13 May 2019: The Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN (FAO) has published a study titled, ‘Disaster Risk Reduction at Farm Level: Multiple Benefits, No Regrets,’ tracking the performance of 36 farming practices with potential benefits for mitigating the impacts of disasters. The study finds that disaster risk reduction (DRR) practices provide benefits that are 2.2 times higher than practices previously used by farmers.

The publication highlights the potential for DRR in agriculture to achieve SDG target 2.4 on ensuring sustainable food production systems and resilient agricultural practices, and SDG target 13.1 on strengthening resilience and adaptive capacity to climate-related hazards and natural disasters.

DRR on farms can save money that otherwise would be spent on post-disaster rehabilitation.

The FAO research benchmarked the performance of introduced DRR practices in 900 farms in ten different countries, without assuming that previously used practices were poorer. The criteria for deciding whether something represented a good DRR practice were: agro-ecological suitability; socioeconomic feasibility; hazard-specific resilience; and environmental co-benefits. The case studies presented in the report include the use of improved maize varieties in Uganda, raising of goats in controlled areas and with vaccination in the Lao People’s Democratic Republic (Lao PDR), cattle raising in silvo-pastoral systems in Bolivia, and tomato and sweet pepper cultivation using rooftop rainwater harvesting and gravity drip irrigation in Jamaica.

The publication states that DRR measures should increase agricultural productivity even in the absence of hazards, while avoiding losses in times of hazards. The study finds that prevention and DRR measures in agriculture are especially useful in avoiding or reducing damage and loss from high- to medium-frequency events. The authors recommend giving greater emphasis to farm-level DRR, noting that such measures have been found to be effective in avoiding or reducing damage from less severe disaster events – “the types of disasters that most frequently affect vulnerable smallholders.”

In a foreword to the report, Dominique Burgeon, Director of Emergency and Resilience Division, FAO, said that undertaking DRR on farms can save money that otherwise would be spent on post-disaster rehabilitation. [Publication: Disaster Risk Reduction at Farm Level: Multiple Benefits, No Regrets] [UN News Story]