New Zealand designs its buildings for earthquakes it hopes never come. We should apply that mindset to food systems: not because famine is imminent here, but because disruptions at home and abroad can threaten food production, access and trade. Preparing also strengthens everyday sustainability.
Designing for the day we hope never comes
I live in Christchurch, where the 2011 earthquake killed 185 people and transformed how New Zealanders think about risk (Manatū Taonga Ministry for Culture and Heritage, n.d.).
Yet the base-isolated Christchurch Women’s Hospital remained operational immediately afterward, with mostly minor damage (Mayes et al., 2012). Its engineers had planned for the worst day, not just an average one.
Our food systems are built for an average day
Earthquake engineers plan around a rare but plausible level of shaking: a “design earthquake.” For ordinary New Zealand buildings, life-safety design typically considers shaking with roughly a 500-year return period (Standards Australia & Standards New Zealand, 2002). We accept extra costs because some failures are unacceptable.
The same principle applies to food systems: they also need to be prepared for rare but plausible disruptions, though the hazards are different. These include extreme weather, crop diseases, pandemics, cyberattacks, energy shortages and trade disruptions. Although New Zealand produces abundant food, its farms and food businesses depend on fuel, machinery, inputs and transport. Global shocks also threaten vulnerable populations and our export markets.
The “design earthquake” for food
There is no single food-system “design earthquake.” At Alliance to Feed the Earth in Disasters (ALLFED), we study one extreme example: abrupt sunlight reduction following nuclear war, major volcanic eruptions or asteroid impacts. Such events could damage harvests for years. In one severe nuclear-war scenario, global crop calories fall around 90%, and more than five billion people could die (Xia et al., 2022).
Such disasters are rare, but preparing for them can reveal weaknesses relevant to smaller disruptions.
Earthquake thinking, applied to food
Earthquake engineering offers useful parallels:
| Earthquake principle | Food-system equivalent |
| Rare-event design | Plan for prolonged crop failures |
| Base isolation | Develop foods less reliant on conventional crops |
| Ductility | Repurpose or expand facilities quickly |
| Redundancy | Diversify food sources, trade and inputs |
| Pre-engineering | Test equipment, feedstocks and deployment plans |
| Upfront investment | Fund trials and agreements before emergencies |
Modeling suggests global famine is not inevitable. Rapid food-system adaptation and continued trade could make enough calories physically available, although success depends on preparation and cooperation (Rivers et al., 2024). Technologies such as greenhouses, seaweed farming and microbial protein already exist, but scaling them in emergencies requires advance planning (García Martínez et al., 2025).
My research examines practical bottlenecks: how rapidly groundwater-fed irrigation and production of critical agricultural inputs could expand after disruptions. Engineering these responses beforehand is crucial.
It pays off even if the worst never comes
Preparedness and sustainability can reinforce each other. Regenerative farming and efficient water and nutrient management can reduce routine dependence on irrigation and fertilizers. But these measures cannot eliminate the need for backup supplies and production capacity if severe disruptions cause harvests to fail or imports stop.
Some resilient foods could also ease pressure on resources in ordinary times: seaweed needs no farmland or freshwater irrigation; microbial protein uses little land; and foods made from agricultural residues could reduce demand on farmland. Diverse suppliers can help buffer routine price shocks, while conserving roundwater preserves a reserve for emergencies.
Preparing for the worst day can therefore support sustainability on ordinary days.
How New Zealand could prepare
New Zealand could develop a food-resilience plan: trial alternative foods, prepare factories for conversion, inventory essential equipment and practice emergency responses. It should protect domestic food security and help sustain global supplies.
Engineers should treat food-system failure as a design challenge, not just a doomsday scenario. A positive future is one in which we have already engineered ways through the worst.
About The Author: Pinkeshkumar Attarwala
Pinkeshkumar is a mechanical engineer whose work addresses critical challenges in global catastrophic food resilience. He holds an MSc in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Louisiana at Lafayette,USA, where his research focused on 3-D simulation tools for improving visualization in dynamics and statics.
His current doctoral research at University of Canterbury, NZ, examines how to rapidly expand irrigation, fertilizers and pesticides, and industrial food production capacity in the aftermath of catastrophic disruptions such as nuclear winter. His work combines engineering rigor with practical catastrophe-preparedness planning, with the goal of identifying scalable interventions that could help safeguard food security for large populations under extreme global stress.
More posts by Pinkeshkumar Attarwala