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Building resilient food system amidst COVID-19: Responses and lessons from China
Abstract
CONTEXT
The COVID-19 pandemic continues to spread over the world and has heightened concerns over global food security risks. As the first country hit by COVID-19, China has adopted a series of stringent mitigation policies to contain the spread of virus. This has led to food system disruptions due to restrictions on labor and interruption of transport, processing, retailing, and input distribution.
OBJECTIVE
The objective of this contribution is to report evidence for initial impacts and resilience of China's food system amid the COVID-19 pandemic and to discuss government's responses as well as long-term efforts that promoted resilience.
METHODS
We reviewed a range of publications, government released reports and official information, blogs, and media articles, and whenever possible, we complemented this qualitative information with quantitative data from China's National Bureau of Statistics and finally empirical data obtained from a simulation study.
RESULTS AND CONCLUSIONS
We identified China's earlier responses in each key food system activities including ensuring effective logistics of agricultural products and inputs, supporting production and processing, matching supply with demand, and mitigating consumer's income loss. In particular, innovative information and communications technology (ICT) applications along the food system had been highlighted. Coupled with China's long-term efforts in investing in agriculture, building emergency response systems, and adopting governor's responsibility mechanisms, there has been little panic in the food system with largely sufficient supplies and stable prices. In the second quarter of 2020, after registered negative growth in the first quarter, primary agriculture grew by 3.4% and the negative growth of livestock production was narrowed significantly by 8.7 percentage points. Food prices rose by a modest 0.6% and returned to normal after a surge in February 2020.
SIGNIFICANCE
We expect that China's experiences on building resilient food systems could improve understanding of the challenges posed by COVID-19 from a retrospective perspective and provide lessons to other countries that are experiencing disruptions in the food systems worldwide. The lessons are also important for strengthening the resilience of food systems over longer time horizons.
... The COVID-19 pandemic has undermined the efforts of the United Nations in achieving the Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) number 2 [1], which aims at eradicating hunger by 2030 [2]. Prior to the Coronavirus pandemic, 2 billion people were subjected to either moderate or severe food insecurity, from 2014 the number of food-insecure people rose by 60 million. ...
... Some of these measures are the closure of borders, schools, and institutions of higher learning, shutting down the business, social distancing, masking, and sanitizing [17]. These measures were applauded for saving lives however; this was achieved against the backdrop of falling national output, spiking unemployment, and poverty [1].COVID-19would cause the global economy to fall by 4.9% in 2020 according to the International Monitory Fund (IMF) projections; it is more severe than the2008-09 financial crisis [1]. ...
... Some of these measures are the closure of borders, schools, and institutions of higher learning, shutting down the business, social distancing, masking, and sanitizing [17]. These measures were applauded for saving lives however; this was achieved against the backdrop of falling national output, spiking unemployment, and poverty [1].COVID-19would cause the global economy to fall by 4.9% in 2020 according to the International Monitory Fund (IMF) projections; it is more severe than the2008-09 financial crisis [1]. ...
... In the response aspect, PHEs' impulses rapidly causes negative responses of EAPAP in the first two lag phases, indicating that outbreak of PHEs can cause significant decline of EAPAP in the short term ( Figure 4H). In the recovery aspect, when PHEs breaks out, especially zoonotic infectious diseases, safety clauses and prevention and control measures restrict the export of primary agricultural products in the short term (Laborde et al., 2021;Saboori et al., 2022;Stephesns et al., 2022), while in the long term, with proper control or end of the pandemic, compensatory growth appears (Zhan and Chen, 2021;Li and Song, 2022). In the adaptation aspect, the negative responses of EAPAP increased significantly from January 2005 to December 2006, June 2008 to January 2011, and February 2012 to November 2013 ( Figure 4I), when serious zoonotic infectious diseases (influenza A (H1N1), highly pathogenic avian influenza and Japanese encephalitis) occurred and led to significant decline in exports of livestock products, which promoted the rapid increase of the negative responses of EAPAP. ...
... However, the periodicity of agricultural production and the lagged effects of decision-making lead to lagged response of raw material production to PHEs' impulses, and longer duration (Fan et al., 2021). When PHEs occurs, the safety clauses and prevention and control measures restrict exports of relevant primary agricultural products in the short term (Zhan and Chen, 2021;Saboori et al., 2022;Stephesns et al., 2022), and increase imports to make up for the demand gap in the domestic market. Therefore, PHEs has great impacts on raw material trade. ...
... However, food production enterprises have the responsibility of ensuring food supply during disaster emergencies (Schneider, 2016). After the outbreak of PHEs, government helps these enterprises to resume production through technical support, financial subsidies, tax relief, etc., to ensure the stability of food supply (Zhan and Chen, 2021), so the negative responses of OVFI become positive. In the adaptation aspect, the negative responses of OVFI increased significantly from November 2007 to January 2010, from July 2010 to December 2012, and from May 2017 to August 2018 ( Figure 5C), and the corresponding PHEs include H1N1 influenza A, highly pathogenic avian influenza, H7N9, Japanese encephalitis, hemorrhagic fever, plague, and malaria (Period 3-6 and Period 10-11 in Figure 1B). ...
Introduction
The fragility of agriculture makes the food supply chain vulnerable to external risks such as epidemic, conflict, disaster, climate change, economic and energy crisis. The COVID-19 pandemic has spread and continued globally in recent years, resulting in food supply chain disruption and insecurity, which triggers profound reflection on the impacts of public health events (PHEs). Studying the impacts of PHEs on the resilience of food supply chain has great significance to effectively reduce the risks of disruption and insecurity in the future.
Methods
Based on the composition of PHEs and the division of food supply chain, this paper adopted the nonlinear Granger causality test to verify the nonlinear causal relationship between PHEs and proxy variables in the food supply chain; then the TVP-VAR-SV model was constructed and its three-dimensional pulse response results were matched with the sensitivity, recovery, and adaptation of the food supply chain resilience to deeply explore the dynamic impacts of PHEs.
Results
PHEs has significant nonlinear conduction effects on the resilience of food supply chain, the impacts of PHEs on the partial sector resilience have significant dynamic characteristics in the whole sample period, and the impacts of PHEs on the recovery and adaptation aspects of food supply chain resilience have structural break characteristics.
Discussion
The differences, dynamic characteristics and structural breaks of the impacts of PHEs on the resilience of food supply chain are caused by the infectivity and mortality of PHEs, attributes of food products, regulation of supply and demand in the market, behavioral decisions of all participants, changes in the policy environment, and coordination and upgrading of all sectors in the supply chain.
... Market disruptions have been addressed by adjusting business models or reestablishing supply toward specific market segments (Rejeb et al., 2021), such as a significant increase in digital technology to enable home delivery or a shift toward retail in response to a restaurant's other food service closures (Apostolopoulos et al., 2021). Building agri-food system resilience through ICT can be a better solution to deal with the adverse effects of the pandemic (Zhan and Chen, 2021). ...
... At the production level, travel constraints in the developing countries have limited farmers' access to inputs such as crop seeds, fertilizers, machinery, and agro-chemicals, hence boosting their prices (Priyadarshini and Abhilash, 2021). For example, with China's lockdown, a significant manufacturer of synthetic agricultural inputs has been unable to operate (Zhan and Chen, 2021). Additionally, movement restrictions have reduced the available labor force for harvesting and collection, resulting in a seasonal labor shortage and significant consequences on globalized food systems that rely heavily on seasonal migrant labor. ...
... Delays in planting time Amjath-Babu et al., 2020;Kumar and Kumar Singh, 2022 Challenges in the input collection Jaacks et al., 2021;Priyadarshini and Abhilash, 2021 High-cost input Fan et al., 2021;Jaacks et al., 2021Undesirable crop stock Ben Hassen et al., 2020 Disease/ pest attack Heck et al., 2020;Sharma et al., 2021a Challenges to manage daily expenses Ben Hassen et al., 2020;Heck et al., 2020 Lack of labor Hashem et al., 2021;Zhan and Chen, 2021 Migration of labor Aday and Aday, 2020;Sid et al., 2021 Infection fairness of labor Sid et al., 2021;Talukder et al., 2021 Lack of necessary capital Amjath-Babu et al., 2020;Sid et al., 2021 Lack of technical support from extension agents Zielińska-Chmielewska et al., 2021;Yadav et al., 2022 Scarce demand for processed food Deconinck et al., 2020;Coopmans et al., 2021 The unwillingness of service providers to support during a pandemic Heck et al., 2020;Boughton et al., 2021 Low demand of consumer Deconinck et al., 2020;Coopmans et al., 2021 Consumers fear contamination through cereals, vegetables, fruits and fish. Benyam et al., 2021;Sid et al., 2021 Agri-product's low price Boughton et al., 2021;Coopmans et al., 2021 High transportation costs and restrictions Heck et al., 2020;Kumari et al., 2021 Source: Author's compilation. ...
An increasing body of literature has demonstrated COVID-19's harmful impact on agri-food systems, which are a major source of livelihood for millions of people worldwide. Information and communication technology (ICT) has been playing an increasing role in enhancing agri-food systems' resilience amid COVID-19. In this study, the PRISMA approach was employed to perform a systematic review of the literature from January 2020 to December 2021 on the overall impact of COVID-19 on agri-food system networks and ICT's role in enhancing agri-food system resilience in developing countries. This study reveals that COVID-19 has posed abundant obstacles to agri-food systems actors, including a lack of inputs, technical support, challenges to selling the product, transportation barriers, and low pricing. These impediments result in insufficient output, unforeseen stock, and revenue loss. COVID-19's restrictions have caused a significant food deficit by disrupting the demand and supply sides of the agri-food system networks. A high number of small-scale farmers have had to deal with food insecurity. As a result of the cumulative effects, actors in the agri-food system are getting less motivated to continue producing. This study also argues that many challenges in the agri-food systems can be overcome using ICTs, including maintaining precise farm management, product marketing, and access to production inputs. To assist stakeholders in coping with, adapting to, and building resilience in the agri-food system networks, this article emphasizes the critical need to turn to and expand the application of advanced agricultural ICTs to meet the world's growing needs for food production and to ensure the resilience and sustainability of farming systems, particularly in the face of a pandemic like COVID-19.
... Stability is a significant indicator to measure food security [3,4], which describes the extent of impacts on the food supply chain when disrupted, such as market fluctuations, extreme weather, conflicts, political crises, policy changes, epidemics, and natural disasters [5,6]. And a resilient food supply chain will have higher stability [7][8][9]. The stability of the supply chain is affected by internal structures and external impacts [10], which is the combination of supply chain management and environmental management [11]. ...
... Meanwhile, the rise in food prices caused by natural disasters also has impact on consumers' purchasing power and consumption habits [70]. Factors related to consumer income in economic uncertainties can affect food consumption ability in the short term [71]; factors related to market development can change consumers' consumption expectations through demonstration effects in the long term [8,72]. Meanwhile, with the increase of consumers' income, consumption habits will be rapidly upgraded from plant-based food to animal-based food [73]. ...
... From February 2009 to October 2010, the impacts of SDU on PAPP increased remarkably, mainly due to the significant growth of PAPP driven by the "four trillion" economic stimulus plan implemented by the Chinese government [43,82]. From August 2018 to June 2020, the Sino-US trade war and the outbreak of COVID-19 had negative impacts on economic development; to avoid drastic fluctuation of agri-products price, the Chinese government strengthened price supervision [8], and consequently, PAPP decreased slightly. ...
