COVID-19 Disruptions: Understanding Food Security Implications

Clearly, unanticipated disruptions in the global food system can lead to cascading impacts that affect developing countries. Food supply and accessibility, both pillars of a country’s food security, can be negatively impacted. To this end, we have been working to understand where the food supply of each ACToday country comes from, both in terms of amount and nutritional content. We’re also working on an assessment of Senegal’s food system, in light of its relatively high dependencies on imports to understand what it means for food prices throughout the country.

Fiondella: Food accessibility is a main concern for the ACToday countries. Help us understand how breaks in the food supply chain can translate into hardship for people in these countries. Puma:
As the COVID-19 pandemic is demonstrating, food supply chains are complex. They have numerous components, each of which can be vulnerable to climate-related disruptions. Disruptions in production, processing, transportation or even buying behavior can negatively influence food availability and prices. In fact, there is substantial concern at the moment about how the loss of migrant workers will impact food production. Supply chains are also at risk, as they represent pathways through which the virus can be spread. These risks, if not mitigated, can lead to hardships associated with food insecurity, including malnutrition and even famine. As part of ACToday, we are working to highlight such vulnerabilities and identify ways of de-risking food systems.

Fiondella: Are there different or unique concerns between rural and urban poor households?
Puma: Generally, concerns on the food security of both rural and urban poor households are centered on food accessibility, which is affected by a range of factors—from declining household incomes to spikes in local food market prices. New efforts are needed to examine detailed interactions within the food supply chain. My colleagues and I are working to qualitatively characterize risks due to coronavirus in multiple sub-Saharan countries, including Senegal, from smallholder farmers and small shopkeepers all the way up to supermarkets and global retailers and traders. Our goal is to explore various scenarios associated with the current crisis and to then map vulnerabilities at multiple levels, from the global level down to the details of domestic supply chains.

Fiondella: What are the implications for international and national trade and social protection policies and responses?
Puma: The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the World Bank and many other institutions have recognized the need to ensure stability and confidence in global food systems. One of the keys is to develop and implement a set of best practices to avoid reactionary and overzealous protectionist measures that could disrupt global trade. To this end, the FAO is compiling past policy responses — including both their advantages and disadvantages — to better inform potential policy interventions in food systems. (See this analysis by the FAO.)

Fiondella: In the coming weeks and months, what are going to be some indicators you’ll be keeping an eye out for?
Puma: In the coming weeks, I will be watching key food price indicators, including the International Grain Council’s Grains and Oilseeds Index (GOI) and the FAO’s Food Price Index (FFPI)). To track local level concerns, the World Food Program has developed a Hunger Analytics Hub which includes a monitor for local market food prices. For crop production, I will be watching GEOGLAM, the crop monitor for G20 Agricultural Market Information System.

Francesco Fiondella is a writer for the State of the Planet.This story was originally published by the International Research Institute for Climate and Society at Columbia University. It ispublished courtesy of Earth Institute, Columbia University,