Illustrative: rain routed down a catchment to the flood plain, generated, with the intensity of a scenario rising and falling

Risk Academy, led by the Nexus Consortium · Course catalogue · Earth and Environmental Sciences

Water and Food Systems

Food systems and agriculture

Food systems and agriculture, taught twice over: as the working methods of the field and as its frontier since 2024, with labs on the Academy's tools, open data and the Nexus Standards.

Core course Frontier course

The discipline

01Core course · L2 Intermediate

Food systems and agriculture: foundations and practice

Food systems risk concerns whether people can reliably obtain safe and nutritious food, from soils, water and inputs through production, storage, trade and markets to household access.

Level
L2 Intermediate
Study time
about 24 hours (planning estimate)
Status
In authoring
Prerequisites
An L1 course in the area, or an entry review

Why now

Aggregate progress hides regional divergence and affordability stress; food security risk work needs both hunger counts and diet cost indicators, especially for Africa. Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, UN report: Global hunger levels ease for third consecutive year as regional disparities persist, 21 July 2026

Learning outcomes

  1. Define food security and the other key terms of the discipline and use them correctly in a written case
  2. Explain agricultural production and yield risk and food security and access with a worked example and its source
  3. Apply the discipline's method to a documented case and explain each result with its source
  4. Analyse a named case against food security classification and analysis, stating evidence, date and limits

Modules

  1. Agricultural production and yield risk
    • Agricultural production and yield risk
    • Food security and access
    • Food security classification and analysis
  2. Food prices, trade and markets
    • Food prices, trade and markets
    • Storage, processing and cold chains
    • Plant pests and animal diseases
  3. Soils and land for agriculture
    • Soils and land for agriculture
    • Agricultural insurance and risk transfer
    • Food safety
  4. Lab: the discipline's method
    • Days of heat above a crop's threshold cut yield at a rate the field record measures; yield times area gives production; the shortfall meets a market whose demand barely bends, so a small production loss becomes a large price rise, and the price decides who eats.
    • Work the method through a documented case and explain each result
    • Read the method's sources and stated values

Labs with Academy tools

Nexus Standards

Teaches

  • NRS-N3 Food and agriculture risk and resilience
  • NRS-N7 Water-energy-food-health-biodiversity-infrastructure nexus coupling
  • NRS-H10 Hazard family: Water deficit
  • NRS-H44 Hazard family: Plant disease and pests
  • NRS-H81 Hazard family: Malnutrition and micronutrient deficiency
  • NRS-H90 Hazard family: Food system infrastructure failure
  • NRS-M14 Method fabric: Food, agriculture and fisheries

Relies on

  • NS-1 The UNI and the artefact catalogue
  • NS-16 UNI application profile (how articles, documents, code, data, APIs and interfaces carry the UNI)
  • NRS-C1 Risk vocabulary and ontology
  • NRS-C2 Risk assessment method
  • NRS-C3 Hazard, exposure, vulnerability and capacity data
  • NRS-C4 Risk data model, identifiers and exchange
  • NRS-C6 Systemic and cascading risk
  • NRS-C7 Early warning, triggers and anticipatory action

Assessment

  • 40%Lab recordWork the discipline's method through a documented case and explain each result with its source and date
  • 40%Case memoApply the discipline's methods to a named place or organisation, stating evidence and limits
  • 20%Key terms checkShort answers on the key terms, marked against the definitions

Delivery

  • Self-paced online, with the labs in the browser
  • Cohort study over six to eight weeks, with a weekly lab review
  • Co-delivered with a partner institution, inside its own courses

Partner on this course

  • Co-teach a module and bring a current case from your work
  • Host a cohort for your learners, with your own schedule and review
  • Contribute a lab: a dataset your institution publishes openly, or a model
  • Review the course content and its references before it opens
  • Translate the course and adapt its cases to your region

How institutions and experts take part

In the Academy LMS

Course on the learning platform
Intermediate, 4 topics
Cohort group
A community group for each cohort of learners
Achievement
Recorded on completion of the assessed work

Open now in this discipline

References

  1. Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, UN report: Global hunger levels ease for third consecutive year as regional disparities persist, 21 July 2026
  2. Schlenker and Roberts, Nonlinear temperature effects indicate severe damages to U.S. crop yields under climate change, 2009
  3. Headey and Fan, Anatomy of a crisis: the causes and consequences of surging food prices, 2008
  4. Sen, Ingredients of famine analysis: availability and entitlements, 1981
02Live map

Growing conditions in Australia

Crop greenness, root-zone soil water, rain, heat, fire and flood, the conditions behind harvests, over Australia.