The food supply chain operates in a complex and dynamic external environment, and the external uncertainties from natural and socio-economic environment pose great challenges to the development of the food industry. In particular, the COVID-19 pandemic and Russia–Ukraine conflict have further exacerbated the vulnerability of the global food supply chain. Analyzing the dynamic impacts of external uncertainties on the stability of food supply chain is central to guaranteeing the sustainable security of food supply. Based on the division of food supply chain and the classification of external uncertainties, the TVP-FAVAR-SV model was constructed to explore the dynamic impacts of external uncertainties on food supply chain. It was found that the impacts of external uncertainty elements were significantly different, the combination of different external uncertainty elements aggravated or reduced the risks of food supply chain. And some uncertainty elements had both positive and negative impacts in the whole sample period, as the magnitude and direction of the impacts of various uncertainties in different periods had time-varying characteristics.
... This timeframe provides an ideal observation window for studying the resilience performance of urban food systems in the face of sudden public health events. It allows researchers to deeply analyze the food system's reactions throughout the stages of the pandemic, from initial impact to adaptation and recovery [33]. ...
... The year 2020 was a turning point, with a significant increase in the score for B4 (emergency preparedness and management) from 0.0851 to 0.1681, likely related to the outbreak of COVID-19, reflecting the rapid response and adaptability of the Zhengzhou Metropolitan Area to crisis management [33]. ...
This study aims to assess and analyze the urban food resilience of the Zhengzhou metropolitan area, proposing innovative assessment frameworks and methodologies. Utilizing a dual-level analysis approach that combines long-term planning impact analysis (2000–2020) with short-term resilience assessment (2018–2022), the study integrates public government data and Geographic Information System (GIS) data, employing spatial analysis, Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP), and fuzzy comprehensive evaluation techniques. Findings from 2000 to 2020 indicate that urban planning within the metropolitan area has significantly impacted the food system. Urbanization has led to reduced agricultural land, but improvements in infrastructure have enhanced the efficiency of the food supply chain. Woodland and grassland areas have remained relatively stable, providing an ecological buffer for the food system. Building on this, the short-term assessment from 2018 to 2022 reveals significant dynamic changes and a continuous improvement trend in food resilience, though there is still room for enhancement. Food supply chain management and emergency preparedness and management contributed the most to overall resilience. Notably, extreme events such as the COVID-19 pandemic and the “7.20 Flood Disaster” prompted the adoption of innovative measures to enhance food resilience. The study develops a multidimensional theoretical framework and assessment system for urban food resilience, offering new perspectives and methods for understanding and enhancing urban food resilience. The results highlight the critical role of urban planning in enhancing food resilience, recommending the integration of the food system into comprehensive urban planning, strengthening regional collaboration, and enhancing public engagement. These findings provide an important basis for policymaking and practice aimed at improving the long-term adaptability and short-term recovery capabilities of urban food systems.
... Further, Nchanji and Lutomia [67] examined the effects of COVID-19 on sustainable production and consumption of beans, vegetables, fish, and fruits in rural, peri-urban, and urban areas in Eastern and Southern Africa. Likewise, Zhan and Chen [102] analysed China's food system's initial impacts and resilience amid COVID-19 to discuss the government's responses and long-term efforts to promote stability. Meanwhile, Abuabara et al. [1] analysed the diet problem during COVID-19 to provide a diversified weekly meal plan that complies with the nutritional requirements. ...
... Also, according to Zhan and Chen [102], there are three key elements to mitigate disruptions, firstly the use of innovative methods to ensure the normal functioning of FSC; next, the establishment of targeted policies to support businesses and households, finally, the increase and prioritization of investments to build resilient food systems. Furthermore, Kazancoglu et al. [44] add that it is essential to consider drivers such as information sharing and management approaches, as well as relevant factors, focused on food safety, knowledge transfer, logistics networking, risk mitigation, employee engagement, innovation, traceability, and responsiveness. ...
Disruptions in the food supply chain are events that affect the flow of products and can be caused by extreme weather, natural disasters, conflicts, pandemics, and political situations, among others. These events can significantly impact food products' availability, quality, and cost, creating risks to the well-being of local populations and livelihoods. The specific literature on food supply chains needs to address other approaches to risk categorisation, which allow for establishing reference frameworks focused on the general classification of types of disruption and parameters related to solution methods. In this paper, we present a literature review to analyse the disruptions in the food supply chain. We classified 74 papers according to the types of disruptions, stakeholders, response level, supply chain echelon, solution methods, goals, and related considerations. The review results showed that the most common disruptions in the food supply chain are climatic, biological and environmental, logistics and infrastructure, and supply. The results of this review allow us to suggest some new research directions.
... Indeed, for Cameroon, the COVID-19 disruptions affected households' resilience capacity, similar to the observations of Chiwaula et al. [32]. The results revealed that about 67.5 % of farming households experienced disrupted access to important production inputs (seeds and fertilizer), in line with the findings of Zhan and Chen [52]. Although farming households had access to markets that complied with COVID-19 measures, many measures in the market, such as social distancing, limited the number of people accessing markets and prohibited economic activities from functioning properly. ...
... Our findings align with Suh et al.'s [7] research in Cameroon. Similar to Zhan and Chen [52], the income of farming households in Cameroon has a positive and statistically significant relationship with their food and nutrition security. This indicates that higher income-earning farming households could maintain or improve food and nutrition security. ...
... At the same time, collaboration among different actors is a key factor in achieving effective governance [39]. Governments are the traditional actors in responding to food system crises and play a key role in ensuring food system resilience [40]. Warshawsky and Vos [11] compared seven papers that focus variously on food system governance to show more sustainable outcomes are possible if local initiatives embrace change across multiple scales. ...
... In the urban food system, the government restricts the relevant actors involved in the urban food system through laws and regulations and supervises and guides the effective operation of the market through government policies and administrative directives. Since the pandemic, government departments, as the main actors in market supervision and management, have played a key role in stabilizing and enhancing the resilience of urban food systems [40]. As one of the official political discourse carriers, policy documents have become a major feature of social governance in China. ...
The COVID-19 pandemic has drastically challenged urban food systems, has hurt the resilience and fundamental function of urban food systems and also accelerated the trends of digitization and changing preferences of consumers in cities. This research conducted a qualitative analysis of the discourses, actions and interactions of different actors in the urban food systems in China during COVID-19 using an actor-oriented approach and discourse analysis. This research finds that stricter regulations and policies have been implemented by governments to regulate the food supply chain and ensure human health. Local community service personnel, volunteers, stakeholders along the food supply chain and consumers formulated collective actions during the pandemic yet chaos and discourse distortions also emerged at different stages. The pandemic is a preamble to changes in consumers’ preferences and food supply chains in urban communities. There were significant structural changes and a dual structure of urban and rural food systems, where unbalanced supply and demand existed. Collective actions with community governance and an innovative food business model to digitize flows and easily adapt to shocks in food systems are required.
... This linear trend can be seen in three types of research. First, the study of the relationship between the pandemic and the development of the sugarcane trade system cannot be separated from the influence of cultural and scientific patterns constructed by the local community (Zhan and Chen, 2021). Second, studies evaluating the trading system's performance during a pandemic are still growing (Ilesanmi et al., 2021). ...
... Usually, the patterns of community culture and science constructed have the power to determine this pattern of sugar cane sales. Culture and science are now only about sugarcane cultivation (Zhan and Chen, 2021). Sugarcane sales are more dominant than ever in the market mechanism. ...
... They declared a "green channel policy" for perishable farming commodities and confirmed that agricultural products were transported safely from producers to consumers. They also guarantee that the agricultural resources are sufficient such as breeding animals, newborn chicks, and feedstuffs supply for livestock feeding (Zhan & Chen, 2021). In Indonesia, the Indonesian Bureau of Logistics (BULOG) is in charge of price stabilization, and the company's rice reserves serve as a buffer stock. ...
... As a large-scale social restriction policy had been applied, there was a high demand for in-home delivery services for most of the products, including the food. Introducing and using a contactless delivery app without face-to-face interaction could minimize the risk of infection from direct groceries in the market (Zhan & Chen, 2021). ...
COVID-19 has disrupted all aspects of human life. To mitigate the impact of the pandemic, several efforts have been taken, including by Indonesian scholars abroad. This book entitled Indonesia Post-Pandemic Outlook: Rethinking Health and Economics Post-COVID-19 explores opportunities and innovations to push forward to recover from COVID-19, both in health and economics. Comprising 15 chapters, this book is split into three main themes. The first part, Digital Transformation, focuses on how digital transformation has provided new ways of working in health, Small Medium Enterprises (SMEs), financing, and the tourism industry, especially in this post-pandemic era. Second, Building Future Ready Resilient Societies, raises the critical question of how the Indonesian society can be more resilient and future-ready to face a future that changes more rapidly than before, through the lens of food systems, mental health, culture, collaborative leadership, communities, and global supply chains. The last part, Equitable, Sustainable, and Green Development, presents ideas on what it takes to build a more equitable, sustainable, and greener future without sacrificing prosperity. We hope that this book can be a valuable reference for stakeholders, policymakers, as well as society to recover from the pandemic crisis and find better solutions to benefit future generations.
... For instance, due to government action, the price of dairy products is higher than before a result of government action; the cost of dairy products is higher than before the pandemic. Government intervention can use the variables of logistics certainty, production certainty, matching supply with demand, and market monitoring as described in the journal [158], where quantitative and qualitative methods are used to describe indicators of government intervention as a form of food system resilience. In addition, the study [112] revealed that milk prices were higher after the epidemic than before. ...
Since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, tens of thousands of scientific articles have been published. Researchers are enthusiastic to uncover the effects of COVID-19. This study aims to critically assess the methods researchers used to analyze the impact of COVID-19 on food security. The PRISMA and Bibliometric Methods were utilized in this study. The results of the PRISMA indicate that most researchers utilize quantitative methods, 61%, compared to 32% for qualitative and 7% for mixed methods. These findings provide important data. Firstly, researchers continue relying on quantitative methods (multiple linear regression and Chi-square). Secondly, 32% of the articles utilized qualitative and only two qualitative methods, phenomenological and case studies, have been identified. No researchers use grounded theory research (GTR) and ethnographic studies (SE). Thirdly, using mixed method among COVID-19 researchers is uncommon; only 3% of researchers employed it. Next, the results of the bibliometric reveal that the USA and China contribute the most to the publication on the impact of COVID-19 on food security. A review of research publications on the impact of COVID-19 on food security shows an alarming increase in food loss and waste due to excessive household food purchases. This trend has the potential to endanger food availability in the future. Recommendations to the government include offering incentives to reduce food loss and waste, improving supply chain coordination, training, and technical breakthroughs and innovations, especially for small-scale farmers. The government should support food banks and farmers' markets to shorten the value chain and connect farmers with consumers.
... In this work, the agricultural product sales data of a supermarket from July 1, 2020, to June 30, 2023, is used, covering the periods before and after the pandemic, which may bring unpredictable impacts on the stability and accuracy of the results. Specifically, due to labor shortages caused by pandemic restrictions, there is a reduced availability of manpower for harvesting and transporting fresh produce [39]. This disruption in the supply chain for many foods, such as fruits and vegetables, leads to unavoidable price volatility. ...
