Agrifood systems (AFSs) are highly dependent on healthy ecosystems and suitable climatic conditions, meaning that the impacts of shocks are often severe and far-reaching. Unmitigated risks can trigger food crises with a wide range of consequences including reduced access to food, weakened public health, social unrest and threatened livelihoods. As the world continues to be rocked by successive and compounding shocks, the importance of building resilience into food systems is becoming increasingly urgent.
To strengthen AFS resilience, we must consider different approaches to production and public policy, often with cost and efficiency trade-offs that are difficult for AFS actors to navigate. In an effort to support decision-making, this publication aims to provide modellers, particularly FABLE Calculator users, a conceptual and methodological basis that can facilitate the inclusion of resilience indicators in AFS models such as FABLE pathways.
Including resilience indicators in AFS models is not an obvious task: shocks are occurring in unprecedented ways, and their impacts are complex and difficult to fully predict or quantify. Nonetheless, this brief proposes an initial approach that leverages existing data to build out resilience indicators relevant to AFS.