations, it is important to cross-reference the occurrence of a concurrent disaster in order to differentiate respective impacts during the assessment process, or to account for compound production loss.

At the national level, data collection methods need to be urgently adapted and enhanced, as traditional survey processes (such as face-to-face interviewing) are disrupted by physical distancing measures to contain the pandemic. Innovative methods, such as phone- and web-based interviewing and remote sensing, are better suited to ensure timely and responsive data to meet the new demands presented by the pandemic.

At the global level, existing information systems should be prioritised for monitoring risk factors and actual shifts in production. This includes the use of frequently updated and reliable national/regional/global databases, as well as relevant analyses from other organisations on observed trends related to direct and indirect impacts of COVID-19.

The Global Assessment Report on Disaster Risk Reduction 2019 and the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015-2030 convey with urgency that in an increasingly populous, networked and globalised society, the very nature and scale of risk have changed to such a degree that they surpass existing traditional risk management approaches. It is uncertain when the pandemic will be deemed under control and the recovery phase will commence. As recovery plans and instruments are being designed by national and regional entities, they present an opportunity to reiterate the need for multi-hazard, multisectoral and multi-stakeholder risk reduction strategies.

Best of the old with best of the new

In this light, ensuring that food systems are more sustainable, resilient and better prepared for future crises is an ever more urgent priority. In particular, it will be important to examine the resilience toolkits currently available for the food system, with a view toward identifying those policy measures that have proven most effective, and determining which new measures may be needed to prepare for and respond to systemic shocks. When institutionalised and operationalised at national level, assessments provided via the FAO’s damage and loss methodology can form the basis of analysing the various policy measures. Understanding the scope of pandemic-related agricultural loss can, in combination with other tools, help build an evidence base to identify weaknesses in agricultural production systems. This is a stepping stone towards increasing preparedness for systemic risks and targeted disaster risk reduction policy and planning.

Furthermore, lessons from the COVID-19 pandemic will need to be integrated into wider responses to other challenges confronting the global food system. Among those challenges are the ongoing climate emergency as well as the need to build food systems resilient to multiple hazards and systemic risk; ensure food security in a changing climate, while simultaneously reducing the sector’s greenhouse gas emissions; preserve biodiversity; and control and prevent a range of animal and plant diseases, including those that affect human health directly via foodborne disease and human-tohuman transmission. – Lloyd Phillips

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