Short-cycle agricultural product sales forecasting significantly reduces food waste by accurately predicting demand, ensuring producers match supply with consumer needs. However, the forecasting is often subject to uncertain factors, resulting in highly volatile and discontinuous data. To address this, a hierarchical prediction model that combines RF-XGBoost is proposed in this work. It adopts the Random Forest (RF) in the first layer to extract residuals and achieve initial prediction results based on correlation features from Grey Relation Analysis (GRA). Then, a new feature set based on residual clustering features is generated after the hierarchical clustering is applied to classify the characteristics of the residuals. Subsequently, Extreme Gradient Boosting (XGBoost) acts as the second layer that utilizes those residual clustering features to yield the prediction results. The final prediction is by incorporating the results from the first layer and second layer correspondingly. As for the performance evaluation, using agricultural product sales data from a supermarket in China from 1 July 2020 to 30 June 2023, the results demonstrate superiority over standalone RF and XGBoost, with a Mean Absolute Percentage Error (MAPE) reduction of 10% and 12%, respectively, and a coefficient of determination (R2) increase of 22% and 24%, respectively. Additionally, its generalization is validated across 42 types of agricultural products from six vegetable categories, showing its extensive practical ability. Such performances reveal that the proposed model beneficially enhances the precision of short-term agricultural product sales forecasting, with the advantages of optimizing the supply chain from producers to consumers and minimizing food waste accordingly.
... The transition from supply chain to value chain resilience, facilitated by digital platforms, was notably pronounced during the pandemic, illustrating the critical role of digital technologies in delivering food products and services (Donthu and Gustafsson, 2020;Golan et al., 2020;Indriastuti and Fuad, 2020). Due to the technological abilities to improve supply chain efficiency and enhance supply chain flexibility, the use of digital platforms in the food system has been widely promoted by international organizations and governments since the onset of the pandemic (FAO, 2020;Gruere and Brooks, 2021;Zhan and Chen, 2021;Guo et al., 2023). ...
Purpose – The purpose of this study is to investigate the effect of digital platforms on the resilience of food entrepreneurs in non-Western countries before and after the COVID-19 pandemic. Design/methodology/approach – This study adopts a qualitative approach using cross-case analysis based on interviews with 17 restaurants in Iran’s touristic Torqabeh region. The data were collected before (2018) and after (2023) the COVID-19 outbreak.
Findings – The findings indicate that social and economic factors, particularly procurement and technological aspects of the food value chain, exhibited high resilience, enabling food entrepreneurs to revitalize their functions post-pandemic. The results reveal that digital platforms and online food shopping within food entrepreneurship contributed to this resilience by enhancing food distribution and potentially broadening equitable food access.
Research limitations/implications – The main limitations of this research are linked to the research method, which focuses on qualitative coding, and its geographic focus on Iran, which may limit the generalizability of the findings to other contexts. The key implications include providing additional insights into the resilience of food entrepreneurship, illustrating the varied effects of social, economic and legal factors on revitalizing food entrepreneurship and emphasizing the crucial role of digital platforms in advancing food entrepreneurship.
Originality/value – The study advances the understanding of resilience in food entrepreneurship, contributing to both theoretical and practical strategies in emerging market contexts and offering insights for future research.
... Indeed, the COVID-19 pandemic significantly undermines farming households' response strategies, affecting farming households' resilience, similar to the findings of Chiwaula et al. (2022) in Malawi. Further, our results show that approximately 83.5% of the respondents experienced disrupted access to markets, similar to the findings of Rozelle et al. (2020) and Zhan and Chen (2021). Moreover, we found that farming households could not sell their agricultural produce on time. ...
The COVID-19 pandemic affected farming households in Sub-Saharan Africa. As a case in point, we examine farming households' resilience to food and nutrition insecurity in Ghana under the COVID-19 shocks. Focus group discussions were initially conducted with farming household heads to identify households' sources of resilience and the different COVID-19 shocks. A multi-stage random sampling technique was then used to survey 252 farming households. We used different econometric modelling techniques, that is, the multiple indicators multiple causes modelling procedure, ordinary least square, and multinomial probit model, for data analysis. Our results provide supportive evidence affirming that COVID-19 shocks undermine farming households' resilience and food and nutrition security. Urban and male-headed households experience more food and nutrition insecurity than rural and female-headed households. Farming households' adaptive capacity significantly contributed to household resilience and food and nutrition security. The findings suggest that lessons learned from the current pandemic can help policymakers, governments, and international organisations build adequate responses and interventions that strengthen and support farming households' resilience to food and nutrition security and systemic shocks such as COVID-19 in Ghana.
... In response to the agricultural epidemic crisis, governments have implemented a number of strategies to improve the prices of means of production in agriculture. These include increasing subsidies to purchase unsold agricultural products at a higher price than the market rate (Zhan & Chen, 2021). This strategy is intended to enhance the resilience of the agricultural supply chain to the pandemic and the resulting global market volatility (Mann, 2022). ...
Theoretical background: Agriculture is an input-intensive sector of the economy. The sector of means of production in agriculture is one of the three basic components of the food economy. The prices of agricultural inputs shape the operational costs of farms and significantly affect their income situation. Key agricultural inputs represent fertilizers, plant protection products, seeds, energy and labour force. The COVID-19 pandemic has affected the functioning of food systems all over the world, including in Poland. The agricultural sector in Poland faced several challenges, including the surge in prices of means of production in agriculture. Purpose of the article: The study aims to identify and assess changes in the prices of means of production in agriculture and the impact of changes in these prices on the dynamics of selling prices of agricultural products and the income situation of farms in Poland during the COVID-19 pandemic. Research methods: The study employs various research methods, including critical literature analysis, the descriptive approach, the comparative method, verbal logic, and descriptive statistical methods. Moreover, we utilize a standardised questionnaire method utilising the CATI (computer-assisted telephone interviewing) technique, targeting 50 experts in the field of agricultural economics, to gather their perspectives on the possibility of transferring the rise in agricultural production costs to the pricing of products sold during the COVID-19 pandemic. The secondary data come from the Statistics Poland, the Agency for Restructuring and Modernization of Agriculture (ARMA), and the National Bank of Poland (NBP). The research period covers the years 2017–2021, with particular emphasis on the years 2020–2021, i.e., the period of the COVID-19 pandemic. Main findings: Research results show that only in 2020, the prices of goods purchased for current agricultural production decreased. However, in 2021, the costs of materials and services and other costs in agriculture, including wages, increased at a record pace. The demand-side causes of such cost increases were increases in money supply and agricultural income. Supply-side causes were shaped by commodity prices and wages. In Poland, the prices of goods and services purchased by farms were less variable than the prices of goods sold. The data analysis did not reveal significant relationships regarding the dynamics of the prices discussed. Such a conclusion is also confirmed by the results of a questionnaire survey directed to experts in agricultural economics. The responses concerning the possibility of transferring the increase in production costs to the prices of sold products during the pandemic years varied. In the years 2017–2021, the income situation of Polish farms was variable. In 2020, increases in income from production factors, operating surplus, and farmer’s income, and their decreases in 2021, were inversely correlated with changes in production costs in agriculture.
... During the second and third waves of the pandemic, the sector has not reported any critical challenges to its smooth operation, with the notable exception of the significant disruption of the supply chain due to the financial crisis caused by the pandemic and related containment measures that continue to affect foodservice channel in most Member States and have an indirect impact on the operators who mainly supply this channel (Zhan & Chen, 2021). However, due to the flexibility of manufacturers and retailers in this area and governments' rapid and broad response, the negative impact on results was less significant. ...
... Samoggia et al. have conducted a systematic review of "digital technologies in the agrofood sector" in which they concluded that "Apps" are the most prevalent digital technology within the agro-food chain, especially within the production, distribution, and consumption sectors (Samoggia et al., 2021). In China, in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, Zhan and Chen highlight the important role that ICTs played in keeping the food supply chains operating as normally as possible, from virtual technical support to agricultural producers, to virtual events to connect all the actors in the food supply chains, and digital applications for e-commerce that included contactless delivery services (Zhan and Chen, 2021). In the third paper, MacKenzie and Davies describe the co-design of an online sustainability impact assessment (SIA) framework called SHARE IT with the purpose of disseminating "ICT-mediated food sharing initiatives" and their subsequent impacts on urban food systems, especially in terms of its contribution to the sustainability of said systems (Mackenzie and Davies, 2019). ...
Introduction
The fragility of food systems in Chile has been exposed through concomitant crises, from a social crisis in 2019 to the COVID-19 pandemic, and ongoing climate change. There is an increased dependence on information and communication technologies (ICTs) to produce, sell, and consume food and the digital divide has increased. The lack of digital literacy in Chile has not been evaluated or considered within comprehensive interventions.
Methods
To examine how local food systems can be strengthened, we conducted a pilot study of a digital literacy-based intervention with smallholder farmers, vendors, and consumers ( n = 96) of different age groups (25–45 y, and 46–65 y) from adjacent urban and rural regions in Chile. Telephone surveys were carried out on the use of ICTs, access to the food environment, and agricultural practices during crises. A 5-week digital literacy intervention was carried out on digital confidence, the use of ICTs to generate networks, networks, the use of apps to sell or buy food, banking operations, and communication with state agencies. We also planned a virtual conversation about the food system and nutrition in Chile.
Results
All participants knew how to read and send WhatsApp messages but >50% of farmers and vendors reported cell signal problems. Between the 2019 social crisis and the COVID-19 pandemic, supermarkets as the main source of food decreased from 79 to 57%, and delivery increased from 2 to 17%. In total, 92% of the participants received the intervention, and 52% expressed satisfaction. Across participants, the average implementation score was 61%. Only one person connected to the virtual conversation.
Discussion
Crises have impacted how the Chilean population in both urban and rural regions navigate their food environment for their household as well as small-scale agricultural production in these areas; elucidating a greater dependency on ICTs amongst small-scale farmers, vendors, and consumers in Chile to buy and/or sell food. We also conclude that it is feasible to implement a digital literacy intervention for key food system actors in urban and rural settings in Chile. Future studies will contribute to the evidence base about the feasibility and impact of similar digital literacy interventions; an area of increasing importance given the rising prevalence of the digital food environment worldwide.
... 3.1 Moderating role of e-commerce as a technological factor E-commerce is viewed by firms as an option in the suite of digital technologies that can enhance performance in unfavourable market conditions (Gunasekaran et al., 2011). To be sure, in China, where economic recovery has already been achieved, e-commerce has been instrumental to the promotion and distribution of products with a short shelf life in manufacturing subsectors such as food processing (Zhan and Chen, 2021). The fast adoption and diffusion of e-commerce among firms in Asia and Latin America since the onset of COVID-19 has also been noted (Reardon et al., 2021). ...
Purpose-Although recent literature has examined diverse measures adopted by SMEs to navigate the COVID-19 turbulence, there is a shortage of evidence on how crisis-time strategy creation behaviour and digitalization activities increase (1) sales and (2) cash flow. Thus, predicated on a novel strategy creation perspective, this inquiry aims to investigate the crisis behaviour, sales and cash flow performance of 528 SMEs in Morocco.
Design/methodology/approach-Novel links between (1) aggregate wage cuts, (2) variable operating hours, (3) deferred payment to suppliers, (4) deferred payment to tax authorities and (5) sales performance are developed and tested. A further link between sales performance and cash flow is also examined and the analysis is conducted using a non-linear structural equation modelling technique.
Findings-While there is a significant association between strategy creation behaviours and sales performance, only variable operating hours have a positive effect. Also, sales performance increases cash flow and this relationship is substantially strengthened by e-commerce digitalization and innovation.
