Much of the attention from COVID‐19 has been on the impacts on tourism and other service sectors; but there has been a growing interest in some agricultural and food topics, such as the decline in food away from home (FAFH) expenditures. Our work considers the importance of FAFH in the overall economy, and we also consider changes in agricultural production and trade that have occurred because of COVID‐19. We gather data on actual changes to these components, as well as similar shocks to non‐agricultural sectors, and employ a simulation model to estimate the impacts on gross domestic product (GDP). Results indicate that changes from agriculture due to COVID‐19 have had a larger effect on the overall U.S. economy than the share of agriculture in the economy at the beginning of COVID‐19. But the non‐agricultural shocks still outweigh the impacts from agriculture by a magnitude of 3. Breaking the results down along the components, we find that the loss in FAFH expenditures is the largest contributor to the change in GDP resulting from shocks to agricultural markets and conclude that agricultural production/trade markets have been very resilient during the pandemic. Our results also indicate that our model (computable general equilibrium) does reasonably well in estimating GDP compared to actual changes due to the inclusion of data on actual demand, supply, and fiscal responses to COVID‐19.

Wheat is a key global commodity in terms of acreage and tradeable value and as a staple in household diets. Many factors affect wheat prices including climate, yields, oil prices, lagged prices, and imports. In addition to gradually and consistently increasing global wheat demand, these market drivers are posited to impact world prices and, ultimately, food security. To investigate how these factors differentially influence wheat markets, an extensive survey of literature regarding wheat market fundamentals was conducted, as well as a trend analysis using a uniquely compiled data set specific to significant wheat-producing areas. Previous studies show that imports, climate, oil prices, and past prices, among other factors, have a significant relationship with changes in the world wheat price. This study compiles and compares these same key variables from five major wheat export countries/regions for the time frame from 1980 to 2013.

COVID-19 has led to a wealth of research examining possible impacts; however, potential impacts to food security have received much less attention. We use a computable general equilibrium model to simulate the potential impacts of COVID-19 using observed changes from 2020 (September) in unemployment, trade, oil prices, and production to inform our model. Estimated GDP and food price changes are then used as inputs into the International Food Security Assessment (IFSA) model which estimates changes in food consumption, and food gaps in developing countries. Results indicate that the COVID-19 lockdowns lead to a decrease in global GDP of 7.2 per cent, and a decrease in grain prices of 9 per cent. These changes lead to an increase in the number of food-insecure people in 2020 of 211 million (a 27.8 per cent increase). We also perform a sensitivity analysis, providing a lower and upper bound of potential impacts from COVID-19.

China is one of the largest wine importing countries in the world and is poised for continued import growth in the future. Increased wine purchases throughout China have given rise to persistent fraud where fake wines are packaged and sold with counterfeit contents and labels. For exporting countries like France, counterfeit wines displace market share, damage foreign brand reputation, and cause distrust in consumers who are aware of counterfeiting problems throughout the country. We examine the impact of fraudulent wine events (as measured by negative media reports) on Chinese wine demand differentiated by supplying country. We employ the Rotterdam demand system and a switching regression procedure to estimate import demand and compare results across different media variable specifications. Results consistently show that negative reports disproportionately affect French wine regardless of how the media variable is specified. This is not surprising because most fraudulent events involve French wine counterfeits.

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