Risk Communication in Agriculture

Videoconference

Risk Communication in Agriculture

November 17, 2015

San Jose, Costa Rica

Hosted by​ 

• Flagship Project: Resilience and Integrated Risk Management in Agriculture, Inter-American Institute for Cooperation on Agriculture (IICA)
• Delegation in Ecuador, IICA
• University of Nebraska at Lincoln, USA

Background

Risk communication is understood as an interactive process to exchange information and opinions among individuals, groups and institutions. The discussion will be related to health safety, environmental threats, among others. This includes any communication to inform individuals about the existence, nature, form, severity, and acceptability of a risk.

For example, risk communication will be critical in the early warning systems for extreme events like hurricanes or heat waves, as should provide the way to approach to vulnerable groups in order to protect their health, reduce mortality and reduce losses and damages. Similarly, communication of lack of products could lead to speculation and rising prices, if not properly conducted. Should an outbreak occur and was mistakenly associated with a product, people may stop using the product, causing losses in the production sector or market loss by a country.

Therefore, risk communication should be designed to ensure that messages reach the target population groups, clearly and concisely, in precise time and by the relevant channel for the audience to which it is addressed.

In this context, this VC is developed to address risk communication as a whole, and then make risk communication in the health safety field.

Objectives

• To know the conceptual framework of risk communication in agriculture, existing tools and some strategies for Latin America and the Caribbean.
• To open the discussion and exchange information process concerning risk communication in agriculture.

Expected results

• Stakeholders from ALC have updated information about the conceptual frameworks and strategies, and best practices of risk communication in agriculture (productive and sanitary)
• IICA partners and specialists opened the discussion and exchange information process on risk communication.