Originality/value-Theoretically, to the best of the authors' knowledge, this is one of the first inquiries to espouse the strategy creation view to explain SMEs' crisis-time behaviour and digitalization. For practical purposes, to supplement Moroccan SMEs' propensity to seek tax deferrals, it is argued that debt and equity support measures are also needed to boost sales performance and cash flow.
... Для обеспечения стабильности продовольственной безопасности китайское правительство создало системы продовольственных резервов, состоящие из центрального резерва и местных резервов. Центральные запасы зерна предназначены для удовлетворения основных потребностей потребителей в случае стихийных бедствий, войны и могут обеспечивать потребление в течение одного года (Zhan, Chen, 2021). Местные запасы зерна предназначены для использования в чрезвычайных ситуациях на местном рынке, стабилизации цен на зерно и обеспечения гарантированных поставок продовольствия. ...
Against the background of a global decline in food security over the past three to four years, China, remaining the world’s largest food importer, has made notable progress in improving its food security. China’s food security transformation has greatly improved not only the availability but also the affordability of food, as well as the sustainability of the Chinese food system. The increase in agricultural production, including grain production in China, indicates a transition from an extensive development model with high resource dependence to a sustainable intensification model. As a result of rapid economic and social development, the food pattern has changed based on high value foods such as meat, dairy products, fish and fish products. However, there are a number of serious problems in China’s food system. China has insufficient self-sufficiency and high import dependence on a number of food products. New to China’s nutritional challenges are the overweight part of the population and the resulting increasing burden on the health care system. In addition, China’s food losses exceed those of developed countries. The changes that the world economy is undergoing, the influence of non-market factors such as ideology, geopolitics and challenges to the multilateral trade and investment system, can seriously disrupt the global agricultural market and reduce the food security of China, which is heavily dependent on foreign food trade. The transformation of China’s food system is aimed at preventing and eliminating the risks of disruption of food imports, diversifying import sources, reducing the cost of agricultural products through scientific and technological progress and increasing investment in infrastructure, the transition of Chinese agriculture from a strategy of increasing production to improving the quality of products and its security.
... and food system through regional coordination, and (5) [8] ，能够 涵盖、惠及并赋权系统内所有人，特别是经济社会 中的弱势群体 [9] 。狭义上，农业食物系统包容性从 食物消费包容和农业生产包容两个维度进行阐述， 前者通过消除弱势群体参与食物系统阻碍因素，向 贫困群体提供食物，赋予所有群体可负担、安全、 营养的食物权益 [10] ；包容的农业系统则在农业系统 和价值链中帮助弱势群体获得不断发展的技能，体 现机会公平、参与权利与权益保障 [11] ，公平分享经 济社会发展成果 [12,13] ，主要通过提供多样化就业、 可负担农业生产资料、可获得通畅的农业市场渠 道 [10,13] [16] ；全球人口增长和粮饲化竞争对粮食安 全产生威胁 [17] 。同时，粮食金融化、能源化助推国 际粮食价格剧烈波动和高价运行，使单一经济国家 陷入饥荒 [18] ，也加剧全球粮食危机 [19] 。在供应链流 通环节，新型冠状病毒感染疫情造成港口拥堵、运 价高涨、断链等 [20] ，影响食物进出口国或地区食物 供应量和配置效率。在食物消费环节，环境政策负 外部性、气候政策如碳税，提高能源价格和食品价 格，影响消费者及家庭福利 [21,22] ；新型冠状病毒感 染疫情使消费者线上需求增加，从而促使冷冻和包 装食品零售消费量飙升 [23] ，低收入群体对谷物的需 求增长较大，显著降低了农村居民的膳食多样性和 总体膳食平衡度 [24] 。 可持续需协同生态、农业、食物系统三方面的 包容发展。生态环境恶化加剧食物系统脆弱化进 程 [25,26] 缺乏 [27] ；二是粮食作物单产水平、优质品种自主研 发能力仍待提升，单产普遍低于美国，主产区大豆 单产低于美国近 17% [28] ，迫切需要聚焦单产提高开 展技术攻关和集成。国民膳食的主要肉类来源之一 的白羽鸡种苗进口依存度一度接近 100%，肉牛等 [30,31] [2] 郝爱民, 谭家银. 数字乡村建设对我国粮食体系韧性的影响 [J]. ...
The inclusive development of agricultural and food systems is crucial for realizing rural revitalization and Chinese path to modernization considering China’s basic national condition of being a large country with small farmers, and it is also an important aspect of common prosperity and global sustainable development. This study explores the implications and characteristics of inclusive development of the agricultural and food systems and identifies four prominent problems existing in promoting the effective connection between small farmers and agricultural modernization, improving the food demand and public service support systems for vulnerable groups, enhancing the resilience of agricultural industrial and supply chains, and establishing a fair, shared, and sustainable public-service system necessary for the agricultural and food systems. Moreover, four key systems are proposed aimed at overcoming scientific and technological challenges critical to the agricultural system, developing food science and technology while improving the food supply chain, promoting the inclusive development of agricultural and food systems, and establishing an inclusive agricultural and food system. Furthermore, the following suggestions are proposed: (1) ensuring food security to guarantee the inclusive development of vulnerable groups, (2) forming a large-scale grain security pattern while adhering to an all-encompassing approach to food,
(3) optimizing the circulation and distribution systems using digital technologies, (4) establishing a shared and inclusive agricultural and food system through regional coordination, and (5) unblocking the entire chain channels of agricultural and food systems.
... In-country lockdowns and measures attempting to control the COVID-19 virus have also adversely affected food access, shopping habits, and consumption [3,4]. The threats to food security due to the COVID-19 pandemic made assuring the supply of staple foods a top priority for governments [5]. For example, consumers made the transition to online community food purchases because of the pandemic [6]. ...
Online food community purchases contributed to urban residents' food security during the COVID-19 pandemic in Shanghai. The influence of the outbreak on the purchasing behavior of an online food community was examined. An innovative e-commerce model describes how the online community purchases facilitate integration of local food and agri-product resources, and provide consumers, especially residents of densely populated agglomerations, with convenient short-distance distribution. The survey data collected from 1168 residents show that the lockdown severity and food security concerns increased the frequency of residents' online food purchases. Heterogeneity analysis indicated that the Omicron outbreak effected the online food purchases of those born before the 1990s, males, the less educated, and low-income earners through a community group effect. The internet provides a convenient means of disseminating information, promoting access to local foods, and assuring food access during public health emergencies. Purchasing food online can be further enhanced through standardized management of online communities.
... In addition, FAO (2020) reported that hindrance in feed supplies affects the allied activities of agriculture such as poultry, aquaculture, and livestock production. The disruption in the agricultural supply chain included the unavailability of labor and other farm inputs, a reduction in the level of processing, and a slow response of distribution channels (Zhan & Chen 2021;de Boef 2021;Zahraee et al. 2022). Selim and Eltarabily (2022) assessed the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the agricultural sector and highlighted the importance of agricultural extensions in creating awareness towards improving farming practices and water use efficiency for increasing crop productivity. ...
This paper aims at analyzing the research productivity and scientific knowledge discovery of the COVID-19 pandemic in agriculture using a bibliometric analysis approach. A total of 1514 research papers indexed in the Scopus database, covering a period of 2020 to 2022, are processed using VOSviewer and R-Studio software. The analysis of research productivity indicates that the number of research publications on COVID-19 and agriculture has exponentially increased globally, and about 80% of the research papers have been published in the top 10 countries led by the USA, India, and China. The countries are increasingly collaborating in undertaking research on COVID-19 and agriculture. Furthermore, major journals and articles with citations have been extracted to analyze the leading publication avenues and focused areas of research. The science mapping is done using co-occurrence and thematic map. With the help of co-occurrence analysis, six clusters are identified depicting major research themes, i.e., COVID-19 and agricultural supply chain disruption, COVID-19 and human health issues and coping strategies, COVID-19 and non-human and animal health, COVID-19 pandemic and environment and pollution, COVID-19 and healthcare and treatment, and COVID-19 and food nutrition from dairy and meat products. The thematic map analysis identifies potential research areas such as mental health, anxiety, and depression in the agricultural system, which may help in setting future research agenda and help devising policy supports for managing the agriculture sector better during crisis. The paper also highlights the theoretical and practical implications.
... Conventional agri-food systems actually have limited resilience, being vulnerable to several shocks such as increasing occurrence of extreme natural events [7] such as the COVID-19 pandemic [8] and the current Russia-Ukraine conflict [9]. Even before the COVID-19 crisis and other events, there was an urgent call for sustainable food systems to address food security and nutrition [10]. The COVID-19 crisis affected food demand, food supply and The geographical area considered in this research is the Metropolitan City of Bari-MCB (southern Italy), which is one of the nine cities involved in the FoodShift 2030 EU project [33] aimed at fostering the transition of European food systems to efficient resource use and low carbon emissions and also promoting sustainable food diets. ...
Cities have been increasingly involved in the development of food policies, becoming key points in achieving food security and fostering the transition to sustainable agri-food systems. The aim of this paper is to identify citizens’ profiles by performing segmentation and profiling according to their socio-economic variables and perception of key factors affecting food security. This is to define appropriate strategies to guide policy makers in a more effective creation of urban food policies. An online survey was filled out by citizens of the Metropolitan City of Bari from July to November 2022. Descriptive analysis, principal component analysis and K-means cluster analysis were applied to the collected data. Four clusters of citizens were obtained and labelled based on socio-economic characteristics and key factors affecting food security perception. Specifically, the “Law-confident” (45% of citizens) and “Hedonist” (36%) clusters revealed the greatest trust in “governance” and “quality certification” aspects. The “Capitalist” (15%) and “Conservatory” (4%) clusters were relatively small groups, characterized respectively by a positive perception of the standardization of food production and governance power, with a focus on strategies regarding food policy implementation, reduction of food loss and waste (FLW) and improvement of food quality certifications systems. The proposed approach and results may support EU policy makers in identifying key macro-areas and matters toward which to direct public funding in order to improve food security in urban areas, and to put in place actions enhancing citizens’ knowledge and awareness of key issues of food security.
... Increasing food demand would encourage unsustainable resource use behaviors, such as over-grazing, over-farming, and the indiscriminate use of fertilizers [23], so that limited local ecological resources could meet the aggregated food demand [21]. Understanding household dietary diversity status and its development trends will help us to better understand the local ecosystem [24] and build a safer social net, which might have a stronger ability and better resilience to resist socio-economic crises [25]. For example, the policymakers should target and purposefully to monitor the factors that lead to high-resource-required dietary patterns and provide prompt and necessary interventions; additionally, policymakers could be better prepared in terms of food supply when the regional household dietary status displays negative signs due to natural disasters. ...
Food security is critical for socioeconomic development. In grassland areas, inappropriate food consumption patterns can cause irreversible damage to vulnerable local ecosystems. This study aims to examine the household dietary diversity status and development trend over the past 20 years in Chinese herder communities. We draw on a cross-sectional dataset of 230 households involving 652 family members from the Xilin Gol Grassland areas in North China. Household dietary diversity was assessed using the household dietary diversity score (HDDS), which was calculated based on 12 food groups. Results show that HDDS increased from 3.74 in 1999 to 5.92 in 2019, with an annual average growth rate of 2.45% during the past 20 years. The increase in plant-based food scores made a major contribution to the HDDS improvement. The variations in household dietary diversity status between pastoral areas and agro-pastoral areas showed differences among different types of grassland in arid and semiarid transitional zones. It is worth paying more attention to monitoring the main impact factors that affect HDDS and how these changes might impact the local ecosystem, which will benefit regional sustainable development.
