Disasters have caused an estimated $3.26 trillion in global agricultural losses over the past 33 years, averaging $99 billion annually, roughly 4 percent of global agricultural GDP, according to the FAO’s 2025 report on the Impact of Disasters on Agriculture and Food Security. The report highlights how droughts, floods, pests, storms, and marine heatwaves have disrupted food production, livelihoods, and nutrition worldwide. It also emphasizes how digital technologies are transforming disaster risk management, enabling proactive, data-driven approaches to safeguard agriculture and food systems.
Between 1991 and 2023, disasters destroyed 4.6 billion tonnes of cereals, 2.8 billion tonnes of fruits and vegetables, and 900 million tonnes of meat and dairy, reducing daily per capita energy intake by 320 kilocalories. Asia bore the largest absolute losses at $1.53 trillion (47 percent), while the Americas lost $713 billion (22 percent). Africa, though losing $611 billion, faced the highest proportional impact, with disasters erasing 7.4 percent of its agricultural GDP. Small Island Developing States (SIDS) are particularly vulnerable, experiencing disproportionate losses relative to their agricultural output. Fisheries and aquaculture, critical to 500 million livelihoods, also face underreported disaster impacts, with marine heatwaves alone causing $6.6 billion in losses between 1985 and 2022.
The report underscores digital technologies as a transformative force for agricultural disaster risk reduction. Tools such as AI, remote sensing, mobile connectivity, drones, and sensors enable real-time, hyperlocal insights that enhance early warning systems, advisory services, risk transfer mechanisms, and anticipatory action. Notable innovations include the Climate Risk Toolbox guiding over 200 projects, the Rift Valley Fever Early Warning Decision Support Tool, Soil Mapping for Resilient Agrifood Systems, mobile-based monitoring of fall armyworm infestations across 60+ countries, parametric insurance platforms covering over 9 million farmers, and FAO’s integrated Risk Monitoring and Situation Room coordinating early detection and response. These tools are shifting agriculture from reactive crisis response to proactive resilience-building.
Despite rapid digital expansion, over 2.6 billion people remain offline, many in disaster-prone rural areas. FAO emphasizes that digital innovation must be coupled with human-centred design, capacity building, institutional strengthening, and coherent policy frameworks to ensure equitable access, particularly for smallholder farmers, women, youth, and Indigenous communities. The report calls for governments, international partners, and the private sector to integrate digital solutions into national agricultural policies, scale up digital infrastructure and literacy, and increase investments that enable resilient, inclusive, and adaptive agrifood systems capable of mitigating the impacts of disasters.
