Rapid Assessment of the Impact of Covid-19 on Food Systems and Rural Livelihoods in Sub-Saharan Africa – Synthesis Report 1

Carreras, Marco; Saha, Amrita; Thompson, John

doi:10.19088/apra.2020.008

Cited by 7 publications

(11 citation statements)

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“…This leads to the reduction of financial resources available to farmers, as only 22% of farmers were able to obtain loans, meaning that more than 75% of farmers did not have access to additional credit due to the demand for higher collateral, reduced loan amounts, delayed disbursements, and the high cost of credit. These findings are confirmed by Carreras et al (2020) and Matenga and Hichaambwa (2021) who assess the impact of COVID‐19 on local food systems and livelihoods based on 100 (Kenya), 114 (Malawi), 111 (Nigeria), 102 (Tanzania), and 115 (Zambia) small‐scale farming households, respectively. On average, the authors find that several farm households experienced difficult access to commercial loans (40%) and concessionary loans (34%) (Figure 10).…”

Section: Impact Of Covid‐19 On the Trend Of Agricultural Finance And ...supporting

confidence: 69%

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COVID‐19 and perceived effects on agricultural financing in Africa: Evidence and policy implications

Koloma

Kemeze

2022

African Development Review

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This study examines the potential effect of COVID-19 on agricultural financing by drawing lessons from past global crises and their link to agricultural financing. With significant impact in multiple sectors, COVID-19 has caused significant liquidity shortage in the banking and financial institutions sectors that led to widespread business failure. Analysis at the macro, sectoral, and farmer levels confirms the decline in the financing allotted to the agricultural sector in Africa, which could exacerbate the existing structural gap in agricultural financing. Many policy responses and stimulus packages designed to address the negative effects of the crisis are found not to be enough. At the farmer level, findings indicate that many farmers are finding it more difficult to access credit than before the COVID-19 crisis. For individual governments, a better understanding of the magnitude of the agricultural sector financing and investment needs to propose appropriate complementary responses is lacking. We suggest that, in the face of such a crisis, while in the short term the agricultural sector needs emergency funding, in the medium and long term, greater financial support is required, including long-term resources at concessional rates, guarantee funds, and more suitable insurance products combined with social safety nets.

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Section: Impact Of Covid‐19 On the Trend Of Agricultural Finance And ...supporting

confidence: 69%

“…Decrease in services availability for agricultural production‐ across countries. Source : Carreras et al (2020) and Matenga and Hichaambwa (2021) [Color figure can be viewed at wileyonlinelibrary.com]…”

Section: Impact Of Covid‐19 On the Trend Of Agricultural Finance And ...mentioning

confidence: 99%

COVID‐19 and perceived effects on agricultural financing in Africa: Evidence and policy implications

Koloma

Kemeze

2022

African Development Review

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“…Here we present a unique comparative and empirical based study, reflecting on pandemic-related impacts and responses on and by diversified farm operations, governments and nongovernmental entities in three very different contexts, revealing fewer devastating impacts than anticipated in large part because of the breadth and depth of multi-level responses across sites. We are, however, aware that this represents just part of the global picture and that many other farms and communities (see e.g., Barrett et al, 2021;Lioutas and Charatsari, 2021;Lopez-Ridaura et al, 2021), especially in the global south (see e.g., Carreras et al, 2020;Morton, 2020;Gatto and Islam, 2021;Rasul et al, 2021), saw more severe impacts and fared worse, as evidenced by a growing literature (Abiral and Atalan-Helicke, 2020;Jámbor et al, 2020;Meuwissen et al, 2021). Our study is an important contribution for understanding both the vulnerabilities and resilience of different actors within the agri-food system during the global COVID-19 crisis, with clear policy recommendations toward a more inclusive, resilient and sustainable food system for the future.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Disaster events, such as the COVID-19 pandemic (hereafter called "the pandemic"), can radically change agricultural landscapes (Eklund et al, 2016;Epstein et al, 2018;Lopez-Ridaura et al, 2021) and influence the adoption of new farming practices, crop choices and distribution mechanisms (Lin, 2011;Altieri et al, 2015;DiCarlo et al, 2018;Barrett et al, 2021), indeed, disasters can become critical moments of transformation (Folke, 2006;Bacon et al, 2012;Scheffer et al, 2012;Lioutas and Charatsari, 2021). This research builds on the important and burgeoning canon of literature that looks at rural livelihoods (Du et al, 2005;Valdés and Foster, 2010;Carreras et al, 2020;Gatto and Islam, 2021;Rasul et al, 2021), livelihood diversification (Gautam and Andersen, 2016), and smallholder farming (Hazell et al, 2010;Jayne et al, 2010), in the context of shocks. Given the pervasiveness and increasing frequency of human-environmental induced disasters, especially related to climate and health, there is widespread interest in understanding their impacts on agricultural systems broadly, as well as in the capacity of farmers to recover and adapt (Scheffer and Carpenter, 2001;Adger et al, 2005;Bacon et al, 2012;Kremen et al, 2013;Marín et al, 2014;Tendall et al, 2015;Folke et al, 2016;Kremen and Merenlender, 2018).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 97%

Diversified Farming Systems: Impacts and Adaptive Responses to the COVID-19 Pandemic in the United States, Norway and China

Måren

Aslesen

McNeal

et al. 2022

Front. Sustain. Food Syst.