... Yet, the sharp contraction was only a temporary shock and rice-crawfish production quickly rebounded in 2021, with government support to farmers and efforts to re-establish crawfish value chains (Pu and Zhong 2020, Xie et al 2021). The Ministry of Transportation has opened 'green channels' that prioritize the transportation of agricultural products (Zhan and Chen 2021). Local governments and private entrepreneurs have established e-commerce platforms to increase online crawfish sales and online input purchases (JPCMSC, Joint Prevention and Control Mechanism of the State Council 2020, FAO 2020c). ...
Crop-aquaculture systems are widely adopted around the world as they can provide high protein and energy outputs per unit of land and raise farm incomes, particularly for smallholder farmers. Recently, a new crop-aquaculture system, which combines rice production with crawfish breeding (integrated rice-crawfish farming), has emerged and rapidly expanded in China. However, the spatial extent and temporal dynamics of this integrated farming system largely remain unclear, which prohibits rigorous impact assessments to support its sustainable development. Here we use time series of Landsat satellite data, for the first time, to explore the emergence and the changing dynamics of this rice-crawfish farming system for the period of 2013-2021 in five provinces of China, where 90% of the global crawfish are produced. The total area of rice-crawfish farming in these five provinces increased steadily from 0.11 Mha in 2013 to 0.70 Mha in 2019, then sharply contracted by a third in 2020 and rebounded in 2021. Rice-crawfish system located primarily in low-elevation plain areas with abundant water resources. More concentrated rice-crawfish distribution is observed in Jianghan Plain, and regions around Dongting Lake and Poyang Lake. The spatial distribution of rice-crawfish cultivation experienced considerable expansion towards the east and north from 2013 to 2021, with the largest expansion found in Jiangsu and Anhui after 2018. Over 6% of counties experienced notable area increases of more than 60 km2 from 2017 and 2019, but 20% of counties have decreased from 2019 to 2021. Irrigated cropland is the largest contributor to rice-crawfish expansion with a contribution of 56%, followed by water bodies (25%) and rainfed cropland (13%). The spatial and temporal information provided in this study helps to understand the evolution of rice-crawfish cultivation in China and facilitates more efficient management of land resources under the rapid development of this farming system.
... The experiences since the start of the pandemic in the Western Cape may not be unique as similar responses have been documented elsewhere (Nemes et al., 2021;Zhan & Chen, 2021;Zollet et al., 2021). Within South Africa, CANs have spread to other provinces and have adopted similar modes of operation. ...
Explains why we need to look beyond agriculture and trade and embrace a holistic food systems perspective
Broaches an array of issues relating to resilience and food security, including gender, climate change, and COVID-19
Appeals to a broad audience, from academics to policymakers, students to practitioners
This book is open access, which means that you have free and unlimited access
... The experiences since the start of the pandemic in the Western Cape may not be unique as similar responses have been documented elsewhere (Nemes et al., 2021;Zhan & Chen, 2021;Zollet et al., 2021). Within South Africa, CANs have spread to other provinces and have adopted similar modes of operation. ...
Climate change poses significant risks to our food systems, thus jeopardising the food security of millions of people worldwide. The concept of resilience is increasingly being proposed as a framework to find solutions to these challenges. In this chapter, we assess how resilience has been integrated in discussions about climate change and food security by both academics and practitioners. We performed a targeted review of the academic literature on climate change, food security, and resilience and found that despite a growing body of literature on the subject, the pathways through which actions translate into resilience and then into food security remain unclear. An examination of a sample of projects implemented through the Adaptation Fund revealed that many good practices with potential for resilience-building are used but also that suitable indicators and methods to monitor and evaluate resilience and its outcomes are lacking. Based on our findings, we conclude that while the concept of resilience has accompanied and may have favoured a transition towards more integrated approaches and interventions in work related to climate change and food security, further efforts are needed to identify an efficient and rational sequence of interventions to improve food security in response to climate threats.
... The experiences since the start of the pandemic in the Western Cape may not be unique as similar responses have been documented elsewhere (Nemes et al., 2021;Zhan & Chen, 2021;Zollet et al., 2021). Within South Africa, CANs have spread to other provinces and have adopted similar modes of operation. ...
Linking the concepts of food systems and resilience offers the opportunity to strengthen our understanding of these concepts, the potential they hold for more informed policy discussions, and the design and implementation of interventions that will better deliver on food security outcomes. This chapter outlines how these twin concepts can be linked conceptually and empirically. It argues that while we know much about certain elements of the food system, specifically production and consumption, our understanding of the processing and distribution components of the food system are weak. For example, market structure in the processing sector and market integration can contribute to food system resilience, but these are rarely measured at a country level. This makes efforts to measure resilience at the system-level challenging. Understanding what can make a resilient food system has important implications for policy and intervention design. Building resilient food systems requires that policymakers grapple with trade-offs and tensions such as those between the benefits of diversification versus gains from specialization; and how openness to trade reduces vulnerability to domestic shocks to the food system while exposing it to external shocks. How best to manage these will be an important challenge to address.
... The experiences since the start of the pandemic in the Western Cape may not be unique as similar responses have been documented elsewhere (Nemes et al., 2021;Zhan & Chen, 2021;Zollet et al., 2021). Within South Africa, CANs have spread to other provinces and have adopted similar modes of operation. ...
The aim of this introduction chapter is twofold. First it will set the scene, frame the overarching problem and present the central question of this volume: How does the concept of resilience help in improving our general understanding of the development process, in particular around the issue of food (in)security, and how does it influence the way development interventions around this question of food security are now programmed and implemented? To address this ambitious question, the entire series of chapters will adopt a food system approach. The second part of the introduction chapter will then ‘kick-start’ the discussion, first by providing some initial element of definition for the three concepts under consideration and then by highlighting some of the main discussions, debates or even contradictions that emerge in the literature around the definition, interpretations and application of those concepts.
... The experiences since the start of the pandemic in the Western Cape may not be unique as similar responses have been documented elsewhere (Nemes et al., 2021;Zhan & Chen, 2021;Zollet et al., 2021). Within South Africa, CANs have spread to other provinces and have adopted similar modes of operation. ...
Food systems have outcomes related to three goals: food and nutrition security; livelihoods and economic inclusion; and environmental sustainability. Place-based approaches help to delineate the adequate territories in which coalitions of actors can address such goals. In the case of food, they facilitate food system resilience through identifying opportunities for adaptation to change and offer risk management to deal with external shocks. In many countries, local authorities and communities were central in the early response to the COVID-19 pandemic. The South African experience is illustrative of their potential roles in a time of crisis. Although South Africa’s provinces have restricted competency for food system governance, the Western Cape Province adopted a pro-active approach and developed from 2014 a food security strategy where it commits to a wide range of interventions. Related and following local debates provided a fertile context which allowed further engagement about ways to improve food governance. It facilitated the emergence of multiple community-led initiatives to address the loss of livelihoods and food insecurity during the crisis. This experience illustrates the potential to produce polycentric forms of governance that can progressively result in collaborative governance; it also reveals how embryonic territorial approaches addressing food system issues can emerge.
... The experiences since the start of the pandemic in the Western Cape may not be unique as similar responses have been documented elsewhere (Nemes et al., 2021;Zhan & Chen, 2021;Zollet et al., 2021). Within South Africa, CANs have spread to other provinces and have adopted similar modes of operation. ...
The concept of resilience within urban food systems has gained significant academic and policy focus in recent years. This aligns with the increased global awareness of the problem of urban food insecurity, and increased focus on sub-national policies for sustainable development. COVID-19 demonstrated a series of vulnerabilities in the food system and the urban system. Academic work on urban food system resilience is wide ranging, however particular areas of focus dominate, focusing on urban agriculture, localized food systems, resilient city region food systems and the water-energy-food nexus. Renewed interest in resilience policy at the local government level has been amplified by global networks, whose framing of urban food systems resilience is embedded within the SDGs and the New Urban Agenda. Using findings from cities in five African countries, we argue for a re-framing of urban food system resilience that is inclusive of a wider set of factors shaping the form and function of the food system; that the urban system, specifically infrastructure, shapes the functioning of the food system and the ability of consumers to use the food system; and that the agency of urban food system users needs inclusion in understandings of, and efforts to increase, food systems resilience.
... The experiences since the start of the pandemic in the Western Cape may not be unique as similar responses have been documented elsewhere (Nemes et al., 2021;Zhan & Chen, 2021;Zollet et al., 2021). Within South Africa, CANs have spread to other provinces and have adopted similar modes of operation. ...
Achieving food security for the global population of 8 billion will be a challenge without functional, equitable, and resilient food systems. This chapter examines the history of how food security has been framed and addressed in international development, and the importance of a food systems approach and mindset in tackling food security. While this new food systems framing is important in bringing together the myriad of actors and components that food touches upon, food security has become more complex in the modern, challenged world, and functional food systems do not necessarily equate to improved food security. As international goals and commitments are made, policymakers must consider how food systems engage with other systems, and the failures and successes that history has taught us in efforts to achieve food security for all.
... The experiences since the start of the pandemic in the Western Cape may not be unique as similar responses have been documented elsewhere (Nemes et al., 2021;Zhan & Chen, 2021;Zollet et al., 2021). Within South Africa, CANs have spread to other provinces and have adopted similar modes of operation. ...
Resilience offers a useful lens for studying how human well-being and agri-food systems absorb and recover from a range of shocks and stressors, including the COVID-19 pandemic. Looking beyond the direct effects of observable shocks to the mechanisms that shape their impacts can guide our understanding of COVID-19 and leverage findings from the pandemic to better understand resilience to future shocks. We develop a conceptual framework for the multiple paths through which observed shocks interact with systemic mechanisms to influence resilience. We illustrate this framework with reference to the pandemic and policy responses as they unfolded in three rural areas in Malawi, Madagascar, and Kenya. Consistent with this framework, we find multiple pathways through which the pandemic affected household food security and resilience. Our findings highlight that, in some settings, the direct effects—in this case severe illness and mortality from SARS-CoV-2—may impact fewer people than the indirect impacts that arise as behaviors, markets, and policies adjust. We illustrate that although COVID-19 is a new shock, its massive, broad-reaching impacts manifest through familiar stressors and uncertainties that frequently burden poor rural populations in much of the low- and middle-income world.
... The experiences since the start of the pandemic in the Western Cape may not be unique as similar responses have been documented elsewhere (Nemes et al., 2021;Zhan & Chen, 2021;Zollet et al., 2021). Within South Africa, CANs have spread to other provinces and have adopted similar modes of operation. ...
The published narratives on food resilience of 16 development agencies are analysed. Using a rapid appraisal method, their positions and conception of resilience as a factor in food security are scrutinised. The study provides a snapshot of thought in 2020 and 2021. The COVID-19 pandemic, climate change, biodiversity loss and a policy focus on food systems have made resilience prominent in food policy. Firstly, concerns are raised that resilience may follow food security in its plasticity, blunting its critical edge. Secondly, the methods are explained. Thirdly, the findings are presented and organised by agency type. Fourthly, the findings are discussed. A fractured consensus around food resilience is noted. Despite broad agreement that resilience is a useful dimension for food security, there is no mutually agreed systematic conceptualisation or framework. Agencies use different definitions, approaches and measurements in their discourse, with varying levels of complexity. Some agencies adopt resilience as a buzzword, while others make it central to their institutional approach. The chapter concludes that, although resilience is emerging as core concept, its value would be strengthened with interdisciplinary attention paid to how food resilience is measured; unless this occurs, the risk is that resilience will be diluted as it becomes ubiquitous.
