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Editor’s Note: WPR has made this article, as well as a selection of others from our COVID-19 coverage that we consider to be in the public interest, freely available for an initial two-week period.
Late last month, as the coronavirus continued to spread across the globe, the World Food Program warned of a “hunger pandemic.” With lockdowns constraining the incomes of the poor and supply chain disruptions preventing food from reaching consumers, pandemic-related hunger and malnutrition could eventually take more lives than the disease itself. Understanding the geography of the pandemic and the vulnerability of different food systems is critical for a well-informed response.
According to the WFP, there are now 821 million people in the world who go to bed hungry every night, and an additional 135 million face crisis levels of hunger or starvation. That latter number could nearly double to 265 million by the end of the year because of COVID-19.
While global hunger had been declining for years, the trend reversed a few years ago as food insecurity levels began to creep up again, with military conflicts in many regions and recent locust infestations in East Africa being some of the major drivers. As such, coronavirus-related food security problems come on top of already troubling worldwide trends.
When assessing the impacts of COVID-19 on global food security, it is important to consider how the pandemic is affecting food production and distribution, as well as people’s ability to buy or acquire food. Furthermore, leaders and policymakers need to understand the spatial pattern of the pandemic and the vulnerability of different food systems.
The COVID-19 pandemic hasn’t just steamrolled across the planet in a uniform way, like wet paint enveloping a ball. Rather, it has spread from its origins in Wuhan, China, to other large, well-connected urban centers in the world, and then from there to smaller towns and finally to rural areas — a pattern known as hierarchical diffusion. What this means is that the world is not experiencing one big, uniform pandemic, but a rolling series of interconnected yet spatially differentiated outbreaks, with different start times and dynamics.
It also means that residents of the cities that are hit first, which are generally globally connected and relatively wealthy, may experience the economic hardship and food problems associated with the disease in different ways from those subsequently affected. These differences persist because the food security consequences of the disease are conditioned by the social, economic and food systems in which they are operating. This does not necessarily mean that wealthier or more industrialized regions are better off, just that their vulnerabilities are different.
Generally speaking, wealthier nations are more likely to see issues with food production because of the nature of their supply chains, which are complex and concentrated. Lower-income countries, meanwhile, are likely to see problems with food access, because of their weaker social safety nets.
Food Production
Impacts on food supply vary by type of foodstuff. Last year was a good harvest year for most major grains around the world, and stocks are relatively plentiful. Processing and moving grain is also relatively less labor-intensive than other types of food. As such, grain shortages are not expected to be a problem in the coming months unless some major grain-producing countries choose to hoard their supplies. This is good news for countries that are net importers of grain, including many low-income nations in Africa.
However, the virus is beginning to create problems for production of fruits, vegetables and meat in some areas of the world, most notably in high-income countries. Here, a lot of fruit and vegetable production is undertaken by immigrant labor housed on farms in close quarters, making them particularly susceptible to outbreaks of COVID-19. Meat-packing plants have also been especially vulnerable to the coronavirus, with a number of plants in the United States and Canada being forced to shut down recently. Corporate concentration in the meat industry has amplified the problem, because now there are fewer, but significantly larger, plants with more densely spaced workers. Hundreds of workers have been infected in some facilities, leading to significant losses in food production.
To tackle coronavirus-related problems with both production and access to food, the world needs a more decentralized food system.
The impacts of COVID-19 on food production in low-income countries differ from those in high-income countries. Production for home consumption and for local markets is still widespread in some tropical areas of the world. With shorter supply chains and more diversified production, there is arguably less to go wrong. One form of this more localized production is small-scale urban and peri-urban agriculture, which supplies many cities in poorer countries with a good deal of their fresh produce.
Women also play a central role as food producers in many areas of the tropics, accounting for 70 percent of the food produced in Africa, for example. But women are also the primary caregivers in many of these societies, meaning that they may be more likely to be exposed to family members ill with COVID-19, with knock-on implications for food production, child care and child nutrition.
Food Access
Lockdowns related to COVID-19 have been particularly challenging for the poorest of the poor in the urban areas of lower-income countries, because these populations depend on casual labor and informal market activity to make the money they need to buy food. Furthermore, many lower-income countries cannot afford to provide a robust social safety net to their populations in terms of income substitution or direct food provision during a lock down.
This has led to reverse migration, or urban-to-rural migration, in some countries like India, as unemployed laborers head home to rural areas in search of better access to food. While this makes sense for individuals, such large movements of people may also spread the disease into rural areas.
Many households in lower-income countries are also facing declines in remittance income from family members who live abroad and can no longer work due to lockdowns in wealthier countries. This further constrains the food budgets of these households.
The Way Forward
To tackle problems with both production and access to food, the world needs a more decentralized food system. Corporate concentration, particularly in wealthier countries, has only made the food system more vulnerable to pest and disease outbreaks. Large farms using industrial methods to grow a narrower range of crops are less adaptable to changing market conditions. They also entail dense workforces and monocultural fields that are more susceptible to disease. Furthermore, the trend toward fewer and larger food-processing facilities produces bottlenecks in the system, as even one plant failure may lead to a significant loss in production. Policies that encourage de-concentration of food industries would render food systems less vulnerable to disease, with the added benefit that more localized food production is better for the environment.
In lower-income countries, donors and their private-sector partners must also stop their relentless push to integrate small-scale farmers into the global food system. Here, smaller farmers that largely produce for home and local consumption are being encouraged to use more purchased inputs — like seeds, fertilizers and pesticides — and produce for regional and global markets. This generally has not led to improvements in food and nutrition security for the households involved, and has made food production riskier because of increased chances of debt and greater exposure to market price fluctuations.
As bad as it may seem now, the negative effects of COVID-19 on global food security will only deepen as the disease spreads further into lower-income countries. These impacts will compound existing food problems, exacerbating hunger in ways we have not seen in several decades. The global community must respond swiftly and generously to address the rising tide of global hunger.
With economic nationalism and xenophobia on the rise in some wealthier countries, it will be difficult to build political support for generous foreign assistance and a multilateral approach to addressing global hunger. But if politicians are not swayed by the moral argument that the right to food is a fundamental human right, then surely they must understand that it is in their own self-interest to champion greater global food security. After all, widespread hunger begets instability and conflict, which benefits no one.
William G. Moseley is DeWitt Wallace professor of geography, and director of the Program for Food, Agriculture & Society, at Macalester College in Saint Paul, Minnesota. He serves on the High Level Panel of Experts, a scientific advisory board to the United Nations Committee on World Food Security. Follow him on Twitter @WilliamGMoseley.
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