Research Program

The Food Resilience Engine

A quantitative map of which Dominican food systems hold if trade, shipping, fuel, fertilizer, feed, or currency deteriorate—and which interventions buy the most resilience per peso.

The Dominican Republic is not food-insecure by default. 2025 was a record agricultural year. Vulnerability is concentrated, not uniform. Figures below are as of the September 2026 briefing.

The research questionRead the threat map

The actual question

Given observable global shocks, which Dominican food systems are most vulnerable, how quickly does the shock propagate, what substitutes exist domestically, and what intervention produces the greatest increase in resilience per peso invested?

The engine does not ask whether the country will run out of food. It asks which categories it can keep producing—and at what price—when the imported layer of the system is stressed. Pasta from yuca is a downstream experiment, not the starting business. The sequence is intelligence, then chokepoints, then physical trials, then commerce.

Signal versus claims

Separate the transmission mechanism from the screenshots

Refinery and shipping disruptions can raise diesel, freight, and fertilizer costs, which raise farm costs, which raise food prices. That channel is economically real. A coordinated plan, an inevitable 2027 famine, or a population reset is not an established fact.

What is established enough to model

  • Conflict affecting oil and shipping—including risk around theStrait of Hormuz—is a live price-and-logistics channel, not a metaphor.
  • Wheat can grow under appropriate conditions in parts of the DR, but there is no commercially meaningful wheat industry. USDA forecasts0 domestic production and800,000 MT of wheat imports in MY 2026/27, against650,000 MT of consumption.
  • Soybeans were commercially cultivated in the 1970s around Guayubín and Montecristi. They are effectively absent from the modern supply chain. In 2024 the country imported602,713 MT of soybean meal (~US$263 million), about99% from the United States, mainly for poultry and swine feed.
  • Headline CPI was 5.13% year-over-year in September 2026. The risk to model is category-level price stress, not national calorie collapse.

What this program refuses

  • Screenshot chains as proof of intent. Screenshots are not a balance sheet, a shipping AIS track, or a fertilizer quote.
  • Treating FAO’s observation that roughly 60% of cereal consumption is imported (wheat for people, maize for feed) as if 60% of Dominican food were imported. Rice, plantains, cassava, roots, fruit, vegetables, and much of the animal-product complex are domestically strong.
  • A business that begins with “wheat disappears, therefore cassava pasta.” Alternative staples are a testable manufacturing platform, not a prophecy.
  • Modeling “Will the DR run out of food?” The working question is which food categories remain producible under a deteriorating import, fuel, fertilizer, feed, or currency layer.

First pass

2027 threat map

A continuously updated surface—closer to a prediction market than a static food-security report. Green categories can absorb a shock. Red categories are structurally import-tied. The map will widen from this first pass toward 20–30 commodities.

  • Rice

    Resilient

    Domestic. Very strong

    External. Low–moderate (fertilizer, fuel, irrigation)

  • Plantains / bananas

    Resilient

    Domestic. Very strong

    External. Low

  • Yuca / cassava

    Resilient

    Domestic. Very strong

    External. Low

  • Sweet potato, yams, yautía

    Resilient

    Domestic. Strong

    External. Low

  • Avocado / fruit

    Resilient

    Domestic. Strong

    External. Low

  • Beef

    Watch

    Domestic. Domestic base

    External. Feed and operating inputs

  • Beans

    Exposed

    Domestic. Significant production

    External. High import gap

  • Chicken / eggs

    Exposed

    Domestic. Strong domestic flocks

    External. Very dependent on imported feed

  • Pork

    Exposed

    Domestic. Domestic production

    External. Feed and disease risk

  • Milk / dairy

    Exposed

    Domestic. Significant

    External. Imports remain important

  • Cooking-oil inputs

    Exposed

    Domestic. Limited

    External. Significant

  • Corn

    Structural

    Domestic. Weak relative to demand

    External. Very high

  • Wheat / flour

    Structural

    Domestic. No commercially meaningful wheat

    External. Essentially 100% import

  • Soybean meal

    Structural

    Domestic. No meaningful industry today

    External. Essentially 100% import

  • Fertilizer / agrochemicals

    Structural

    Domestic. Import-dependent

    External. High

  • Fuel / energy for agriculture

    Structural

    Domestic. Import-dependent

    External. High

Six layers

Why a strong harvest can still be fragile

Record output in 2025 does not cancel imported diesel, fertilizer, or feed. Each layer is a different failure mode.