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The COVID-19 pandemic fully exposed the vulnerability of the global agri-food system to shocks and stresses, highlighting the need for transformation and action to make it more resilient and inclusive. This paper offers a unique insight into the global nature of the COVID-19 pandemic by examining impacts and responses in the agri-food sector within three very distinct contexts, namely the United States, Norway, and China. Focusing on small, diversified farms, the study builds on prior research with the same farmers and support organizations from an on-going collaboration. Firstly, we conducted a short review of policy adaptations to understand how governments, the private sector, non-profit organizations, and communities “stepped up” to provide emergency relief, specialized training, and recovery support for farmers, support that was instrumental in preventing more devastating impacts in all three countries. Secondly, drawing from in-depth interviews with farmers (23) and government and non-governmental support organizations (19), we mapped the vulnerability and resiliency of selected farmers to shocks that severely disrupted traditional supply chains during the COVID-19 pandemic. Data were collected on both the negative and positive impacts of the pandemic to farmer inputs, including labor, operations, and markets, how these changed from the initial lockdowns in early 2020 and through 2021, and on farmer adaptive responses to these impacts. In some contexts, innovation and adaptive responses counteracted negative impacts. We saw diversifying markets, catering to consumer safety concerns, switching to direct and e-markets, hiring in more labor or relying on family labor, and switching to high demand crops and products as the most prominent adaptive responses. Farmers who lacked access to information and government programs, in large part because of language, technology and institutional barriers, missed out on pandemic related opportunities and suffered the most. As we enter the post-pandemic new normal it is important to take stock of lessons learned, and to continue to support those initiatives and innovations that were pivotal not only for weathering the storm, but for building a more inclusive and resilient agri-food system in the long-run.

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“…This led to school closures, stay-at-home orders and business closures in the significant part of 2020. Furthermore, the economic fallout of the COVID-19 pandemic resulted in massive job loss with a considerable impact on income and livelihood worldwide (Martin et al, 2020;Parolin and Wimer, 2020;Carreras et al, 2020aCarreras et al, , 2020b. This makes the COVID-19 pandemic a unique income shock, with the expected increase in the prevalence of household food insecurity worldwide (Deaton and Deaton, 2020).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Social safety net programs and food sufficiency during COVID-19 pandemic in the USA

Ogundari

Aromolaran

Akinwehinmi

2022

IJDI

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Purpose The COVID-19 pandemic has caused many households to experience income shocks because of the unprecedented job loss, resulting in the demand for public and private food assistance programs and a surge in unemployment insurance filing in the USA. This study aims to investigate the association between social safety programs (e.g. supplementary nutritional assistance programs (SNAP), unemployment insurance and charitable food assistance) and household food sufficiency during the COVID-19 pandemic in the country. Design/methodology/approach The authors used the Household Pulse Surveys (HPS) conducted by the US Census Bureau from August 2020 to March 2021. And, the authors used an ordered probit model for the empirical analysis because the indicator of food sufficiency constructed from the HPS is an ordinal variable with four categories. The indicator identifies four groups of households: severe food insufficiency, moderate food insufficiency, mild food sufficiency and food sufficiency. Findings The results show that food sufficiency is significantly higher among the SNAP, unemployment insurance and charitable food assistance recipients than non-recipients. Furthermore, the results indicate that food sufficiency is significantly lower among black, Asian, Hispanic and other races than white households. Concerning the intersectional effect of social safety net programs and race/ethnicity on household food sufficiency, the authors find that the household food sufficiency is significantly higher among white, black and Asian households who benefited from SNAP, compared with non-beneficiary households. On the other hand, the authors find no evidence that participation in SNAP increases food sufficiency significantly among Hispanics and other races. In addition, the likelihood of food sufficiency increases significantly among white, black, Asian, Hispanic and other races that received unemployment insurance and charitable food assistance during the COVID-19 pandemic compared with those who did not benefit from the programs. Practical implications These results underscore the critical role collective America’s social safety net programs played in increasing food sufficiency among Americans during the COVID-19 pandemic. Specifically, the results suggest that families' basic needs (food sufficiency) would have been at risk if these safety net programs were not available to households during the pandemic. This, therefore, highlights the important role that government- and non-government-supported food emergency assistance programs can play in preventing people from facing food insufficiency problems in a tough time or during a crisis in the USA. Originality/value This study highlights the dynamic relationship between Americans’ social safety net programs and household food sufficiency during the COVID-19 pandemic.

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Rapid Assessment of the Impact of Covid-19 on Food Systems and Rural Livelihoods in Sub-Saharan Africa – Synthesis Report 1

Cited by 7 publications

References 0 publications

COVID‐19 and perceived effects on agricultural financing in Africa: Evidence and policy implications

COVID‐19 and perceived effects on agricultural financing in Africa: Evidence and policy implications

Diversified Farming Systems: Impacts and Adaptive Responses to the COVID-19 Pandemic in the United States, Norway and China

Social safety net programs and food sufficiency during COVID-19 pandemic in the USA

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