The interactive map needs JavaScript; the layer list and sources are below.

Layers 2

Growing conditions

Latest available

NASA GIBS / EOSDIS · ASTER GDEM (METI, NASA) · Blue Marble (NASA) · © OpenStreetMap contributors (ODbL) · Natural Earth

Loading the latest NASA imagery.

Drag to move. Ctrl or ⌘ and scroll, pinch or the buttons to zoom; hover for the values under the pointer; reset returns to the region.

Growing conditions, framed on Australia.Satellite and model products as NASA publishes them, each with its own date. They are indicators, not assessments of any place.

Data: NASA GIBS · ASTER GDEM · Blue Marble · © OpenStreetMap contributors · Natural Earth · NASA EONETSources and licences

  • We acknowledge the use of imagery provided by services from NASA's Global Imagery Browse Services (GIBS), part of NASA's Earth Science Data and Information System (ESDIS). Colours redrawn from the published colour map; values averaged into H3 cells where shown (modified). NASA open data
  • MODIS land products (vegetation indices, gross primary production, land cover), NASA LP DAAC and LANCE; imagery via NASA GIBS. Colours redrawn from the published colour map; values averaged into H3 cells where shown (modified). NASA open data
  • SMAP Level 4 soil moisture and snow mass, NASA Global Modeling and Assimilation Office; distributed by the NASA National Snow and Ice Data Center DAAC; imagery via NASA GIBS. Colours redrawn from the published colour map; values averaged into H3 cells where shown (modified). NASA open data
  • GPM IMERG precipitation, NASA Precipitation Processing System; distributed by the NASA Goddard Earth Sciences Data and Information Services Center (GES DISC); imagery via NASA GIBS. Colours redrawn from the published colour map; values averaged into H3 cells where shown (modified). NASA open data
  • VIIRS near-real-time products (flood, land surface temperature, snow cover, corrected reflectance), NASA LANCE; imagery via NASA GIBS. Colours redrawn from the published colour map; values averaged into H3 cells where shown (modified). NASA open data
  • NASA Fire Information for Resource Management System (FIRMS), VIIRS 375 m active fire product, NASA LANCE; vector tiles via NASA GIBS. Colours redrawn from the published colour map; values averaged into H3 cells where shown (modified). NASA open data
  • ASTER GDEM is a product of METI and NASA (ASTER Global Digital Elevation Model V003, NASA LP DAAC); imagery via NASA GIBS. Colours redrawn from the published colour map; values averaged into H3 cells where shown (modified). Cite as: NASA/METI/AIST/Japan Spacesystems and U.S./Japan ASTER Science Team (2019). ASTER Global Digital Elevation Model V003. doi:10.5067/ASTER/ASTGTM.003. NASA open data
  • Made with Natural Earth. Free vector and raster map data @ naturalearthdata.com. Public domain
  • © OpenStreetMap contributors (ODbL), via NASA GIBS (coastlines, boundaries, roads and place names). Colours redrawn from the published colour map; values averaged into H3 cells where shown (modified). ODbL
  • Blue Marble, NASA Earth Observatory; imagery via NASA GIBS. Colours redrawn from the published colour map; values averaged into H3 cells where shown (modified). NASA open data
  • Context on the globe and flat map: coastlines, boundaries, roads and place names from NASA GIBS reference layers (OpenStreetMap data, ODbL, © OpenStreetMap contributors); Blue Marble imagery as an optional base; 3D terrain and the elevation read-out from the ASTER GDEM elevation colour index (5 m to 200 m classes, exaggerated for legibility). Boundaries are drawn as published and imply no position on any territory.
  • Globe: MapLibre GL JS 6.9.1, BSD-3-Clause, © MapLibre contributors.
  • Live events: NASA Earth Observatory Natural Event Tracker (EONET); events are indicative and keep their original source links.
  • NASA GIBS: We acknowledge the use of imagery provided by services from NASA's Global Imagery Browse Services (GIBS), part of NASA's Earth Science Data and Information System (ESDIS).
  • River discharge forecast, 30 days with range (GloFAS via Open-Meteo): Contains modified Copernicus Emergency Management Service information 2026; not a flood warning.
  • Past year, daily temperature (ERA5 via Open-Meteo): Contains modified Copernicus Climate Change Service information 2026.
  • Past year, daily temperature and sunshine (NASA POWER): These data were obtained from the NASA Langley Research Center (LaRC) POWER Project funded through the NASA Earth Science/Applied Science Program..
  • Weather data by Open-Meteo.com (https://open-meteo.com/), licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
  • Optional layers (12 sources in the layer list: live, forecast, observed and context) print their provider credit on the map and here when switched on; forecasts are model output and derived indices are estimates.