  1. 01

    Domestic production vs. consumption

    Coverage first: what the country already grows and eats. Rice, roots, plantains, fruit, and much of the animal-protein complex sit here.

  2. 02

    Imported inputs

    Even strong domestic categories can be input-fragile. Rice still needs fertilizer, fuel, machinery, and irrigation. Chicken needs corn, soybean meal, veterinary inputs, and fuel.

  3. 03

    Supplier concentration

    Import Dependency Ratio times Herfindahl–Hirschman Index. A high IDR with one dominant supplier is a different risk than the same IDR spread across many origins.

  4. 04

    Maritime and logistics

    U.S. Gulf and other load ports → Caribbean shipping → Dominican ports → trucking → wholesale → retail. Diesel and freight sit on every hop.

  5. 05

    Climate

    Drought, excess rain, hurricane, flood, heat, reservoirs, irrigation, and planting calendars. FAO flagged elevated El Niño-linked agricultural drought risk for the Caribbean, including the DR, into 2026–27.

  6. 06

    Household substitution

    What families can actually switch to when a category becomes expensive. Local roots and rice behave differently from wheat pasta or imported beans.

The model

Balances, concentration, and a directed graph

Each commodity carries domestic production, imports, exports, beginning and ending stocks, and domestic consumption. The first book is eighteen names; the working set should grow to thirty or fifty.

  • Rice
  • Wheat
  • Corn
  • Soybean meal
  • Beans
  • Plantain
  • Yuca
  • Batata
  • Yautía
  • Ñame
  • Potatoes
  • Chicken
  • Eggs
  • Pork
  • Beef
  • Milk
  • Cooking oil
  • Sugar

Import Dependency Ratio

IDR = Imports / (Domestic supply + Imports − Exports)

Rice in MY 2026/27 is the opposite of wheat: milled production 675,000 MT, imports about 50,000 MT, consumption about 720,000 MT—roughly 94% domestic coverage. Corn production meets on the order of 5% of utilization.

Supplier concentration (HHI)

HHI = sum of each supplier’s share, squared

Soybean meal is the teaching case: one origin at ~99% of 2024 imports. A high IDR with a high HHI is a chokepoint. The same IDR split across many origins is a different object.

Transmission

How a distant shock becomes a kitchen price

The trunk line is energy and logistics. Two branches hit the household basket through feed and through wheat.

  1. Trunk. Oil and shipping stress → crude → diesel → transportation → fertilizer → farm operating costs → domestic food production → wholesale → retail → household food security.
  2. Feed branch. Oil and shipping → soybean meal → poultry feed → chicken → eggs → household basket.
  3. Wheat branch. Wheat shipping → flour → bread and pasta → consumer prices.

Four scenarios

Months until a category is materially stressed

The output is a clock, not a slogan: for each food category, how many months until cost or availability is materially worse. We do not invent those month counts here. The engine exists to compute them.

  1. Green

    Normal

    Baseline trade, fuel, fertilizer, and weather. The map is a monitoring surface, not an alarm.

  2. Yellow

    Commodity shock

    Oil +25–50%, fertilizer +25–50%, freight +25%, imports still available. Prices move before shelves empty.

  3. Orange

    Supply-chain disruption

    Oil plus shipping stress, fertilizer shortage, and currency pressure. Availability and cost both deteriorate.

  4. Red

    Severe compound shock

    Oil, shipping, fertilizer, drought, animal disease, and export restrictions arriving together.

Where the peso goes

Opportunity stack, then four phases

The quantitative question behind alternative pasta is not “can yuca be milled?” It is: at what wheat price does a locally sourced staple become economically competitive? Formulations to test include yuca, rice, plantain, maize, and legumes.

