Post-cyclone resilience of an agroforest-based food system in the Pacific Islands

As climate change increases the probability and/or severity of major disturbances worldwide, understanding how agroecological food systems can be resilient to the effects of major disturbances becomes critical. Farm-level crop and cultivar richness are critical to food security and nutritional dietary diversity, but quantitative research of how they are impacted by major disturbances, including the dynamics of their recovery, is largely lacking. We assessed the resilience of an agroforest-based food system to a recent Category 5 cyclone. Specifically, we carried out vegetation surveys in Fijian agroforests pre-cyclone, and 1 and 3 years post-cyclone, to assess changes in staple starch crop and cultivar richness over time. Resilience, measured as robustness, redundancy, reactivity, and resourcefulness, varied with the scale of analysis. At both the crop and cultivar scale, the agroforestry systems were highly reactive to cyclone disturbance. Crop species richness increased immediately post-cyclone and 3 years later remained higher than pre-cyclone levels, largely due to the increased presence of famine food crops, indicating system robustness, redundancy, and resourcefulness as well. Farmers also planted many new starch crop cultivars post-cyclone, especially of sweet potatoes, but the total number of cultivars declined over time, indicating limited redundancy and resourcefulness. Frequent crop substitutions for cassava over taro or yams, and high cultivar dynamism that resulted in the loss of traditional varieties, can have consequences both for nutritional diversity and the maintenance of cultural traditions. This research suggests resilience is present in Fijian agroforest systems, yet a greater focus on crop cultivar diversity is needed.