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Every year, some nine million people worldwide, equivalent to the population of Austria, die of starvation or hunger-related diseases. That’s pretty tragic, but COVID-19’s disruption of food supply chains risks doubling this number in 2020.
This is the hidden cost of the coronavirus pandemic, and it will fall on the poorest and most vulnerable. To avoid these preventable deaths, we must first recognize that Africa, South Asia, and other poorer regions cannot enter confinement or try to contain the disease by mimicking the measures taken in the West. Instead, they must find their own way of balancing the risks of the virus with the risks to livelihoods and lives that arise from attempts to defeat it.
Above all, however, the international community must act now to keep food supply chains running. Otherwise, for the poorer parts of the world, the unintended consequences of the cure will be worse than the disease.
The United Nations (UN) World Food Program (WFP) has identified 26 countries at greatest risk of increased food insecurity due to the COVID-19 crisis, with Ethiopia, Nigeria and Mozambique among the most vulnerable in Africa. In these three countries alone, WFP estimates that 56 million people (out of a combined population of approximately 334 million) were already chronically food insecure. In addition, of the 1.5 billion children worldwide who are currently out of school due to the pandemic, 350 million depend on school meals to avoid starvation.
COVID-19 presents the poorest countries with four main food security challenges.
For starters, households have less income to buy increasingly expensive food. Production per capita in sub-Saharan Africa will contract more than four percent in 2020 due to the pandemic, while remittances from Africans working abroad are plummeting, by 80 percent to a payment company in the United Kingdom. And a household survey in Bangladesh shows that the poor have already seen their incomes drop by a staggering 70 percent; almost half are now cutting back on food as a result.
Second, transporting food has become slower and more expensive. Global shipping activity decreased by 25 percent in the first quarter of 2020, while the cost of shipping cargo across the Pacific Ocean tripled in March alone. And the new hygiene and social distancing measures are delaying the dispatch and delivery of goods.
Third, the pandemic is disrupting the global supply of agricultural products. The Indian Agricultural Research Council has called on Indian farmers to postpone their wheat harvest until after closing, while countries like Vietnam and Cambodia are restricting rice exports. This directly affects Africa, which imports rice worth US $ 4.5 billion each year.
Furthermore, food is becoming more expensive as poorer countries struggle to secure foreign exchange to pay for imports. For example, rice prices in Nigeria rose 30 percent in the last week of March, in part due to a sharp drop in export earnings following the global collapse in the price of oil.
There are also mismatches between supply and demand. In the UK, five million liters of milk are at risk of being discarded every week due to lower demand from restaurants. But this surplus could have been converted into powdered milk and exported where it was needed.
Finally, COVID-19 is affecting agriculture and the availability of food in the markets, as inputs are still scarce and vital agrochemicals are delayed at ports and at customs controls. The World Bank estimates that agricultural production in Africa could decline as much as seven percent in 2020, depending on the extent of trade blockades.
Given these challenges, governments should provide cash transfers and safe food distribution channels to ensure that vulnerable citizens are protected. Crucially, policymakers must focus on eliminating logistics bottlenecks in both national and international value chains, so that food can move freely between and within countries. In addition, investing in the planting season will now boost countries’ adoption of technology solutions and reduce their dependence on food imports.
Globally, four types of action are needed.
First, the international community must increase funding for food relief and social protection measures. This support must come quickly, because otherwise the eventual bill will be higher as hunger spreads and the viability of agricultural systems weakens.
The second priority is to invest in local agricultural production. Disruptions in local and regional food production systems must be mitigated quickly, particularly at critical times in the planting season, when the distribution of inputs such as fertilizer is crucial. Other investments should aim to help poorer countries build up strategic food reserves for three months, as the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) recently recommended. And supporting market systems for food and non-food crops alike would help poorer countries become more resilient.
Third, we must alleviate disruptions in global food and agricultural supply chains by supporting regional and local logistics centers. WFP is best placed to coordinate such centers and needs $ 350 million immediately for that purpose. That’s not a lot of money to ensure that food gets where it’s needed most quickly.
Finally, we need to incentivize the private sector to finance agricultural processing companies and agtech. Resources must be quickly channeled into investment opportunities that are emerging as a result of the pandemic, especially for innovative value chain solutions. Priorities include supporting electronic commerce and electronic market platforms in developing countries, especially in Africa, and underpinning food processing.
Business travel, workplace arrangements, and much more are already affected by COVID-19. The pandemic also creates an opportunity to transform food systems. The new partnership in Kenya between African online retailer Jumia and Twiga, an e-marketplace platform for local farmers, is a great example of what can be done.
Protecting food supply chains is the vital element missing from an effective COVID-19 strategy. While the challenges involved are enormous, they can be resolved through global partnerships, particularly between the private sector, governments, development banks, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and farmers’ organizations. But these solutions must be implemented quickly if we want to avoid a catastrophic food crisis in developing countries.
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