... This was observed globally during the COVID-19 pandemic, which caused various disruptions to food systems across demand-side, supply-side, and integrated pro-cesses. The pandemic has yet to cease and still has some countries questioning global food security risks (Zhan & Chen, 2021). Disruptions occurred within supply chains, including physical inaccessibility to food products due to social distancing and quarantine restrictions. ...
The COVID-19 outbreak led to major disruptions in food systems across the globe. In the United States’ Chicago region, the outbreak created immediate concerns around increased hunger, food insecurity, supply chain disruptions, and loss of local livelihoods. This was especially evident in communities of color, which faced disproportionate impacts from the pandemic. In March 2020, the Chicago Food Policy Action Council (CFPAC) coordinated a Rapid Response Effort that convened people in working groups related to emergency food assistance, local food producers, small businesses, and food system workers to address urgent needs that arose due to the pandemic. Each working group met regularly through virtual calls. This effort has persisted throughout the pandemic in various forms. For this study, we interviewed CFPAC staff members and participants in these calls to create narratives that document respondents’ perceptions of the Rapid Response Effort’s evolution, benefits, challenges, and potential for long-term impacts. Thematic analysis conducted across these narratives revealed the importance of network connections to overcoming food system disruptions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. Our analysis also underscored challenges associated with racism in efforts to strengthen local and regional food systems. These findings indicate a need for research and practice that intentionally attend to power disparities related to race within collaborative networks in order to structure local and regional food systems to achieve greater racial equity and resilience to future shocks.
... Its connotation has been widely applied and developed in systems such as forests (Danielson et al., 2017), rambling beaches (Colloff and Baldwin, 2010), grasslands (Cao et al., 2018), and even cities (Suárez et al., 2016). In recent years, the resilience measurement and assessment of farmland/food systems have gained attention (Zhan and Chen, 2021). The most common innovative practice is resilience thinking, which integrates qualitative aspects as an essential perspective of agricultural management to construct a single-dimensional or multi-dimensional indicator system to measure and assess the resilience of farming systems (Darnhofer et al., 2010;Bennett et al., 2021;Lyu et al., 2021). ...
In the context of global warming, the sustainability of farmland ecosystems is increasingly impacted by multiple disturbances from both natural and human-induced sources. This study constructed a conceptual model and indicator system of farmland ecosystem resilience (FER) based on the disturbance-response processes of farmland ecosystems. FER assessment, supported by 30 specific indicators, was tested in Ethiopia, one of the most food-insecure countries in the world and the factors impending farmland ecosystem sustainability were discussed based on the obstacle degree values (ODVs). The results showed that the FER change rate in Ethiopia was 0.3 %/year during 2003–2018, indicating positive sustainability on the whole. However, in the five years of 2004, 2007, 2008, 2011, and 2017, the FER decreased, among which the largest decline was −0.017 in 2017. Natural comprehensive disturbance (ND), human activity disturbance (HD), resilience of farmland supply (RFS), and resilience of social support (RS) were the key constraints of FER, while the ODVs of ND and RFS showed increasing trends. We also found that there were general antagonistic and synergistic effects among the response factors and the synergistic enhancement between disturbance factors was more pronounced than the antagonistic buffering effect. This study provides a fresh perspective for farmland ecosystem managers and stakeholders to examine disturbance risks and assess the sustainability of farmland ecosystems.
... The COVID-19 pandemic and the many associated control measures posed great challenges to food security around the world (FAO, 2020; Gruere and Brooks, 2021;Zhan and Chen, 2021;Rudin-Rush et al., 2022;Maredia et al., 2022). Lockdown policies compromised residents' ability to access food through physical food stores (Reardon et al., 2021), and panic buying or hoarding caused prices to spike for some food categories (Chenarides et al., 2021;Wang and Na, 2020;Yu et al., 2020). ...
We investigated the operation of e-stores specializing in food and agricultural products before and after the occurrence of COVID-19. A difference-in-difference (DID) method was employed to estimate the relationship between COVID-19 and the online sales of agricultural products using data from 164,002 food and agricultural product e-commerce stores (in short, e-stores) of two major Chinese e-commerce platforms in 120 prefectural-level or above cities. The results demonstrated that while COVID-19 and its control measures were associated with a substantial growth in the monthly sales of food and agricultural product e-stores, the growth varies considerably across store scales and with the type of food and agricultural product in which an e-store is specialized. Micro stores experienced much larger growth and played a more important role in maintaining the resilience of the supply chain of food and agricultural products than larger-scale stores; stores selling more essential food items experienced larger growth than those selling leisure food items. A mechanism analysis further revealed that the growth of online sales of agricultural products was mainly driven by changes in consumers’ food purchase behaviors from offline channels to online channels (i.e., an increase in the number of online customer orders and price per online order) starting with the onset of COVID-19. The results of this paper underscore the importance of e-commerce in maintaining the resilience of the agri-food supply chain and call for public support of the development of micro- and small-scale e-stores to meet consumers’ increasing demand for food supply from those types of stores during the pandemic period.
... The recent outbreak of the COVID-19 virus around the globe has severely disrupted the access to food for a vast number of people, not necessarily due to the limited food availability but rather due to the reduced food access caused by the altered regimes of food supply, changed working hours, restricted movement of citizens, and hoarding of groceries caused by panic buying [53]. Marusak et al. [34] showed the adaptability and responsiveness of regionalized food supply chains within the US food system to changes in demand and delivery during the COVID-19 crisis mainly based on the willingness of farmers and food distributors to adopt newly imposed strategies. ...
The rapid growth of the world population has increased the food demand as well as the need for assurance of food quality, safety, and sustainability. However, food security can easily be compromised by not only natural hazards but also changes in food preferences, political conflicts, and food frauds. In order to contribute to building a more sustainable food system—digitally visible and processes measurable—within this review, we summarized currently available evidence for various information and communication technologies (ICTs) that can be utilized to support collaborative actions, prevent fraudulent activities, and remotely perform real-time monitoring, which has become essential, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic. The Internet of Everything, 6G, blockchain, artificial intelligence, and digital twin are gaining significant attention in recent years in anticipation of leveraging the creativity of human experts in collaboration with efficient, intelligent, and accurate machines, but with limited consideration in the food supply chain. Therefore, this paper provided a thorough review of the food system by showing how various ICT tools can help sense and quantify the food system and highlighting the key enhancements that Industry 5.0 technologies can bring. The vulnerability of the food system can be effectively mitigated with the utilization of various ICTs depending on not only the nature and severity of crisis but also the specificity of the food supply chain. There are numerous ways of implementing these technologies, and they are continuously evolving.
... The existing studies on the effects of COVID-19 on the e-commerce of agricultural supply chains with a focus on fresh produce and processed food items are largely based on recall data from phone surveys (e.g., Chen et al., 2021; or online surveys of a relatively small sample of consumers or suppliers (e.g., Alaimo et al., 2020;Brugarolas et al., 2020;Dannenberg et al., 2020;Moon et al., 2021), which are subject to recall and representation biases. Others use highly aggregated data to demonstrate the trend of e-commerce in the agri-food supply chain during the pandemic (Hobbs, 2020;Zhan & Chen, 2021). Third, the large and more representative online transaction data also allow us to investigate the heterogeneous effects across the scales and other characteristics of e-stores and identify the channels by which the pandemic shocks affected the digital expansion of the agricultural input supply chain. ...
COVID-19 has caused major disruptions to agricultural supply chains around the world. Researchers and policy-makers are interested in identifying means to reduce the disruptive effects caused by the pandemic. We investigate the impacts of COVID-19 on the operation of e-commerce stores (in short, e-stores) specialising in agricultural inputs. The difference-indifferences method (DID) is employed to estimate the causal relationship between COVID-19 and online sales of agricultural inputs using data from 54,244 agricultural input e-stores registered in 118 prefecture-level cities across 15 provinces and hosted on two major Chinese e-commerce platforms. The results show that COVID-19 led to a substantial growth in monthly sales of agricultural input e-stores, and this growth of online sales varied across store scales and by types of agricultural inputs. In particular, e-stores selling seeds and seedlings experienced a larger growth in sales than stores selling agricultural machinery and implements, and the mid-and larger-scaled e-stores experienced more growth of sales than micro-and small-scaled e-stores. Further analysis reveals that the growth of online sales of agricultural inputs was driven mainly by an increase in the quantity of customer orders (QCO).
Ekonomik büyüme süreçleri; gıda krizleri, salgın hastalıklar veya savaş gibi nedenlerle kesintiye uğrar. 2019 Aralık ayında başlayan, 30 Ocak 2020’de küresel acil durum ilan edilen ve 5 Mayıs 2022’de küresel acil durumdan çıkarılan COVID-19 pandemi süreci dünya ekonomisini etkilediği gibi tarım sektörünü de derinden etkilemiştir. Bu dönemde tarım sektörünün krizlere karşı dayanıklı ve sürdürülebilir hale getirilmesi oldukça önem kazanmıştır. Bu çalışmanın amacı, pandemi sürecinde sebze üreten tarım işletmelerinin yapısal durumlarının ortaya konulması, finansmanının incelenmesi ve pandemi sürecinin tarım işletmelerine etkilerinin belirlenmesidir. Çalışmada ana materyal olarak, Ankara ilinde Beypazarı ve Ayaş ilçelerinde Tabakalı Tesadüfi Örnekleme yönetimi ile belirlenen 112 adet sebze üreten tarım işletmesine yüz yüze anket uygulanarak elde edilen birincil veriler kullanılmıştır. Çalışmada, tarım işletmelerine dair bazı sosyoekonomik değişkenler incelenmiş, pandemi döneminde kredi kullanımı pandemi öncesine göre karşılaştırılmış ve pandemi sürecinin işletmelere etkisi 5’li likert ölçeği kullanılarak sıralanmıştır. Araştırma bulgularında; ortalama hane halkı büyüklüğü 2,96 kişi iken işletmecilerin yaş ortalaması 54,7 yıl ve tarımsal deneyimi 43,1 yıl olarak belirlenmiştir. Ortalama işletme büyüklüğü 145,47 dekar ve parsel sayısı 12,20 adettir. İşletmelerde, pandemi öncesi %63,39 olan kredi kullanım oranı pandemi döneminde %73,21’e yükselmiştir. İşletme kredisi kullanım oranı pandemi öncesinde %57,75 iken pandemi döneminde %68,29’ye yükselmiştir. Sonuçlara göre işletmecilerin, pandemi döneminde sorun yaşandığına dair katılım düzeyi genel olarak düşük bulunmuştur. Bununla birlikte bu süreçte işçilik, pazarlama, tarımsal altyapı, hasat ve sulama sorunlarının yaşandığına dair katılım düzeyleri diğer hususlara göre daha yüksektir.
