Agricultural Emergencies: Factors and Impacts in the Spread of Transboundary Diseases in, and Adjacent to, Agriculture

The purpose of this chapter is to introduce agricultural emergencies and provide some case examples, specifically transboundary disease (TBD) events, that have threatened sustainable agriculture worldwide. Agricultural self-sufficiency, the ability of a country to meet its own food requirements domestically, is a new goal of the United Nations (UN) Sustainable Development Goals. Agricultural emergencies are hazardous conditions or events that threaten production, livelihoods, and economic stability within the agricultural sector. TBD outbreaks are socially, economically, and politically significant agricultural emergencies that offer a diverse array of impacts and challenges to the economy and trade of agriculture. This chapter explored the impacts and factors involved in the spread of multiple plant and animal TBDs in, and adjacent to, agricultural production. TBDs cost millions to billions of dollars in production and trade losses in endemic countries where they normally circulate, in addition to outbreaks in non-endemic countries. Outbreaks of TBDs are also capable of producing massive social fear and civil or political unrest. This research found that human activity, climate change and variability, and the agricultural-wildlife interface are important drivers in the occurrence and spread of these diseases, but the threat of a malicious attack using these pathogens is a continuing danger as well. The threats in the occurrence and spread of these diseases are not easily eliminated and the severity of impacts caused by TBDs warrants continuing research and monitoring.