The Global Centre for Risk and Innovation (GCRI)
Food-system security and resilience is the study of how food is produced, moved, stored, traded and eaten, and how that chain holds up under stress. It joins agronomy, soil science, animal health, hydrology, logistics, economics and nutrition. It matters because food shortfalls and price spikes hit poorer households first, damage health for years and can unsettle whole societies.
Risk fieldWhere systemic stress concentrates across the areas GCRI works in. Illustrative levels, not findings.
The Food Nexus field covers food-system security and resilience from land and production through supply chains, nutrition and access. Experts in it study questions such as agricultural production and food security and access, with methods such as agricultural, soil and food science as well as ecology and biodiversity science. Its counterparts at GRF and GRA look at the same systems through governance and finance.
Fig.How GCRI, GRF and GRA share one field while the authorities decide. Design, not a record.
The working screen behind this subject: its structure, terms and states. Names are placeholders and values illustrative.
Experts describe food security through four linked dimensions. Resilience is the capacity of the system to keep delivering on all four when shocked, and to recover.
Domestic production, stocks and imports together meet need.
Incomes, prices, markets and social protection let households buy or produce food.
Diet quality, safe water, sanitation and food safety let the body use what is eaten.
The first three hold through seasons, shocks and crises.
Agriculture is the largest user of freshwater and land, a major source of employment in many economies and a direct link between ecosystems and human health. Disruption to food systems raises poverty, worsens child undernutrition and can contribute to displacement and unrest. Equally, food systems drive change in others: land conversion affects biodiversity, fertilizer use affects water quality, and production and loss affect greenhouse gas emissions.
Because food systems are global, a local shock can have distant consequences. Export restrictions, port closures or a disease outbreak in a major producing region pass through world markets to importing countries within weeks.
How climate, soils, water, pests and disease shape yields. See agricultural production and soil and land.
Which routes, stocks and markets carry food, and where they are concentrated. See food trade and markets and storage and cold chain.
Who cannot afford an adequate diet and why. See food security and access.
How shocks combine and cascade. See food system shocks and dependencies and consequences.
Each term as this page uses it. Where a standard-setting body defines the term, the wording follows that body.
| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| Acute food insecurity | Food insecurity severe enough to threaten lives or livelihoods at a given time, classified in five phases by the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification. |
| Yield gap | The difference between the yield farmers achieve and the yield attainable with the best adapted varieties and management under the same climate and soil. |
| Food loss | Food that leaves the supply chain between harvest and retail, distinct from food waste at retail, food service and household level. |
| Systemic risk | Risk arising from the interactions and dependencies within and between systems, where a shock can propagate and threaten the functioning of the whole. |
Food links directly to the work of Water Nexus, Energy Nexus, Climate and Hazards and Biodiversity Nexus at The Global Centre for Risk and Innovation (GCRI). Governance of land and climate is convened at Climate and Nature Governance, and the financial view of agricultural risk is built at Insurance Nexus.
The current service level is R0: information and enquiries. An enquiry receives a reference and names the next step; applications, payments, compute allocations and registrations open only when their team, terms and review capacity exist.