Resilience Building for Sustainable Food Production
Resilience building for sustainable food production involves being prepared for emergencies, disruptions, and having sufficient resources. And sustainable food systems and sustainable food resources need to be resilient, regenerative, and efficient.
Specifically, resilience means the ability of a system to withstand shock and continue to develop. And for diverse systems, other parts can compensate if any one part of the system fails.
For example, specific crops are more resilient to risks than other crops. And these crops can be productive in a wider range of climate and soil conditions. However, other crops are more sensitive to their growing environments.
In summary, organizations need to build resilience.
Building Resilience to Handle Disruptions
A key component of effectively handling and managing disruptions is Building Resilience.
And successful handling of climate-related disruptions and other disruptions requires effective plans. So, effective strategies and plans help to mitigate losses and maximize return to a new normal.
And two strategies are typically required:
- A Climate Strategy for Building Resilience against climate-related extreme events. Examples include heatwaves, droughts, torrential downpours…
- A Disruption Strategy for Building Resilience against various disruptions, such as fires, computer system failures, cyber threats, and other threats.
Resilience Building for Sustainable Food: Key Components for Consideration
Following are a few key components to consider:
- Understanding Risks & Vulnerabilities
- Planning & preparing for climate events, extreme weather events, emergencies
- Preparing for short-term, long-term, and major disruptions
- Updating Adaptation plans
- Monitoring continuously
- Testing plans and keeping plans up-to-date
- Calculating & documenting resource needs
- Ensuring sufficient stock of supplies for extended periods
- Arranging and ensuring a stable supply chain
- Transparently reporting on sustainability initiatives.
And the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals encompass concepts to protect the planet and build resilience.
For more information, refer to our Education.
Climate Resilient Agriculture
One definition of Climate Resilient Agriculture is agriculture that reduces poverty and hunger in the face of climate.
So, agriculture and food systems exposed to hazards need to:
- Anticipate the potential risks
- Respond when disaster strikes, and
- Adapt to these risks by transforming to address underlying causes.
OpenDRI
The Open Data for Resilience Initiative (Open DRI) provides practices to reduce vulnerability and build resilience to natural hazards and the impacts of climate change across the globe.
- Last Modified: May 17, 2024