Editorial: Food system resilience, disaster preparedness & response

Food system resilience is defined as the capacity of an agri-food system to provide sufficient, appropriate, and accessible food to all in the face of unpredictable biophysical, social, or economic disturbances (Tendall et Miles & Hoy, 2023). In this era of overlapping and accelerating crises, including extreme weather events, global pandemics, geopolitical conflict, cuts to disaster response and entitlement programs from national governments, and food price volatility, strengthening agri-food system resilience and disaster preparedness has become an important governance challenge for many nations, states, regions, cities and civil society (IPES 2023; Ryan These growing pressures are being compounded by rapid, uneven, and multiple shocks transmitted through global commodity chains (Fan et al. 2021) with disproportionate impacts on tens of millions of poor, food insecure, and vulnerable people globally. Over the last decade alone, for example, shocks to global commodity chains affecting food security, nutrition, economics, and public health have increased significantly. Narayan et al. (2024) synthesize the evidence that extreme events, including droughts, floods, heatwaves, storms, and related hazards, drive food insecurity through production losses, damage to critical infrastructure and supply chains, impact to livelihoods, income shocks, and market disruptions that trigger food price spikes and reduced affordability, access, and consumption of quality foods. These impacts on food insecurity are amplified where poverty, conflict, and weak social safety nets already exist, thus disproportionately affecting socio-economically vulnerable populations (Hasegawa et al. 2021;Narayan et al. 2024).Key examples of global shocks to the agri-food system in the last decade include the COVID-19 pandemic, during which pandemic-related economic disruptions (e.g., widespread income loss and reduced purchasing power) coincided with a sharp increase in moderate or severe food insecurity (UNICEF 2021). The resulting impact was an increase to a total of 2.37 billion food insecure people in 2020, an estimated 320 million more than the pre-pandemic period in 2019 (UNICEF 2021). Other large-scale biophysical shocks to food systems include the 2015-2016 El Niño, affecting agriculture, food security, and nutrition for more than 60 million people worldwide (FAO 2016). Further examples include the 2022 Pakistan mega-flood, which affected 33 million people (MPDSI 2022), and the 2023-2024 Southern Africa drought, which the World Food Program estimated created an additional 27 million food insecure people (WFP 2024). Recent global estimates reveal that about 2.3 billion people experienced moderate or severe food insecurity in 2024, and an estimated 673 million faced hunger (UNICEF 2025).Biophysical risks and impacts driven by climate destabilization are expected to accelerate this century because current global commitments are not on track to keep anthropogenic warming below 1.5°C (IPCC 2023). Instead, current international climate pledges are projected to result in 2.3-2.5°C of warming by 2100, a level of anthropogenic climate forcing associated with substantially greater impacts on the frequency and intensity of extreme events and heightened risks to food security (IPCC 2023; UNEP 2025; Ripple et al. 2025).The implications and risks of this rapid and global ecological change are increasingly clear: achieving food system resilience and disaster preparedness is not a sectoral concern, but a cross-cutting societal need and capacity that will depend upon on backing and scaling integrated research, education, planning, policy design, and sustained public investment (Miles and Hoy 2023), especially where climate change is already intensifying risks to equitable food availability, access, stability and utilization (IPCC 2019; IPCC 2022) There is also growing evidence that agri-food systems can be redesigned intentionally to reduce vulnerability, prepare for shocks, and support recovery through policies, programs, and community-based initiatives (Blay-Palmer et al., 2021; Miles and Hoy, 2023; Campbell et al., 2022;McDaniel et al., 2021). While the most successful mechanisms of change continue to be uncovered and many are context-dependent, understanding how resilience can be enhanced and sustained across scales is a key area for research and practice A practical food system resilience and disaster preparedness framework: from principles to measurable preparedness Emerging from the published peer-reviewed literature is a suite of food system resilience and disaster preparedness attributes and principles that translate into implementable actions and measurable outcomes. Food systems with these elements have been shown to be more resilient in the face of shocks (Worstell & Green 2017; Huang et al 2025). Key attributes and capacities identified in the literature include: 1) food system awareness (identification of risks, scenario planning and advanced preparation); 2) diversity (multiple production, processing, and distribution pathways); 3) redundancy (backup logistics, routes, and governance roles); 4) buffering/reserves (stocks, fiscal flexibility, surge staffing); 5) connectivity and coordination (formalized cross-sector relationships and experienced networks); 6) modularity (decentralized assets to reduce cascading failures); 7) adaptive capacity and learning (monitoring and after-action reviews that revise plans); 8) equity and protection (priority preparedness for high-need populations); 9) legitimacy and trust (credible institutions and trusted messengers); 10) place-based knowledge and stewardship (collaborative partnerships with local leaders and knowledge systems); and 11) infrastructure robustness (transport, storage, and cold-chain reliability). Together, these principles and capacities form a practical planning-and-measurement architecture for governments and communities seeking to withstand, respond to, and recover from disruptions while advancing more socially equitable food security outcomes (Tendall et Resilience and Equity in the Era of Global Environmental Change the following eleven articles provide examples of these food system resilience and disaster preparedness principles and attributes and contribute to both the theoretical and practical knowledge aimed at strengthening food system resilience in the face of natural and human-caused disasters by synthesizing recent evidence, theory, and practice.This Research Topic brings together eleven articles spanning conceptual frameworks, empirical research, reviews, and community case studies. Collectively, they advance actionable insights into how food systems can prepare for and respond to multiple shocks while also identifying where today's science, governance, and infrastructure remain underdeveloped. Across these contributions, a common message emerges: resilience is not a single intervention but a portfolio of essential capacities that are organizational, infrastructural, ecological, and political, and built over time and tested during acute disruption. Enhancing resilience requires (i) conceptual tools capable of grappling with multiple interacting shocks, (ii) governance and network capacity for coordination and equitable response, (iii) robust infrastructure and contingency planning across transport, water, and supply chains, (iv) genuine partnership with Indigenous and place-based knowledge systems as foundational assets, and and (v) the importance of understanding and acting on inequities and disproportionate burdens and responses.The articles collected here strengthen the scientific and applied foundations for food system resilience and disaster preparedness. They also underscore the need for integrated planning, improved metrics and assessment tools that are accessible to planners and practitioners, and sustained investment in the institutional and social infrastructure that enables communities to prepare, withstand, adapt, and transform amid accelerating disruptions to agri-food systems.Authors: Albie Miles (AM): Conceptualization; Writing -original draft, review and editing; Supervision; Project administration. E.R. Moore (ERM): Writing -contributing to original draft, review, editing.