Food Security and COVID-19: A Systematic Review of the First-Year Experience

Abstract

For decades, global food security has not been able to address the structural problem of economic access to food, resulting in a recent increase in the number of undernourished people from 2014. In addition, the FAO estimates that the number of undernourished people drastically increased by 82–132 million people in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. To alleviate this dramatic growth in food insecurity, it is necessary to understand the nature of the increase in the number of malnourished during the pandemic. In order to address this, we gathered and synthesized food-security-related empirical results from the first year of the pandemic in a systematic review. The vast majority (78%) of the 51 included articles reported household food insecurity has increased (access, utilization) and/or disruption to food production (availability) was a result of households having persistently low income and not having an adequate amount of savings. These households could not afford the same quality and/or quantity of food, and a demand shortfall immediately appeared on the producer side. Producers thus had to deal not only with the direct consequences of government measures (disruption in labor flow, lack of demand of the catering sector, etc.) but also with a decline in consumption from low-income households. We conclude that the factor that most negatively affects food security during the COVID-19 pandemic is the same as the deepest structural problem of global food security: low income. Therefore, we argue that there is no need for new global food security objectives, but there is a need for an even stronger emphasis on poverty reduction and raising the wages of low-income households. This structural adjustment is the most fundamental step to recover from the COVID-19 food crises, and to avoid possible future food security crises.

Shiftwork Is Associated with Higher Food Insecurity in U.S. Workers: Findings from a Cross-Sectional Study (NHANES)

“…Unrelated to our study data, low income has been identified as the factor that most negatively affected food security during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic [ 69 ]. As a consequence, food security remains a current topic in the United States, and the COVID-19 pandemic (and its imposed social isolation) exacerbated persistent sociopolitical barriers to food security [ 64 ].…”

Cellular Aquaculture: Prospects and Challenges

“…A substantial gap can be seen between the demand and supply of seafood in the near future with the current state of wild-capture fisheries and aquaculture [2]. The COVID-19 pandemic has increased threats to the global food system and further demonstrates the importance of resilient and sustainable animal-protein production systems [3,4]. This shows an urgent need for a new method for seafood production to build a productive, flexible, and resilient enterprise of current and future challenges.…”

Agricultura celular para la producción de pescados y mariscos a base de células

“…Con el estado actual de las producciones de pescados y mariscos provenientes de la acuicultura y pesca de captura salvaje, va a haber una gran diferencia entre la oferta y la demanda de pescados y mariscos en un futuro próximo (Banco Mundial 2014). Además, la pandemia de COVID-19 mostró las amenazas a la seguridad del sistema alimentario de Estados Unidos y del mundo, así como la importancia de contar con sistemas de producción de proteínas animales duraderas y resistentes (Éliás et al 2021;Mardones et al 2020). Esto demuestra la necesidad urgente de un método totalmente nuevo para la producir pescados y mariscos, con el fin de construir una empresa resistente, productiva y flexible frente a los desafíos actuales y futuros.…”