Risk and Resilience

By: Swati Malhotra, IFPRI

This post originally appeared on the IFPRI-WCAO blog.

The prolonged heatwave of summer 2018 has devastated crops across Europe, leaving some countries facing their worst harvests since the end of World War II.

The hot temperatures and lack of rainfall, especially in central and Eastern Europe, has forced major exporting countries to import food for the first time in decades. Some countries are facing rising food prices as a result, while others, such as the UK, experience fruit and vegetable shortages in supermarkets.

In April 2016, the President of Malawi declared a state of emergency in response to the second consecutive year of failed maize harvests. Domestic maize production in early 2016 only reached 2.4 million metric tons, compared to the 3.2 metric tons harvested in an average year. The international aid community and the private sector responded with the Food Insecurity Response Program (FIRP), which provided aid to almost 40 percent of the Malawian population.

As fall armyworm continues to spread across Africa, policymakers and development partners have increased their efforts to stop the pest’s reach and to mitigate its impact on the region’s agricultural production and food security.

This post originally appeared on the IFPRI.org blog .

B Andrew Reid Bell, Patrick Ward, Lawrence Mapemba, Tim Benton, Klaus Droppelmann, Jennifer Zavaleta Cheek, Frazer Mataya, and Oliver Pierson