Crop prices, farm incomes, and food security during the COVID-19 pandemic in India: Phone-based producer survey evidence from Haryana State

Impact of the second wave of COVID-19 pandemic on food security among Ho indigenous community of Jharkhand, India

Background

Food insecurity and hunger are global concerns further exacerbated by the unprecedented COVID-19 pandemic. There is a need to understand the depth of this impact, especially among smallholder farmers, and recognize specific coping strategies that offered resilience to inform preparedness in future. The present cross-sectional study assessed the impact of the second wave of COVID-19 pandemic on different dimensions of food security among smallholder farmers of Ho indigenous community of Jharkhand, India. It also explored potential resilient attributes of their food systems.

Results

Most of the respondents (67.2%) reported reduced food consumption at the household (HH) level. Majority faced difficulty in accessing food from different food sources; however, easier access to government food security programmes was highlighted. Around 40% reported change in their ability to purchase farming inputs. Market vendors reported disruptions in food procurement owing to travel restrictions; however, no change was reported for home-produced foods in agricultural lands/kitchen gardens. Prices of indigenous foods produced locally decreased/remained same; however, for cereals, pulses, and other HH staples, prices increased during second wave. Difficulty in accessing wild food environment (OR: 1.7, CI 0.40, 7.75), change in food prices (OR: 19.9, CI 5.25, 76.02), decrease in HH income (OR: 9.2, CI 2.99, 28.60) were found to be significantly associated with reduction in HH food consumption (p < 0.01). The coping strategies adopted by the community included sale of cultivated and wild produce in local weekly markets to ensure additional income.

Conclusions

The findings highlight the need to reinforce the traditional ecological knowledge of the Ho community and focus on practices around their food systems, engrained into their socio-cultural ecosystems that may offer resilience against future stresses. In addition, the need of systemic support to ensure the social and economic well-being of the community needs to be prioritized.

Mapping scientific knowledge discovery on COVID-19 pandemic and agriculture: a bibliometric analysis and future research directions

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.

Effects of Policy Intervention on Food System Resilience to Emergency Risk Shock: Experience from China during COVID-19 Pandemic

Achieving the goal of zero hunger within the goal of sustainable development requires improving the resilience of food systems to various types of risk shocks; food systems have shown significant vulnerability to COVID-19 outbreaks and transmission. By analyzing the impact of China's lockdown policy and food security emergency policy in 2020 on food prices during the COVID-19 pandemic, we can clarify the role of policy intervention in enhancing the resilience of the food system, which can provide guidance, using China's experience, for dealing with global food safety emergencies in the future. Firstly, we selected Beijing, Shanghai and Guangdong as food-consuming areas, and Shandong, Henan, and Hubei as food-producing areas. We also collected food security emergency policy data from the Chinese government website during the COVID-19 pandemic. Secondly, a difference-in-difference method was used to observe that Chinese cabbage and pork prices in the main food-producing areas and food-consuming areas rose more obviously after the adoption of lockdown policy, and Chinese cabbage and pork prices in the food-consuming areas increased more obviously than those in food-producing areas. However, staple food prices have not risen significantly. Thirdly, the response of four kinds of food prices to the food security emergency policy is analyzed quantitatively and graphically using the food price volatility index and food price increase rate; we observed that the response of food prices to the food security emergency policy is related to the food types and regions. For food types, the fluctuation degree and increase in Chinese cabbage and pork prices decreased significantly after the adoption of the food security emergency policy. For regions, when the food security emergency policy was adopted, the food prices in the main food-consuming areas fluctuated more obviously than those in food-producing areas. Finally, we found that the implementation of the transport policy and the joint supply emergency policy in the main producing and consuming areas has played a very significant and positive role in stabilizing food prices.

COVID-19 mobility restrictions and stay-at-home behaviour in 2020 were associated with higher retail food prices worldwide

COVID-19 policy responses have included mobility restrictions, and many people have chosen to stay at home to avoid exposure. These actions have ambiguous impacts on food prices, lowering demand for food away from home and perishables, while increasing supply costs for items where workers are most affected by the pandemic. We use evidence from 160 countries to identify the net direction and magnitude of association between countries' real cost of all food and mobility restriction stringency. We investigate the deviation of each month's price level in 2020 from that month's average price level during the previous three years and find that an increase in mobility restriction stringency from no restrictions to most restrictive is associated with an increase in the real cost of all food of more than one percentage point across all models. We then examine the relationship between retail food price levels by food group and stay-at-home behaviour around markets in 36 countries and find positive associations for non-perishables, dairy and eggs.

