Strengthening oil palm smallholder farmers' resilience to future industrial challenges.

Oil palm cultivation has improved living standards and alleviated the poverty of many smallholder farmers. However, challenges such as climate change, aging palms and negative sentiments in the major markets, threaten the wellbeing of and raise the question on smallholder farmers' resilience, which remains poorly understood. Using primary data from Indonesia, the largest palm oil producer in the world, we measure and evaluate the resilience of oil palm smallholder farmers using the Sustainable Livelihoods Approach. Our results revealed five classes of smallholders with different levels of resilience: vulnerable, economically and socially constrained, low-skilled, semi-secure and adaptive smallholders. The farmers in the least resilient group are majorly older local farmers, who established oil palm plantations independently. Meanwhile, the most resilient group is dominated by smallholders who participated in the migration program, and in the past, received support from the government to start oil palm plantations. Our study highlights the heterogeneity of smallholders' livelihood resilience and the need for inclusive and tailored interventions for the various classes of smallholder farmers to establish sustainable communities.

Agricultural input shocks affect crop yields more in the high-yielding areas of the world.

The industrialization of agriculture has led to an increasing dependence on non-locally sourced agricultural inputs. Hence, shocks in the availability of agricultural inputs can be devastating to food crop production. There is also a pressure to decrease the use of synthetic fertilizers and pesticides in many areas. However, the combined impact of the agricultural input shocks on crop yields has not yet been systematically assessed globally. Here we modelled the effects of agricultural input shocks using a random forest machine learning algorithm. We show that shocks in fertilizers cause the most drastic yield losses. Under the scenario of 50% shock in all studied agricultural inputs, global maize production could decrease up to 26%, and global wheat production up to 21%, impacting particularly the high-yielding 'breadbasket' areas of the world. Our study provides insights into global food system resilience and can be useful for preparing for potential future shocks or agricultural input availability decreases at local and global scales.