Small Farms, Big Risks: A Review of Flood Resilience Challenges Faced by Vegetables Farmers

Abstract

Smallholder vegetable farmers play a critical role in ensuring food security but remain highly vulnerable to climate-related challenges, particularly floods. This review explores the multifaceted challenges these farmers face in building resilience to floods, focusing on four key components: social, economic, physical, and environmental. Small farms, often constrained by limited resources, fragmented landholdings and dependency on weather patterns. These challenges are further intensified by inadequate access to financial support, adaptive agricultural practices and other indicators. The review also identifies recent studies on flood resilience, identifying gaps in research and practice. A lack of knowledge about flood vulnerability levels among vegetable farmers remains a significant barrier to designing effective coping strategies. To address these challenges, prioritizing foundational research is essential to better understand the dimensions of vulnerability under each component. Such knowledge is vital for guiding policymakers and decision-makers in identifying and addressing the most critical areas for intervention. Closing these gaps is necessary not only for protecting livelihoods but also for achieving long-term agricultural sustainability and enhancing climate resilience.