Our food systems are buckling under intensifying shocks – food price shocks, supply chain disruptions and conflict -- that simultaneously threaten food security, nutrition, livelihoods and environmental sustainability.
These shocks are not isolated. Climate variability exacerbates existing poverty, weak infrastructure, fragile governance, conflict and exclusion from markets. In already fragile contexts, overlapping crises disrupt not only agricultural production but also transport systems, local markets, financial services, extension systems and social cohesion. Smallholder farmers, women, Indigenous Peoples and marginalised rural communities – those most affected by such cascading vulnerabilities -- are hardest hit.
The UN Committee on World Food Security’s High Level Panel of Experts (HLPE) report, Building Resilient Food Systems, argues that resilience cannot simply mean “bouncing back” to previous conditions after crises; instead, food systems need to “bounce forward” to achieve what the HLPE terms “equitably transformative resilience,” -- systems capable of adapting and transforming while reducing structural inequalities and strengthening ecological sustainability
This policy brief is informed by reviews of projects funded by the Global Agriculture and Food Security Program (GAFSP), across seven countries.
The brief offers important practical lessons on strengthening resilient food systems in highly vulnerable contexts across Africa, Asia and the Caribbean. It argues building resilient food systems requires moving beyond production-focused approaches toward integrated systems that strengthen ecological sustainability, local institutions, social cohesion and equitable livelihoods under conditions of growing uncertainty.
The reviews were conducted by the Civil Society Partnership for GAFSP, consisting of ActionAid International, the Eastern and Southern Africa Small-Scale Farmers Forum (ESAFF), the Asian Partnership for the Development of Human Resources in Rural Areas (AsiaDHRRA) and Coordination pour des Actions en Santé et en Développement d’Haïti (COSADH).