From Famine To Food Security Lessons For Building Resilient Food Systems

Armed conflict combined with prolonged drought has put about 20 million people at risk of starvation and death in Somalia, South Sudan, Yemen, and northern Nigeria. The international development and aid communities are caught between the enormity of the humanitarian crisis, which demands an estimated US$4.4 billion to address, and the lack of resources forthcoming from donors. Food crises, famine-like conditions, and famines recur with regularity in many developing countries (see Box 1 for definitions of terms). Although the current famines can be largely attributed to conflicts, chronic food insecurity also threatens several other African countries. For example, 6.7 million people were affected by Malawi’s largest food crisis in decades in 2016–2017, and the country remains vulnerable to weather extremes that could create food emergencies (World Bank 2017). In Kenya, food security has deteriorated since the end of 2016 and half of its 47 counties face food shortages (Chatterjee and Mengistu 2017). How do countries prepare to prevent shocks—natural and man-made—from generating food crises? What does it take to break the cycle of chronic food insecurity and build resilient food systems? How have some countries managed to prevent drought from leading to famine? In this brief, we document lessons for building resilient food systems to prevent future famines.

Two years in, the long-term health and economic effects of the COVID-19 pandemic continue to influence poverty, food systems, and food security. Drawing on CGIAR research on the COVID-19 pandemic thus far, this brief presents key lessons learned and policy recommendations to inform decision-making processes around managing risks, addressing structural vulnerabilities, and building resilient and sustainable food systems.

This paper assesses the role of the private sector by using the case study of Cambodia to learn specific lessons for increasing the resilience of food systems in the developing world. In order to develop a sustainable and lasting impact, it is imperative that both market actors and private actors be involved in addressing the new challenges facing vulnerable food systems.

Two years after the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, the health, economic, and social disruptions caused by this global crisis continue to evolve. The impacts of the pandemic are likely to endure for years to come, with poor, marginalized, and vulnerable groups the most affected. In COVID-19 & Global Food Security: Two Years Later, the editors bring together contributions from new IFPRI research, blogs, and the CGIAR COVID-19 Hub to examine the pandemic’s effects on poverty, food security, nutrition, and health around the world. This volume presents key lessons learned on food security and food system resilience in 2020 and 2021 and assesses the effectiveness of policy responses to the crisis. Looking forward, the authors consider how the pandemic experience can inform both recovery and longer-term efforts to build more resilient food systems.

As part of the work implemented by CGIAR on COVID-19, the COVID-19 Research Hub Working Group 4 “Address food systems’ fragility and build back better” was tasked with implementing a global assessment of the impacts of COVID-19 on food systems and their actors, focusing specifically on the consequences that the pandemic had brought on the food security and nutrition of those who have been affected by the crisis. This includes formal and informal actors of the food supply chains (from producers to street vendors) as well as consumers, in both rural and urban environments. Building on this assessment, the task was then to draw on key principles of resilience in the context of humanitarian and food security crisis, to identify preliminary elements of a food system resilience research agenda.

In this paper we undertake an analytical review of the extant literature on the building food system resilience. While the concept of food system resilience has become a topical issue in global and national policy discussion, there is little research on how to develop operational procedures to design and implement interventions from the food system and resilience perspective. This review identifies five major entry points to strengthen food system resilience in the national context: policy, institutions, technology, capacity, and governance. Measurement issues and analytical approaches to studying food system resilience are reviewed. We conclude that while there is a large gap in the methodological approaches to study the food system resilience, beginning with the case studies of understanding specific elements of a food system and their role in enhancing resilience would be good starting point for addressing thematic issues, challenges and constraints facing resilience of the food systems.