The Impact of the Coronavirus on Agriculture: First Evidence Based on Global Newspapers

Abstract

Since late 2019, an outbreak of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has rapidly spread all over the world, challenging the sustainability of global agri-food markets. Although its full impact on agricultural and food markets is not yet evident, we have some early evidence on the different impacts. The aim of this article is to summarize the early evidence by screening global newspaper articles and sites written on the topic until 10 April 2020. The most read English-based newspaper articles were downloaded and accessed together with a Google search on specific keywords in order to have a complete picture of the topic. Results suggest that agriculture-related pandemic effects can be grouped into supply, demand, labour, food security, food safety, trade and other effects. It is also evident that the first impacts are not one-sided: what helped some hurt others. This article can serve as a basis for future research on the topic by identifying and highlighting the key topics as well as summarizing the earliest evidence available.

A Review on Drone-Based Data Solutions for Cereal Crops

“…The COVID-19 pandemic has a severe impact on food production, demand, and supply chain systems [38,39]. Access to key requirements such as seeds, fertilizers, and pesticides might become a limiting factor for food production [39,40]. Disruptions in national food supply chains, financial instability and remittances are further creating severe food insecurity in many countries [41].…”

“…Disruptions in national food supply chains, financial instability and remittances are further creating severe food insecurity in many countries [41]. Additionally, national food security risks will be compromised by trade and export restrictions, which could be destructive, particularly for cereal food-import-dependent countries [39,40,42]. The problem is worsened by labor (both agricultural and non-agricultural) shortages and disruptions to transportation networks [43].…”

“…Additionally, it offers economic, social, environmental as well as health benefits [46]. Migration of unskilled workforce towards rural areas due to the COVID-19 pandemic [39] and utilization of family labor may empower them to overcome the need of seasonal labor deficiencies (at least in the developing countries where the family size is usually larger and family members have returned to their rural homes due to shutdowns and job cuts in the urban areas) around plantation, harvesting, and sending the product to the market. This might help in reducing the cost of local food production so that local food supply chains may compete with the mainstream supply chain systems as well as empower the local communities with limited income due to the loss of jobs to buy staple foods.…”

Agricultural Workforce Crisis in Light of the COVID-19 Pandemic

“…Additional supply chain checks and procedures resulted in delays to the transit of these products. Shortages or high prices in personal protection equipment from COVID-19 infection, such as hand sanitizers and face masks, caused additional delays and problems [5]. A representative example was China, where pesticide production declined suddenly after production plants shut down.…”

“…Some of them analyzed solely the impact of the virus on agricultural production regarding the first infected by COVID-19 countries, namely China [18,19] and later Italy [7,[20][21][22]. In contrast, some studies dealt with the agricultural sector of countries, which were later infected by the viral pandemic, including countries from the rest of Asia (India [23,24] and Iran [25]), Oceania (Australia [26] and New Zealand [27]), Europe (rest of EU [5,28] and the United Kingdom (UK) [29]) as well as America (Argentine [30], Peru [31], Canada [32][33][34][35][36] and the US [14,37,38]).…”