Collaborative Research: RAPID: Compounding Human and Natural Disasters: Implication on agriculture sectors

Engineering - One of the key sectors being significantly affected by the COVID-19 disaster is the agriculture sector. The COVID-19 human disaster is further posing significant challenges to mitigating ongoing natural disasters (e.g., drought) in different parts of the world, including the USA. COVID-19 will have a significant impact on multiple agricultural sub-sectors as farm prices will be impacted, supply chains will likely slow down, farm workforce disruptions will occur, and the odds of farm bankruptcies will increase. The reduction of demand for crops and the reduction of supply of labor is likely to reduce revenue and increase costs. Drought conditions will further exacerbate the hardship of the broader agricultural sector as water availability declines due to drought and costs continue to rise.The resilience of agricultural systems in the face of natural hazards (e.g., drought, hot days) has improved over the decades but the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic presents a new and unexpected challenge to the farming community. The combination of drought and COVID-19 can lead to a compounding impact on farming sectors. Droughts reduce crop yield and create financial losses, and COVID-19 further compounds this challenge by impacting farm price, supply chains, health risk, and loss of farm work force. This project will study how the combination of ongoing drought and COVID-19 will affect the agricultural sectors that play an important role in the nation's food security.

The research team will investigate the consequences of compounding drought and COVID 19 on farmers' socio-economic indicators at the county scale, and what strategies can be implemented to minimize the impacts. This project will advance knowledge of the combined influence of human hazard and natural hazard on agricultural sub-sectors and provides an excellent opportunity to study the compounding effect of two different types of hazards in different parts of the USA. Research results will be used to develop strategies for improving awareness about this unique extreme compounding, allowing stakeholders to take precautionary measures for such events in the future. The research findings will be shared with key stakeholders (e.g., Department of Agriculture, agriculture extension specialists) and is targeted to benefit those most affected by this ongoing disaster in the USA and worldwide, assisting in the development of precautionary measures that can be taken in the near future.

This project is jointly funded by the Chemical, Bioengineering, Environmental and Transport Systems (CBET) Division and the Established Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR).

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.