Layers and dates

  • Vegetation greenness (NDVI), rolling 8 days: MODIS Terra NDVI, NASA LANCE · 13 Oct 2026
  • Root-zone soil moisture, 0 to 100 cm: SMAP Level 4, NASA NSIDC DAAC · 11 Oct 2026
  • Precipitation rate, daily mean: GPM IMERG, NASA GES DISC · 12 Oct 2026
  • Land surface temperature, day: VIIRS NOAA-20, NASA LANCE · 13 Oct 2026
  • Active fires and thermal anomalies: VIIRS NOAA-20 375 m (FIRMS), NASA LANCE FIRMS · 13 Oct 2026
  • Flood water, 3-day composite: VIIRS Global Flood Product, NASA LANCE · 14 Oct 2026
  • Land cover type (IGBP), yearly: MODIS Terra and Aqua land cover (MCD12Q1), NASA LP DAAC · 2024

03How learning runs

How learning runs, as a process you can run

Select a scenario and press Play: course, pathway, practice, faculty, cells and record.

04What is changing

Frontier course · L3 advanced, programme courses and standards

Food systems and agriculture: frontier methods

The methods, data, tools and studies that changed food systems and agriculture between 2024 and 2026, taught by reproducing them on open data.

Level
L3 Advanced
Study time
about 28 hours (planning estimate)
Status
Planned
Prerequisites
Food systems and agriculture: foundations and practice; Working knowledge of a scripting language (Python or R) for the labs

Why now

Aggregate progress hides regional divergence and affordability stress; food security risk work needs both hunger counts and diet cost indicators, especially for Africa. Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, UN report: Global hunger levels ease for third consecutive year as regional disparities persist, 21 July 2026

Learning outcomes

  1. Explain what changed in food systems and agriculture since 2024 and cite the studies, data or rules behind each change
  2. Reproduce SOFI 2026: hunger eases again while healthy diets get costlier on open data and state the uncertainty of the result
  3. Evaluate a 2024 to 2026 study: its question, data, method, limits and what it changes for practice
  4. Design an analysis that combines a frontier method with the faculty's instruments, and justify each choice

Modules

  1. SOFI 2026: hunger eases again while healthy diets get costlier
    • The 2026 SOFI report estimated 645 million people (7.8%) faced hunger in 2025, a third annual decline, but Africa now has more hungry people than Asia, and the average cost of a healthy diet rose to 4.28 PPP dollars daily.
    • Aggregate progress hides regional divergence and affordability stress; food security risk work needs both hunger counts and diet cost indicators, especially for Africa.
    • Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, 21 July 2026
  2. Global Report on Food Crises 2026 records two famines in one year
    • The tenth GRFC found 266 million people in 47 countries faced high acute food insecurity in 2025, with famine confirmed in Gaza Governorate and parts of Sudan.
    • Conflict remains the main driver, and shrinking data coverage is now a risk in itself: absence of figures must not be read as absence of crisis.
    • Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, 24 April 2026
  3. IPC confirms famine in Gaza Governorate
    • An IPC analysis confirmed famine (Phase 5) in Gaza Governorate as of mid-August 2025, the first confirmed famine in the Middle East region, and projected it to spread to Deir al-Balah and Khan Younis by late September.
    • It showed how the IPC Famine Review process applies evidence thresholds under severe access limits, a key reference for classification practice in conflict settings.
    • Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC), 22 August 2025
  4. US halts Mexican livestock imports over New World screwworm spread
    • After new detections of New World screwworm in Veracruz, the US Department of Agriculture closed southern border ports to live cattle, bison and horses from Mexico until further notice, reversing a planned phased reopening.
    • A re-emerging animal pest disrupted a major livestock trade corridor within months, illustrating how plant and animal health events become market and supply risks.
    • U.S. Department of Agriculture, 9 July 2025
  5. Reproduction lab
    • Extend the discipline's method with one frontier method and compare its results
    • State the uncertainty and the limits of the result
    • Peer review against a shared checklist
  6. Technology that helps and the risks it carries
    • Earth observation crop monitoring, precision agriculture and agricultural biotechnology.
    • Concentrated agri-tech platforms, dependence on satellite positioning, and the oversight of gene drives.

