Irish Potato Farming on Terraces in Ngororero, Rwanda

Food security is inextricably tied to economic wellbeing. They share a reciprocal relationship in which each paves the way for the other. Just as a healthy economy improves a population’s ability to produce, distribute and consume a sustainable supply of nutritious food, a population that enjoys food security is able to move beyond mere subsistence and pursue gainful activities that improve economic conditions at both the individual and societal levels.

Food security is clearly the more critical of the two factors, because human life depends on it. At the same time, when we work to strengthen food systems—by increasing their resilience and future-proofing them in order to minimize or eliminate the effects of potential shocks—we also lay critical groundwork for protecting and advancing the economic interests of the societies they support.

Unfortunately, those shocks have grown more frequent and widespread in recent years, across the globe. In addition to the ongoing stresses imposed on food security by natural disasters, conflict, and economic shocks, other unforeseen factors brought about ever greater competition for scarcer food resources in many regions of the world. Examples abound, such as locust swarms that have wrought extensive agricultural damage in parts of Africa, historical floods in South East Asia, armed conflicts in Syria, Yemen, Myanmar, and other parts of the world.

New Challenges

Today, COVID-19 has emerged as a new threat that not only endangers populations on its own, but also acts to intensify other factors that threaten economic and food security. David Beasley, executive director of the United Nations World Food Programme, warned earlier this year that the adverse economic impact of COVID-19 may end up causing more deaths than the virus itself by pushing people into poverty and famine because of the loss of income. New fears and travel limitations are cutting into tourism revenues in countries like Egypt, Rwanda, Kenya, and others, and drastic reductions in the use and price of oil have reduced export revenues in nations like Nigeria and South Sudan.

Food prices—driven higher by COVID-19 transport restrictions, slowdown of food processing plants, higher costs for imports and tighter supplies—in some regions have put staple food commodities such as rice and maize beyond the reach of the poorest populations. COVID-related disruptions also are making it more difficult for farmers to obtain basic inputs they critically need to maintain productive crop and livestock production systems. Worse yet, food that producers have been unable to transport and sell may go to waste as others starve.

Governments and international aid organizations can work to address these immediate needs by providing assistance in the form of funding and emergency food distribution. But, what is really needed in today’s world is a long-term approach that supports food system actors to develop contingency plan of actions contributing in improving their level of resilience to a myriad of possible shocks.

Futureproofing Food Security

And the key to this approach lies in initiatives that strengthen local economies. At Cultivating New Frontiers in Agriculture (CNFA), we have implemented projects that serve as examples of how bolstering local economies can strengthen food security.

In Zimbabwe, for example, CNFA is implementing Amalima —a seven-year, USAID Development Food Assistance Program where we collaborated with local communities to build or upgrade 19 irrigation schemes with technology such as solar-powered water pumps and photovoltaic sand abstraction systems. The new systems help farmers provide a steady income from produce sales, protect communities from the climate-related shock of yearly droughts, all directly contributing to improve food security.

The five-year, USAID Feed the Future Hinga Weze Activity in Rwanda works to protect farmers against shocks by increasing agricultural productivity though sustainable land and water use, and adopting climate-smart technologies that maximize the effectiveness of inputs. By rehabilitating terraces on 2,000 hectares of Rwanda’s hilly terrain, for example, Hinga Weze is supporting the resilience of farming systems to grow crops and reduce soil erosion surface water runoff.

In South Asia, when the pandemic prevented Pakistani smallholder farmers from receiving person-to-person information on much-needed agricultural technologies, the CNFA-implemented Pakistan Agricultural Technology Transfer Activity (PATTA) funded by USAID worked with 37 agribusiness partners to develop a digital strategy that uses radio and social media to broaden that outreach and continue the adoption of new technologies—all in a safe and socially distant online environment. By using social media to bring together new networks of often distant farmers and dealers, the effort continues to strengthen the resilience of Pakistan’s smallholder communities, even in the midst of the pandemic.

Tabaski Small Ruminants Fair in the town Tillaberi, Niger

And in Niger and Burkina Faso where building resilience to climate, economic, and other shocks is essential to escaping poverty, our organization is working to enhance safety, sanitation and hygiene infrastructure—a function that is particularly critical during a global pandemic— to ensure that communities can meet the growing demand for affordable, safe and nutritious food.

These initiatives clearly demonstrate that international development projects must do more than simply remedy current shortcomings in the systems that underlie food security. They must also anticipate and put in place the kind of resilient economic and physical infrastructure that provide communities with the tools they need to endure and overcome the next crisis—whether due to changing climate, conflict or a disease such as COVID-19—and preserve those communities’ ability to feed their people.

Sylvain Roy is the President and CEO of CNFA: Cultivating New Frontiers in Agriculture. He is an agribusiness specialist with more than 35 years of expertise in agriculture, business and international development. As President and CEO, Roy leads and coaches a team of more than 70 employees at CNFA’s Washington, D.C., headquarters—and oversees an organization of more than 490 employees in 21 countries of operations worldwide. Throughout his career, Roy has worked to advance the rights and livelihoods of farmers and their workers, and to improve the quality, productivity and efficiency of rural enterprises around the world. Roy holds an MBA with a specialization in Agribusiness from Laval University in his native country, Canada.