Violent storms, extended droughts, crop pests, animal diseases – these are just a few of the multiple types of hazards that are increasingly undermining the livelihoods of the world’s 2.5 billion agriculture-reliant people – and causing billions of dollars in economic losses every year. As the planet’s weather patterns become more erratic and extreme, the need to boost the resilience of agriculture to the impacts of such shocks – to protect the wellbeing of billions of the planet’s poorest people and safeguard global food supplies – is clear.

But expanding humanitarian needs, competing priorities and limited financial resources mean that new tools and approaches are needed urgently. More must be done to curtail the impacts of crises before they devolve into costly humanitarian crises.

Study at a glance

Between 2015 and 2018, the performance of 36 different DRR good practices was monitored on 924 individual farms in ten countries (the Plurinational State of Bolivia, Cambodia, Colombia, Guyana, Haiti, Jamaica, the Lao People’s Democratic Republic, Pakistan, the Philippines, and Uganda). A range of hazards was studied, including droughts and dry spells, flood, storms, frost, and pests and diseases. Using “control” and “good practice” plots, the performance of previous agricultural practices was compared against the performance of new DRR good practices. Monitoring was conducted under both hazard and non-hazard conditions.