Role of cash transfers in mitigating food insecurity in India during the COVID-19 pandemic: a longitudinal study in the Bihar state

OBJECTIVE

There are scant empirical data on the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on food security across the globe. India is no exception, with insights into the impacts of lockdown on food insecurity now emerging. We contribute to the empirical evidence on the prevalence of food insecurity in Bihar state before and after lockdown, and whether the government's policy of cash transfer moderated negative effects of food insecurity or not.

DESIGN

This was a longitudinal study.

SETTINGS

The study was conducted in Gaya and Nalanda district of Bihar state in India from December 2019 to September 2020.

PARTICIPANTS

A total of 1797 households were surveyed in survey 1, and about 52% (n=939) were followed up in survey 2. Valid data for 859 households were considered for the analysis.

MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES

Using the Food Insecurity Experience Scale, we found that household conditions were compared before and after lockdown. The effect of cash transfers was examined in a quasi-experimental method using a longitudinal study design. Logistic regression and propensity score adjusted analyses were used to identify factors associated with food insecurity.

RESULTS

Household food insecurity worsened considerably during lockdown, rising from 20% (95% CI 17.4 to 22.8) to 47% (95% CI 43.8 to 50.4) at the sample mean. Households experiencing negative income shocks were more likely to have been food insecure before the lockdown (adjusted OR 6.4, 95% CI 4.9 to 8.3). However, households that received cash transfers had lower odds of being food insecure once the lockdown was lifted (adjusted OR 0.75, 95% CI 0.56 to 0.99).

CONCLUSION

These findings provide evidence on how the swift economic response to the pandemic crises using targeted income transfers was relatively successful in mitigating potentially deep impacts of food insecurity.

COVID-19 Pandemic-Induced Disruptions and Implications for National Food Security and Farm Incomes: Farm-Level Evidence from Indian Punjab

By using the data from a primary survey of 1100 farm households from Indian Punjab, the present study examined the impact of COVID-19 pandemic-induced disruptions on food security and farm incomes. The paddy-wheat-based production system showed resilience to the challenges of the COVID-19 situation. Farmers adapted effectively to the changed equilibrium and there was no decline in food production, land lease activity or cropping patterns. The disruptions in agricultural machinery services and input supplies led to a rise in the rent of machinery and input prices. Agricultural wages also jumped due to scarcity of agricultural labour. The study highlights no imminent threat to food supplies from Punjab and hence to national food security. It showed that farmers may need some financial support to counter the effect of rising costs of farming. There is a need to enhance the resilience of various input and output markets in agriculture in the future.

Impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on food prices: Evidence from storable and perishable commodities in India

The supply chain disruptions caused by the COVID-19 outbreak have led to changes in food prices globally. The impact of COVID-19 on the price of essential and perishable food items in developing and emerging economies has been lacking. Using a recent phone survey by the World Bank, this study examines the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the prices of the three essential food items in India. The results indicate that price of basic food items such as atta (wheat flour) and rice increased significantly during the pandemic compared to the pre-pandemic period. In contrast, during the same period, the price of onions declined significantly. The findings may suggest panic-buying, hoarding, and storability of food items. The results further reveal that remittance income and cash transfers from the government negatively affected commodity prices. Thus, this study's findings suggest that families may have shifted the demand away from essential foods during the pandemic.

COVID-19 and impacts on global food systems and household welfare: Introduction to a special issue

The food system, and those who depend on it, have been strongly but unevenly affected by COVID-19. Overall, the impacts on food systems, poverty, and nutrition have been caused by a combination of a generalized economic recession and disruptions in agri-food supply chains. This paper provides an overview of the contributions to this Special Issue of Agricultural Economics. The papers in this volume confirm that both income shocks and supply disruptions have affected food security and livelihoods the most where supply chains were more poorly integrated, and poverty and market informality had greater presence before COVID-19. Yet, as the pandemic still has societies worldwide in a stranglehold, outcomes remain uncertain and reliable data are still sparsely available. This Special Issue of Agricultural Economics provides new insights of the pandemics impact on food systems, household welfare, and food security, building on both model-based scenario analysis and new survey data. These methods have proven helpful in providing these insights amidst the unprecedented shock that the pandemic has caused to production systems and livelihoods worldwide. However, they also suffer from obvious limitations identified in this editorial overview paper and require substantial improvement in order to understand the changes in economic behavior and functioning of food supply chains induced by the pandemic.