Agriculture on the Proving Grounds: Damage and Loss

Disaster-induced production loss equivalent, expressed in average daily vitamin A supply per capita, 2008–2018

Africa

670 mg

Vitamin A per capita per day

95% RDA

74% RDA

LAC

699 mg

Vitamin A per capita per day

99.9% RDA

77% RDA

Asia

308 mg

Vitamin A per capita per day

44% RDA

34% RDA

Agricultural production loss in least developed countries (LDCs) and low to middle income countries (LMICs) between 2008–2018 converts to a total of 994 trillion micrograms (mcg) of lost vitamin A. That’s an average of 7 trillion mcg every year.

This corresponds to 21 million adult men or 27 million adult women going without their annual recommended vitamin A intake. The RDA of vitamin A is 900 micrograms per day for adult men and 700 micrograms for adult women.

^* FAO analysis using data from FAOSTAT, EM-DAT CRED and USDA.

The time to act is now

Disasters are nothing new – not to farmers, nor to the rest of us who rely on them for our collective food security. But the imperative of changing how we manage disasters, at this moment in human history, is existentially pressing.

To be effective, national strategies on disaster risk reduction (DDR), emergency response, resilience and climate change adaptation must be firmly grounded in a comprehensive understanding of the particular impact disasters have on agriculture, including:

Identifying damage and loss patterns.
Providing breakdowns of impacts for crops, livestock, forestry, fisheries and aquaculture.
Building profiles of all types of disasters: from rapid-onset large-scale catastrophes like hurricanes, to events that develop slowly over time like droughts; as well as small-scale localized or ‘silent’ disasters, which are often unreported but can be detrimental to livelihoods of small-scale farmers.
Expanding beyond the impacts of natural hazard-related disasters to consider wider threats, such as pandemics, food chain crises, conflicts and protracted crises.
Navigating the nexus of disaster assessment, risk reduction and climate change adaptation.

Want to know more?

The full report, The impact of disasters and crises on agriculture and food security 2021, offers deep insights into how disasters are affecting agriculture, fisheries and aquaculture, forestry, and more. It offers policy makers useful recommendations on how to create agricultural systems that are resilient to disasters, diseases, and climate change.