Extreme weather shocks on smallholder farmers

As hurricane seasons comes to an end this month, the lingering effects on local food systems, especially those on smallholder farmers, often come into focus. For example, short term worries about food and water can grow into perennial damage for next season’s crops.

Many smallholder farmers are part of global food value chain, producing crops for export. These crops include fresh fruit and vegetables, like bananas and beans, along with cocoa, palm oil, and cereals. How such farmers are are affected by climate shocks is not fully understood.

In a new study, an international consortium, led by researchers at ETH Zurich, investigated the cascading impacts after two consecutive hurricanes (Hurricanes Irma and Maria in 2017) on smallholder banana farmers in Dominican Republic. The goals of study were to measure the impacts as well as what strategies can actually enhance food system resilience.

They found, at the farm level, farmers experienced an ‘all-or-nothing’ pattern of damage, with 75% of flooded farmers losing > 90% of production. Looking closer at the recovery, the researchers discovered that farmers who engaged in a global food value chain had their recovery more impeded, due to a ‘double exposure’ of production loss and market access loss. These results showed that exposure to global markets leads to spillover of flooding impacts beyond the experience of direct damage. The authors noted that, "Recovery is determined by both farmers replanting their crop, and the ability to sell their produce and thus generate income to replenish household and farm assets.”