Tier 1

Food substitution

  • Alternative pasta
  • Cassava and plantain flour
  • Bread substitutes
  • Rice products
  • Local cereal blends
  • Shelf-stable and dehydrated foods

Tier 2

Agricultural inputs

  • Organic fertilizer, compost, biofertilizer
  • Waste processing
  • Local animal feed and premixes
  • Seed
  • Irrigation and solar irrigation
  • Equipment sharing

Tier 3

Infrastructure

  • Solar irrigation that reduces diesel
  • Lower farm operating costs
  • More reliable production under fuel stress
  • Mechanization, water, and climate-resilient productivity

The government extended fertilizer subsidies in 2026 pastRD$2,151 million. FAO, Banreservas, and Agriculture have discussed on the order ofUS$20 millionfor modernization, mechanization, water, climate, and productivity. Those are public commitments to model against—not a substitute for the engine.

  1. 01

    Intelligence

    Build the engine: balances, prices, IDR, supplier concentration, and a directed dependency graph that updates as new official series land.

  2. 02

    Identify chokepoints

    Rank categories by import dependency × supplier concentration × price elasticity × population importance. The first physical bets follow the ranking, not a favorite crop.

  3. 03

    Physical experiments

    Test substitutions under Dominican conditions. Example: yuca → flour → pasta, measured for yield, drying, milling, energy, nutrition, texture, shelf life, machinery, labor, retail price, and the wheat-price break-even.

  4. 04

    Commercialize

    Scale the highest-value substitutions—the interventions that buy the most resilience per peso—not a generic food-security catalog.

Chokepoints

Record output, concentrated imports

2025 reached historically high agricultural production. The same year the import bills that matter most sat in corn, soybean meal, wheat, and beans.

Rice
14.78 million quintales
Yuca
6.28 million quintales
Potatoes
2.87 million quintales
Sweet potatoes
>2.16 million quintales
Yams
>1.2 million quintales
Yautía
~1.67 million quintales
Eggs
>400 million per month

Corn. 2024 production on the order of US$46 million against about US$341 million of imports (~1.65 million MT). FAO puts maize production near 5% of utilization.

Soybean meal. 602,713 MT / US$263 million / ~99% United States in 2024. The live research question is whether a domestic soybean industry could be recreated if imported feed became expensive enough.

Wheat. 2024 imports about US$197 million; local commercial production effectively zero. Correct statement: wheat can grow in parts of the country; it is not a commercial industry.

Beans. More than 68,000 MT of dried beans imported annually; about US$119 million in 2024. Domestic production exists; the gap persists.

Rice. The counter-example. FAO notes the 2026 main crop slightly below average after excess rain; later rain can still affect irrigation. Coverage remains high.

The household basket

Substitution is not uniform

Families do not experience “food” as one object. They experience rice, oil, chicken, and bread as different clocks.

Tier A

Locally resilient

Rice, yuca, plantain, batata, yautía, ñame, local fruits and vegetables, eggs.

Tier B

Domestic, system-dependent

Chicken, pork, beef, dairy—produced at home, still tied to imported feed, fuel, and veterinary inputs.

Tier C

Structurally import-dependent

Wheat, pasta, many oils, imported beans, corn and feed, soybean meal, and a wide band of processed foods.

Sources and institutional demand

Official series, not screenshots

Production, planting, harvest, and yield through 2026 come from the Ministerio de Agricultura. ONE publishes production, prices, trade, apparent consumption, self-sufficiency, and import-dependency measures. FAO and the government have been discussing agricultural drought risk for 2026–27. The engine is built to ingest those series as they update.

The bottom line is not preparation for Dominican food collapse. It is preparation for a global commodity shock, imported-input inflation, and climate variability that produce significant price increases in specific food categories. The public artifact is a continuously updated Food Resilience / Threat Map for 2027.

The practice

Six rooms of the research

Land, food, and health as a firm’s work — not a targeting map. The Dominican Republic is the current theater. These pages are rooms, not a fake archive.

Follow the work as it is built.

Research notes and essays land here when they are ready—not on a schedule of noise. Subscribe if you want the next dispatch from the engine.

SubscribeGet in Touch

Prism Dispatch

Research and essays, sent when ready—not as noise.

Follow us wherever you get your content