The COVID-19 pandemic has been one of the most severe disruptions to normal life, impacting how businesses operate. The academic literature in the areas of supply chain and operations management has been trying to explain how this has affected decision-making in businesses. However, the existing literature has predominantly overlooked organisational culture and behavioural economic theories. This paper contends that considering the decisions made in supply chain disruption management involve groups and the individuals within them, the relevance of behavioural economic concepts becomes paramount. As such, the objective of this paper is to conduct an integrative literature review, utilising the purposive sampling method to explore the dearth of academic work connecting behavioural economic theories and organisational culture to supply chain disruption management. Additionally, the paper aims to offer guidelines for future research in this domain. Enhancing our comprehension of these domains concerning supply chain disruption management would empower firms to better anticipate their parties’ decisions, refine their decision-making models, and cultivate stronger relationships with suppliers and customers.
COVID-19 impacted lives and business activities across all sectors of the economy, and farmers were no exception. Utilizing the lens of the transactional theory of stress and coping, the present study explores the stressors among small-scale farmers and the strategies they adopted for farm management during the pandemic. This study follows qualitative research design principles and collects the data of farmers from Pakistan on their lived experiences via in-depth interviews. We selected the farmers based on the purposive criterion sampling method, selecting farmers whose farm management practices were affected by the pandemic. The findings suggest that the pandemic created stress among farmers through internal and external factors. The low income of farmers and decline in their yield appeared as internal factors, and hindrances in utilizing resources, strict lockdown measures, worsening supply chain, and market conditions were major external factors impacting farmers emotionally and economically. Farmers utilized their available resources to cope with these factors, i.e., family labor, on-farm labor accommodation, and self-transportation. Nonetheless, farmers demanded the government, fellow farmers, and wholesalers to build a better system to cope with any crisis such as COVID-19. This study provides two primary contributions: First, it provides theoretical contributions to the transactional model of farmers’ stress and coping during COVID-19, taking evidence from farmers in the agricultural sector. Second, it provides a comprehensive framework through which researchers, practitioners, consultants, and government authorities can build future scholarship and develop strategies to enhance sustainability and cope with future pandemics.
The COVID‐19 pandemic has posed many challenges to the continuous development of logistics and has received increasing attention from all sectors of society. This paper systematically reviews 85 related papers; sets the framework of literature analysis on the basis of five fields of logistics: life, e‐commerce, healthcare, air transportation, and emergency; systematically composes and analyzes the scope and content of the impact of the COVID‐19 pandemic on logistics in different fields; and comprehensively shows the current status of research on the impact of COVID‐19 on the continuous development of logistics. On this basis, we combed out the diverse measures of government, enterprises, and related institutions for the logistics problems that have emerged, and put forward some prospects for future research in this field in terms of multi‐period strategies, multi‐factor evaluation, degree of impacts, and quantification of effects. The work in this paper has some reference value and significance for mitigating or eliminating the negative impact of COVID‐19 on the continuous development process of logistics in multiple fields, rationalizing the epidemic response measures and expanding and deepening the research on this topic.
The COVID‐19 pandemic has issued significant challenges to food systems and the food security of migrants in cities. In China, there have been no studies to date focusing on the food security of migrants during the pandemic. To fill this gap, an online questionnaire survey of food security in Nanjing City, China, was conducted in March 2020. This paper situates the research findings in the general literature on the general migrant experience during the pandemic under COVID and the specifics of the Chinese policy of hukou. Using multiple linear regression and ordered logistic regression, the paper examines the impact of migration status on food security during the pandemic. The paper finds that during the COVID‐19 outbreak in 2020, households without local Nanjing hukou were more food insecure than those with Nanjing hukou. The differences related more to the absolute quantity of food intake, rather than reduction in food quality or in levels of anxiety over food access. Migrants in China and elsewhere during COVID‐19 experienced three pathways to food insecurity—an income gap, an accessibility gap, and a benefits gap. This conceptual framework is used to structure the discussion and interpretation of survey findings and also has wider potential applicability.
China's hog market has faced the challenge of several external shocks, which arise from the ongoing COVID‐19 pandemic, African Swine Fever (ASF) and related global trade uncertainties. This article develops a shocks, cycles and adjustments (SCA) model to evaluate the dynamic impact of different shock scenarios. The SCA model contributes to the existing toolbox for impact evaluation in commodity markets and provides insights into the timing of impact dynamics at refined time intervals. The SCA model is applied to evaluate five sets of shock scenarios, which include a demand shock, a corn price increase, pork import restrictions, a second wave of ASF, and a combination of these shocks. Simulation results demonstrate the reaction of the hog cycle to different shocks with quantitive outcomes. Based on the simulation results, we find that production and economic adjustment lags generate constant and predictable hog cycles, while the external shocks lead hog cycles to be irregular with varying phase and amplitude. [EconLit Citations: Q10, Q11].
Scholars have extolled e-commerce as a pathway for sustaining firm operations in the unique circumstances of COVID-19. To add crisis time evidence to the body of work, and based on World Bank Enterprise Survey data, this inquiry interrogates 249 small manufacturing firms in Italy by examining the effect of e-commerce on (1) resilience, (2) direct exports and (3) indirect exports. The results show that while e-commerce has a positive impact on direct exports, a negative influence is recorded on indirect exports. Besides, e-commerce significantly increases resilience which, in turn, accelerates direct exports. However, resilience is found to have a trivial influence on indirect exporting. Furthermore, held as a constant, firm size demonstrates a significant and positive effect on direct and indirect exports. These fresh findings prompt implications for understanding the correlates of e-commerce, resilience and export behaviour. Practically, there are salient insights for stakeholders engaged in reviving small manufacturers’ exports for a speedy post COVID-19 recovery in Italy.
The sudden COVID-19 pandemic had a serious impact on the catering industry, and lockdown policies put a strain on the food supply chain. However, online food delivery (OFD) services have played an important role in the fight against the epidemic in the catering industry. In this chapter, the authors analyzed the development of keywords attributed to supply chains in the academic view by investigating the core selection of Web of Science and China National Knowledge Infrastructure, respectively, and drew keywords cluster graphs of Chinese catering supply chain by using CiteSpace. The contrastive analysis shows that more attention has been turned to supply chain resiliency, efficiency, and visibility in the post-pandemic era. Moreover, this chapter discusses whether and how Chinese OFD platforms contribute to the food supply chain. The results show that these OFD platforms, with domestic policy support, internet technologies, and the ecosystem advantages, have effectively enhanced supply chain resiliency, efficiency, and visibility.
As of now, the first half of 2020 has been difficult for the entire world due to the pandemic of COVID-19. As of 7 April 2020, 211 countries, areas or territories have been infected, with more than 72,616 deaths caused by coronavirus globally. China, the first country experiencing the outbreak of COVID-19, has taken an unprecedented scale of measures to contain the spread of the virus: citywide lockdown; traffic control; and closed management of villages and communities. Due to the pandemic and the corresponding restrictions, impacts on local food systems have been observed, with a variety of actions taken immediately across the country to mitigate the vulnerability and ensure adequate food supply and distribution in cities and support livelihoods of rural and peri-urban producers. Overall, food prices remain stable and food supply (staples, fruits, vegetables, meats) is meeting the need so far, despite sporadic reports of price hikes and shortages in isolated locations. By early April 2020, with no new domestic COVID-19 cases reported for days, many cities in China have reduced the level of control, resuming work and travel, suggesting the country’s gradual recovery to normal operation. As a retrospective analysis of the pandemic period in China, we identified the impacts the COVID-19 outbreak has brought to China’s local food systems with a focus on fresh and non-processed food, followed by a collection of effective responses carried out by the public and private sectors and civil society from national to local level. It is hoped that these practices could stimulate tailored solutions in countries that are currently experiencing serious outbreak, and for China itself, to consider the way forward in building more resilient and sustainable local food systems with stronger linkages between urban centers and the surrounding rural territories.
The outbreak and wide spread of COVID-19 poses a new threat to global food security. This paper aims to address two important policy related issues, that is which agricultural subsector suffers more under zoonotic diseases and how do zoonotic diseases affect these subsectors. Using provincial panel data of 24 main farm commodities in China from 2002 to 2017, this paper identifies the impacts of zoonotic diseases and projects the potential disruption of COVID-19 to agricultural output in China under three scenarios. The main findings are as follows. First, zoonotic diseases have adverse impacts on almost all the farm commodities, while livestock on average suffers more than crops. Second, zoonotic diseases affect these subsectors mainly through the channel of adverse shocks on total factor productivity (TFP). Third, while a few subsectors can find a way to offset part of the TFP loss by applying more input, most subsectors suffer from both input reduction and TFP loss. Fourth, the spread of COVID-19 is projected to lower the growth rates of China's crop and livestock sector by 1.1%–2.3% and 1.3%–2.6%, with TFP loss by 1.1%–2.0% and 1.4%–2.7%, respectively, in 2020. This paper then discusses several policy implications for mitigating the negative impacts of COVID-19 on agricultural production in China and elsewhere.
When on March 24, 2020 the Government of India ordered a complete lockdown of the country as a response to
the COVID-19 pandemic, it had serious unwanted implications for farmers and the supply chains for agricultural
produce. This was magnified by the fact that, as typically in developing countries, India’s economy is strongly
based on farming, industrialization of its agricultural systems being only modest. This paper reports on the
various consequences of the COVID-19 lockdown for farming systems in India, including the economy, taking
into account the associated emergency responses of state and national governments. Combining quantitative and
qualitative sources of information with a focus on the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh, including expert elicitation
and a survey of farmers, the paper identifies and analyzes the different factors that contributed to the severe
disruption of farming systems and the agricultural sector as a whole following the lockdown. Among other issues,
our study finds that the lack of migrant labor in some regions and a surplus of workers in others greatly affected
the April harvest, leading to a decline in agricultural wages in some communities and an increase in others, as
well as to critical losses of produce. Moreover, the partial closure of rural markets and procurement options,
combined with the insufficient supply of products, led to shortages of food supplies and dramatically increased
prices, which particularly affected urban dwellers and the poor. We argue that the lessons learned from the
COVID-19 crisis could fuel the development of new sustainable agro-policies and decision-making in response
not only to future pandemics but also to the sustainable development of agricultural systems in India and in
developing countries in general.
In response to COVID-19, seed security interventions are being planned to help bolster fragile livelihoods. After 25 years of research during emergencies, there are many lessons to build on, including that seed systems, especially informal markets, prove fairly resilient and often function even in high stress contexts. As a wise first step, given the possible volatility in supply, farmers’ seed saving should be supported actively and at scale. Rigorous remote assessments will have to become the new norm for gauging seed security, with reviews recognizing that different crops might be affected in different ways by specific seed channel stress or breakdown. Well-known short-term seed security responses, for example, Direct Seed Distribution, will need to be tailored to the new COVID-19 reality, particularly in terms of altering logistics. More fundamentally, three new factors might herald a transformation in response: 1) Choice for farmers has to be the operative principle (especially as markets may fluctuate quickly); 2) Remote two-way ‘state of the art’ communication has to be built rapidly; and 3) Seed quality options might need to be liberalized, especially given the scale of possible seed security intervention. Covid-19 effects will likely linger several years or potentially six to nine seasons (depending on agricultural calendar). Now might be the time to move from stop-gap responses (and repetitive ones) to more sustainable and powerful market-led support, with particular emphasis on responses that leverage and strengthen the informal sector markets.
