Smallholder farmer resilience to extreme weather events in a global food value chain

Abstract

Extreme weather events have severe impacts on food systems, especially for smallholders in global food value chains (GFVCs). There is an urgent need to understand a) how climate shocks manifest in food systems, and b) what strategies can enhance food system resilience. Integrating satellite, household and trade data, we investigate the cascading impacts after two consecutive hurricanes on banana farmers in Dominican Republic, and determinants of their recovery. We found that farmers experienced an “all-or-nothing” pattern of damage, where 75% of flooded farmers lost >90% of production. Recovery of regional production indicators took ca. 450 days. However, farm-level recovery-times were highly variable, with both topographic and human capital factors determining recovery. Utilizing this globally representative example, we show that engaging in a GFVC impeded recovery via “double exposure” of production loss and losing market access. Our results suggest that solutions to enhance resilience in GFVCs should promote trader loyalty, facilitate basin-scale collaboration and expand risk-targeted training.