Agrifood systems
[6] Including middle and downstream segments – from food storage and processing to transportation, retailing and consumption – agrifood systems are the backbone of many economies.
[9][10] The typology uses a set of four variables, comprising agricultural value added per worker, number of supermarkets per capita, diet diversity, and urbanization.
[13][14] The magnitude and severity of food crises also worsened in 2020 as protracted conflict, the economic fallout of the COVID-19 pandemic and weather extremes exacerbated pre-existing fragilities.
[15] Economic downturns in 2020, including those resulting from COVID-19 restrictions, delivered the hardest blow in decades to those suffering from hunger, increasing the number of undernourished people by 118 million in 2020 alone and illustrating the devastating impact of a shock that occurs alongside existing vulnerabilities.
[13] According to Béné et al. (2020), there is little evidence of reduced food supply (beyond initial disruptions due to panic buying), which may be attributable to government exemptions for the agrifood sector.
Loss of income and purchasing power sharply reduced the food security and nutrition of billions of people, particularly in low-income and middle-income countries.
Families were forced to shift consumption to cheaper, less nutritious foods[16] at a time when they needed to protect and strengthen their immune system.
[17] Reduced access to nutritious food and a shift to low-quality and energy-dense diets triggered by the economic impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, also risk increasing the levels of overweight and obesity in almost all regions of the world.
Adult obesity is on the rise with no reversal in the trend at global or regional level for more than 15 years, increasing the non-communicable diseases associated with those forms of malnutrition.
[19] Urbanization and greater affluence are shifting diets in many low-income and middle-income countries towards increased consumption of more resource-intensive animal source and processed food.
[20] This increased food demand is compounded by shocks and stresses, including more frequent and intense extreme and slow-onset events due to climate change, which threaten both agricultural production – crops, livestock, aquaculture, fisheries and forestry – and the middle and downstream stages of agrifood systems.
For example, environmental externalities such GHG emissions are easy to include in any TCA analysis due to a wide availability of relevant data.
[21] In 2019, a study by the World Bank estimated the hidden costs of foodborne diseases (from unsafe food) in low and middle-income countries and found these to amount to USD 95.2 billion.
Although there is little agreement today as to a precise definition across disciplines, broadly speaking, resilience can be defined as the dynamic capacity to continue to achieve goals despite disturbances.
[29] Since there is a wide variety of risks relating to understanding resilience, the UN offers the following definition: "the ability of individuals, households, communities, cities, institutions, systems and societies to prevent, anticipate, absorb, adapt, and transform positively, efficiently and effectively when faced with a wide range of risks, while maintaining an acceptable level of functioning and without compromising long-term prospects for sustainable development, peace and security, human rights and well-being for all."
Stresses can result from natural resource degradation, urbanization, demographic pressure, climate variability, political instability or economic decline.
For example, given its reliance on natural processes, the agriculture sector is disproportionately exposed and vulnerable to adverse climate-related events, especially droughts, floods and storms.
[1][2] Over half of all shocks to crop production are the result of extreme weather events, reinforcing concern about the vulnerability of arable systems to climatic and meteorological volatility.
Policies and investments that reduce poverty, generate decent employment and expand access to education and basic services, as well as social protection programmes when needed, are essential building blocks of resilience.
[39] However, evidence on the diversity of food supply in terms of domestic production, imports and stocks reveal that the potential of international trade is not equally well exploited in all countries.
[39] A mix of traditional, transitional and modern food supply chains can help buffer shocks and stresses of different types because the vulnerabilities and resilience capacities of food supply chains are shaped largely by their structural characteristics and product attributes:[1] The limited resources available to small-scale producers and small and medium agrifood enterprises (SMAEs) often make recovery following a disruption more difficult.
[1] One approach is to form consortia, which increase the scale, visibility and influence of small businesses and facilitate access to private and government funding.
[1][2][49] Nurturing inter-organizational relationships in networks or strategic alliances can generate relational, structural and cognitive capital, promote more robust and effective risk management through resource pooling, and improve access to modern technologies and know-how.
Their thematic analysis identified the following 13 different action themes, which are not necessarily mutually exclusive:[56] Anticipatory action is a growing area of disaster management that relies on data analysis to predict where crises might strike and act ahead of time to protect the assets and agency of farmers, fishers and herders to prepare them for widely different circumstances and contexts.
[1][2] There is a growing body of evidence pointing towards the positive impact of anticipatory action, yet it is often fragmented, incomplete in scope, and in need of methodological improvements.
[58] Improved education, non-farm employment and cash transfers will be key in building capacities to absorb, adapt and transform by rural low-income households, in particular small-scale producers whose livelihoods are increasingly vulnerable to climate shocks and depletion of natural resources.
[64] It is an integrated approach to managing landscapes – cropland, livestock, forests and fisheries – that address the interlinked challenges of food security and climate change.