In the context of developing countries, early evidence suggests that the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on food production systems is complex, heterogenous, and dynamic. As such, robust monitoring of the impact of the health crisis and containment measures across agricultural value chains will likely prove vitally important. With Bangladesh as a case study, we discuss the building blocks of a comprehensive monitoring system for prioritizing and designing interventions that respond to food system disruptions from COVID-19 and preemptively avoid further cascading negative effects. We also highlight the need for parallel research that identifies pathways for enhancing information flow, analysis, and action to improve the efficiency and reliability of input and output value chains. In aggregate, this preliminary work highlights the building blocks of resilient food systems to external shocks such as COVID-19 pandemic in the context of developing nations. In doing so, we call attention to the importance of 'infection safe' agricultural input and output distribution logistics, extended social safety nets, adequate credit facilities, and innovative labor management tools alongside, appropriate farm mechanization. In addition, digital extension services, circular nutrient flows, enhanced storage facilities, as well as innovative and robust marketing mechanisms are required. These should be considered in parallel with effective international trade management policies and institutions as crucial supportive measures.
Purpose
The purpose of this study is to assess the potential economic cost of the COVID-19 pandemic on China's macroeconomy and agri-food system and provide policy recommendations to stimulate economic growth and agri-food system development.
Design/methodology/approach
An economy-wide multisector multiplier model built on China's most recent social accounting matrix (SAM) for 2017 with 149 economic sectors is used to assess the impact of COVID-19 on China's macroeconomy and agri-food system. SAM multiplier analysis focuses on supply chain linkages and captures the complexity of an interconnected economy.
Findings
The paper finds that both the macroeconomy and agri-food systems are hit significantly by COVID-19. There are three main findings. First, affected by COVID-19, GDP decreased by 6.8% in the first quarter of 2020 compared with that in 2019, while the economic loss of the agri-food system is equivalent to 7% of its value added (about RMB 0.26 trillion). More than 46 m agri-food system workers (about 27% of total employment) lost their jobs to COVID-19 in the lockdown phase. The COVID-19 affects the employment of unskilled labor more than that of skilled labor. Second, when the economy starts to recover during the second and third quarters, the growth rate in the value added of the agri-food system turns positive but still modest. Many jobs resume during the period, but the level of agri-food system employment continues to be lower than the base. The agri-food system employment recovery is slower than that of other sectors largely due to the sluggish recovery of restaurants. Agri-food system employment drops by 8.6 m , which accounts for about 33% of the total jobs lost. Third, although the domestic economy is expected to be normal in the fourth quarter, external demand still faces uncertainties due to the global pandemic. The agri-food system is projected to grow by 1.1% annually in 2020 with resuming export demand, while only by 0.4% without resuming export demand. These rates are much lower than an annual growth rate of 4.3% for the agri-food system in 2019. The results also show that, without resuming export demand, China's total economy will grow less than 1% in 2020, while, with export demand resumed, the growth rate rises to 1.7%. These rates are much lower than an annual GDP growth rate of 6.1% in 2019.
Practical implications
The results show that continuously reducing economic dependency on exports and stimulating domestic demand are key areas that require policy support. The agri-food system can play an important role in supporting broad economic growth and job creation as SMEs are major part of the AFS. Job creation requires policies to promote innovation by entrepreneurs who run numerous SMEs in China.
Originality/value
This paper represents the first systematic study assessing the impact of COVID-19 on China's agri-food system in terms of value added and employment. The assessment considers three phases of lockdown, recovery and normal phases in order to capture the full potential cost of COVID-19.
Purpose
The purposes of this paper are to review the impact on food and nutrition security of several pandemic emergencies and the 2018 food price crisis from a global perspective, examine the Chinese experiences and lessons in ensuring food and nutrition security for its citizen and propose policy actions to prevent a global food and nutrition security crisis.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors utilize a noncomprehensive review of peer-reviewed and nonpeer-reviewed literature, as well as a case study approach.
Findings
Under the ongoing COVID-19, China's food and nutrition are relatively secure in short run largely due to governmental proactive policies but may face uncertainties in livestock production and imports of soybean in the medium and long terms. Given that the disease has spread to almost all countries in the world, global cooperation and coordination are needed to prevent systemic risks to global food and nutrition security.
Practical implications
The review and analysis of this paper will help policymakers in China and other countries to design strategies and actions to prevent food and nutrition security crisis under the ongoing COVID-19 emergency and other similar threats in the future.
Originality/value
This paper provides recommendations to prevent food and nutrition security crisis based on data, evidence and case studies.
In a world of growing complexity and uncertainty, the security of food supplies is threatened by many factors. These include multiple processes of global change (e.g. climate change, rapid urbanization, population ageing), unexpected shocks (e.g. natural disasters, financial and political crises), and unexpected responses of food systems themselves to these processes and events. In this paper, we develop a conceptual framework for food system resilience, and consider how this could be implemented through stakeholder participation to ensure food security for everyone. Resilience is conceptualized from a hol-istic perspective, as encompassing the complexity of whole food systems, including social, economic and biophysical processes operating at many scales. It presents the opportunity to eradicate weaknesses and build capacities in the food system while dealing with future uncertainty.
The objective of this study was to understand the impacts of COVID-19 crisis in agriculture and food systems in Nepal and assess the effectiveness of measures to deal with this crisis. The study draws policy implications, especially for farming systems resilience and the achievement of SDGs 1 and 2. The findings are based on (i) three panel discussions over six months with policy makers and experts working at grassroots to understand and manage the crisis, (ii) key informants' interviews, and (iii) an extensive literature review. Results revealed that the lockdown and transport restrictions have had severe consequences, raising questions on the achievement of SDGs 1 and 2, especially in the already vulnerable regions dependent on food-aid. This crisis has also exposed the strengths and limitations of both subsistence and commercial farming systems in terms of resiliency, offering important lessons for policy makers. Traditional subsistence farming appears to be somewhat resilient, with a potential to contribute to key pillars of food security, especially access and stability, though with limited contributions to food availability because of low productivity. On the other hand, commercial farming - limited to the periphery of market centres, cities, and emerging towns and in the accessible areas - was more impacted due to the lack of resilient supply networks to reach even the local market. Lower resiliency of commercial farming was also evident because of its growing dependence on inputs (mainly seeds and fertilizer) on distant markets located in foreign countries. The observation of crisis over eight months unleashed by the pandemic clearly revealed that wage labourers, indigenous people, and women from marginalized groups and regions already vulnerable in food security and malnutrition suffered more due to COVID-19 as they lost both external support and the coping mechanisms. The findings have implications for policies to improve both subsistence and commercial farming systems – in particular the former by improving the productivity through quality inputs and by diversifying, promoting and protecting the indigenous food system, while the latter through sustainable intensification by building reliant supply network linking farming with markets and guarantying the supply of inputs.
There are rising concerns over the impact of COVID-19 on the agricultural production, which may become a nonnegligible threat to the long-term food supply and food security. This paper discusses the impact of COVID-19 on agricultural production in China, followed by government responses to alleviate the negative effects. The results show that unreasonable restrictions would block the outflow channels of agricultural products, hinder necessary production inputs, destroy production cycles, and finally undermine production capacity. It is expected that China's experiences could give warnings and suggestions to other countries that are experiencing serious outbreak to protect domestic agricultural production, especially developing countries.
Purpose
This article investigates the mechanism of the direct and indirect effects of epidemics on agricultural production and projects the impact of COVID-19 on agricultural output in China.
Design/methodology/approach
This article first adopts a dynamic panel model and spatial Durbin model to estimate the direct and indirect effects, followed by a growth accounting method to identify the channels by which epidemics affect agriculture; finally, it projects the overall impact of COVID-19 on agriculture.
Findings
The incidence rate of epidemics in a province has a negative impact on that province's own agricultural productivity, but the increase in the input factors (land, fertilizer and machinery) can make up for the loss and thus lead to insignificant direct effects. However, this “input-offset-productivity” mechanism fails to radiate to the surrounding provinces and therefore leads to significant indirect/spillover effects. It is projected that COVID-19 will lower China's agricultural growth rate by 0.4%–2.0% in 2020 under different scenarios.
Research limitations/implications
It is crucial to establish a timely disclosure and sharing system of epidemic information across provinces, improve the support and resilience of agricultural production in the short run and accelerate the process of agricultural modernization in the long run.
Originality/value
Considering the infectivity of epidemics, this article evaluates the mechanism of the direct and indirect effects by introducing a spatial dynamic model into the growth accounting framework. Moreover, besides the impact on input portfolio and productivity, this article also investigates whether epidemics reshape agricultural production processes due to panic effects and control measures.
In this opinion piece, we highlight that trade barriers established during COVID-19 as “fire lines” to prevent cross-border transmission of the pandemic could become “fault lines” that demolish the global food system. We review restrictions on both international agricultural exports and imports, especially unilateral border controls such as import refusals and alerts, in previous epidemics and arising with two novel features amid COVID-19. Institutional causes to pervasive trade barriers in epidemics that are embedded in the WHO-WTO coordination scheme have been discussed. In the meantime, discussions on potential economic outcomes and policy recommendations have been provided.
•Effective governance and efficient coordination across multi-levels and multi-sectors are pivotal factors to ensure food supply during COVID-19.•Digital tools and innovative models provided valuable solutions to cope with the crisis in China, which can be further developed and contribute to the "New Normal".•The pandemic implies the necessity to strengthen urban-rural linkages and foster local food production for more resilient local food systems.
Countries must join forces to avert a global food crisis from COVID-19. Countries must join forces to avert a global food crisis from COVID-19.
This latest Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) again forms the standard scientific reference for all those concerned with the environmental and social consequences of climate change, including students and researchers across the natural and social sciences, professionals in medicine and law, and practitioners in environmental planning, resource management, development, disaster risk reduction, and adaptation. It provides relevant material for decision makers and stakeholders at all levels of government, NGOs, and the private sector worldwide. This assessment provides information on: • Impacts of climate changes that have already occurred and risks of future impacts; • Vulnerabilities and interactions that make some climate events devastating, while others pass with little notice; • Risks of climate change impacts for the health and security of people and ecosystems; • Risks of climate change impacts for human activities; • Prospects for adaptation, including opportunities, barriers, and financing; • Regional and sectoral key risks and vulnerabilities.
This paper outlines a framework for studying the multiple interactions of broadly defined food systems with global environmental change and evaluating the major societal outcomes affected by these interactions: food security, ecosystem services and social welfare. In building the framework the paper explores and synthesizes disparate literature on food systems food security and global environmental change, bridging social science and natural science perspectives. This collected evidence justifies a representation of food systems, which can be used to identify key processes and determinants of food security in a given place or time, particularly the impacts of environmental change. It also enables analysis of the feedbacks from food system outcomes to drivers of environmental and social change, as well as tradeoffs among the food system outcomes themselves. In food systems these tradeoffs are often between different scales or levels of decision-making or management, so solutions to manage them must be context-specific. With sufficient empirical evidence, the framework could be used to build a database of typologies of food system interactions useful for different management or analytical purposes.
The world is becoming urban. The UN predicts that the world's urban population will almost double from 3·3 billion in 2007 to 6·3 billion in 2050. Most of this increase will be in developing countries. Exponential urban growth is having a profound effect on global health. Because of international travel and migration, cities are becoming important hubs for the transmission of infectious diseases, as shown by recent pandemics. Physicians in urban environments in developing and developed countries need to be aware of the changes in infectious diseases associated with urbanisation. Furthermore, health should be a major consideration in town planning to ensure urbanisation works to reduce the burden of infectious diseases in the future.
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