Be ready to change your plans when they’re not working the way you expected; don’t count on things remaining stable.
Diversity
Not relying on a single kind of solution means not suffering from a single point of failure.
Decentralization
Centralized systems look strong, but when they fail, they fail catastrophically.
Collaboration
We’re all in this together. Take advantage of collaborative technologies, especially those offering shared communication and information.
Transparency
Don’t hide your systems; transparency makes it easier to figure out where a problem may lie. Share your plans and preparations, and listen when people point out flaws.
Foresight
You can’t predict the future, but you can hear its footsteps approaching. Anticipate and prepare.
Graceful Failure
Failure happens, so make sure that a failure state won’t make things worse than they are already.
More from IFTF's Food Map 2020:
In a world of rapid change, resilience is the key to products, processes, and organizations that have staying power. It’s the capacity of a system to withstand unexpected shocks, to repair itself when necessary, and to thrive when conditions are right. The underlying assumption of resilience is that, yes, failure happens, but it is possible to design systems that can quickly bounce back from failure.
It often requires embracing behaviors and principles that run counter to expectations, or that
are seen as contrary to “what works” — even when “what works” is prone to catastrophic failure when problems arise. Established leaders and institutions may even find aspects of resilience threatening. For many organizations, the challenge of resilience will emerge in the recognition that efficiency, particularly production efficiency, can be problematic — or, rather, what we do to increase production efficiency can run counter to the demands of resilience.
And as it pertains to agriculture:
resilience is the capacity of our food networks, relationships, technologies, and industries to continue to provide nutrition to the world during radical, even unprecedented, environmental and economic disruptions. In this century, our ability to foster resilient food systems will be essential, not only to our organizations, but to human survival. The principles of resilience thus provide the rules of thumb for anyone who is responsible for designing or managing activities within the the global food web."
