RUI: Household and institutional responses to security threats from environmental and economic disturbances

This award is funded in whole or in part under the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 (Public Law 117-2).

This project studies how small-scale farmers, communities, and institutions can exhibit more resilience in the face of a complex and changing set of environmental and economic challenges. These challenges include droughts, hurricanes, and natural disasters, crop diseases, political instability, fluctuations in food and agricultural prices, pandemics, and problems arising from low socioeconomic status.

A strategy for mitigating the detrimental effects of these extreme events is to practice diverse livelihoods while decreasing dependence on a single crop or commodity. This project examines the effects of diversification on farmers’ economic outcomes while also assessing whether diversification enhances biodiversity in ways that improve crop harvests, food security, and pest control.

The research provides insights about economic livelihoods that are relevant to populations of farmers in diverse regions, including areas that contribute much of the cultivated food that is consumed in global markets. The project also advances the training and education of university students who will participate in the research.

Much remains to be learned about the effectiveness of diversification and about how farmers, communities, and organizations can experiment with new approaches and share promising practices. To address these outstanding questions, the investigators develop a participatory approach to identify and assess the effects of diversification practices on multiple outcomes, including disaster risk, livelihood capabilities, food security, dietary diversity, gender equity, water security, and food sovereignty.

The investigators also examine the processes of innovation, learning, and farmers’ motivation for adopting new diversification activities. Methodologically, the project integrates field research with concepts and analytical techniques from multiple academic disciplines, including agroecology, political ecology, development studies, and economics. This study also identifies how farmers with different diversification practices responded to recent natural disasters, showing the consequences of variation in diversification.

Insights from this research can be used by institutions who are responsible for guiding and recovery efforts following natural disasters. The findings will also be beneficial for multinational efforts to promote sustainable agriculture in diverse settings.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.