Climate tragedies, health crises and wars have caused US$ 3.8 trillion in losses in crops and livestock in 30 years, warns a report by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), released on Friday (13), reports the agency “AFP”.
“The international community is becoming aware of the considerable increase in the number of catastrophes. This increase has quadrupled since the 1970s. Furthermore, these events have a major impact on agriculture and agri-food systems”, explained Piero Conforti, from the FAO statistics division, to “AFP”.
The increase in the number of annual tragedies is mainly due to climate change, pandemics such as Covid-19, epidemics such as African swine fever and wars.
Huge amounts of food are wasted annually: 69 million tons of cereals, 40 million of fruits and vegetables, and 16 million of meat, dairy products and eggs. This waste is alarming. The agricultural sector suffers about 23% of economic losses due to disasters.
Although Asia suffered the most damage (45% of the total), this corresponds to 4% of its agricultural GDP. But in the Horn of Africa, regularly hit by drought, an average of 15% of crops and livestock is lost. Disasters also have a relatively greater impact on island developing States, which lose on average 7% of their agricultural GDP.
Source: datagro
