The UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) on Oct. 13 released a new report, “The Impact of Disasters on Agriculture and Food Security 2023: Avoiding and Reducing Losses through Investment in Resilience,” which estimates that, as stated in the UN News release, “Over the last 30 years, an estimated $3.8 trillion worth of crops and livestock production has been lost due to disaster events, corresponding to an average loss of $123 billion per year or 5% of annual global agricultural gross domestic product (GDP)....”
The FAO defined disasters as “serious disruptions to the functioning of a community or society,” and pointed out that the worst hit are lower and lower middle-income countries. The research made estimates for the volume of commodities lost, for example, “losses in cereals amounted to an average of 69 million tons per year in the last three decades….”