Labs with Academy tools

Nexus Standards

Teaches

  • NRS-N3 Food and agriculture risk and resilience
  • NRS-N7 Water-energy-food-health-biodiversity-infrastructure nexus coupling
  • NRS-H10 Hazard family: Water deficit
  • NRS-H44 Hazard family: Plant disease and pests
  • NRS-H81 Hazard family: Malnutrition and micronutrient deficiency
  • NRS-H90 Hazard family: Food system infrastructure failure
  • NRS-M14 Method fabric: Food, agriculture and fisheries

Relies on

  • NS-1 The UNI and the artefact catalogue
  • NS-16 UNI application profile (how articles, documents, code, data, APIs and interfaces carry the UNI)
  • NRS-C1 Risk vocabulary and ontology
  • NRS-C2 Risk assessment method
  • NRS-C3 Hazard, exposure, vulnerability and capacity data
  • NRS-C4 Risk data model, identifiers and exchange
  • NRS-C6 Systemic and cascading risk
  • NRS-C7 Early warning, triggers and anticipatory action

Assessment

  • 50%Method reproductionReproduce one frontier method on open data and state the uncertainty of the result
  • 30%Study reviewA critical review of a 2024 to 2026 study: question, data, method, limits, what it changes
  • 20%Peer reviewReview two other learners' reproductions against a shared checklist

Delivery

  • Self-paced online, with the labs in the browser
  • Cohort study over six to eight weeks, with a weekly lab review
  • Co-delivered with a partner institution, inside its own courses

Partner on this course

  • Co-teach a module and bring a current case from your work
  • Host a cohort for your learners, with your own schedule and review
  • Contribute a lab: a dataset your institution publishes openly, or a model
  • Review the course content and its references before it opens
  • Translate the course and adapt its cases to your region

How institutions and experts take part

In the Academy LMS

Course on the learning platform
Expert, 6 topics
Cohort group
A community group for each cohort of learners
Achievement
Recorded on completion of the assessed work

Open now in this discipline

References

  1. Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, UN report: Global hunger levels ease for third consecutive year as regional disparities persist, 21 July 2026
  2. Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, Acute food insecurity and malnutrition remain alarmingly high as crises deepen, UN, EU and partners warn in new report, 24 April 2026
  3. Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC), GAZA STRIP: Famine confirmed in Gaza Governorate, projected to expand, 22 August 2025
  4. U.S. Department of Agriculture, Secretary Rollins Takes Decisive Action and Shuts Down U.S. Southern Border Ports to Livestock Trade due to further Northward Spread of New World Screwworm in Mexico, 9 July 2025
  5. Schlenker and Roberts, Nonlinear temperature effects indicate severe damages to U.S. crop yields under climate change, 2009
  6. Headey and Fan, Anatomy of a crisis: the causes and consequences of surging food prices, 2008
  7. Sen, Ingredients of famine analysis: availability and entitlements, 1981
05Take part

Take part in the work

Start from who you are.

06Questions

Questions, answers and key terms

Is the course free?
Yes. Every course and learning material of Risk Academy, led by the Nexus Consortium, is free to study, self-paced or with a cohort. Ordinary participation has no fee; paid work, internships and fellowships are separate arrangements.
What does completing a course give me?
A completion record: the course, its version, the date and what was assessed, private by default and shared by you. It stacks into discipline, department and programme achievements. A record states what was studied and assessed and does not certify competence; it is not a licence, a professional title or an employment status.
Where do the data and the places come from?
Every faculty teaches on a twin of a real place built from open data; each layer carries its provider, licence and date, and every result on the Academy states its source. Maps and figures are indicators for teaching, never an assessment of a place.
How do I take part beyond the course?
Form a competence cell of three to seven people, study a shared pathway, take a supervised assignment in the National Working Groups, or bring a cohort from your institution. For organisations.

Key terms

Term

Food security

A situation in which all people at all times have access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food, assessed through availability, access, utilisation and stability.

Term

IPC phase classification

The Integrated Food Security Phase Classification scale that groups areas or households by the severity of food insecurity.

Term

Yield gap

The difference between the yield farmers achieve and the yield attainable with the best available practice.

Term

Price transmission

The extent to which price changes in one market pass to other markets or along the supply chain.

ReportsContribute

Contribute evidence from this page.

Reports is the Consortium's quarterly publication. What you know about this subject can become evidence, a case or a correction in the next edition, credited to you and published under CC BY 4.0 where it is your own work.

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