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Farmers and agribusinesses at risk under COVID-19

What role for blended finance funds?











FAO. 2020. Farmers and agribusinesses at risk under COVID-19: What role for blended finance funds? Rome.



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    Impact of COVID-19 on informal workers 2020
    The COVID-19 pandemic is a major economic and labour market shock, presenting significant impacts in terms of unemployment and underemployment for informal workers. In rural areas, the livelihoods of especially the self-employed and wage workers are at risk, because agri-food supply chains and markets are being disrupted due to lockdowns and restrictions of movement. Families might resort to negative coping strategies such as distress sale of assets, taking out loans from informal moneylenders, or child labour. Specific groups of workers, including women, youth, children, indigenous people, and migrant workers, who are overrepresented in the informal economy, will experience further exacerbation of their vulnerability. Response measures should foster the expansion of social protection coverage to informal workers in agriculture and rural sectors, including timely cash transfers, food or in-kind distributions. Specific measures should be tailored towards women workers with care responsibilities at home, families that may resort to child labour as a coping strategy, as well as other vulnerable subgroups. Efforts should be made to maintain agricultural supply chains and strengthen the market linkages for local producers, while promoting decent work.
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    Protecting agricultural workers through remote COVID-19 awareness campaigns in Pakistan
    Using digital media and distanced messaging to promote virus mitigation and combat misinformation
    2020
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    The continuing COVID-19 pandemic—and related lockdowns—triggered a massive cash crisis around the world for families who depend on informal earnings, including daily wage workers. In Pakistan, a nationwide lockdown was imposed on 21 March 2020. This had major reverberations on the food supply chain and agriculture sector, where restrictive measures threatened the livelihoods of workers and smallholder farmers. In total, as of 12 July 2020, there were 248 872 confirmed cases throughout Pakistan. Lockdown-related challenges have created new threats to public health, with communities struggling to adhere to restrictions while still securing food for their families. Overall, society’s most vulnerable and food insecure segments have been disproportionately affected by the immediate impacts of lockdown measures, which include sudden unemployment, food price shocks, disruptions in marketing and food trade, logistics and production, and upended labor migration patterns. The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) in Pakistan, together with partners, delivered both physical and remote sensitization messages: field-based resources—including close to 80 000 materials printed and distributed by over 300 000 frontline workers—were complemented with remote communication technologies, ranging from social media posts, local radio broadcasts, and newly modified online components to the Farmer Field School (FFS) platform.
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    The role of social protection in the recovery from COVID-19 impacts in fisheries and aquaculture 2021
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    Food systems were severely hit by COVID-19 and the related restrictions to the movement of people and goods. In fisheries and aquaculture, the socio-economic effects of COVID-19 are manifold including changes in consumer demand, limited storage facilities, drop in fresh fish prices and stopping fishing operations. Many individuals working in the sector operate in the informal market with no coverage from labour market policies – not registered in mandatory social security, paid less than the legal minimum wage, without a written contract, or self-employed. These individuals include small-scale fishers, migrant, fish workers, ethnic minorities, crew members, harvesters, gleaners and vendors – especially women (FAO, 2020a; 2020b), who were the most affected by the pandemic. Social protection (SP) has been a key response that governments took to alleviate the socio-economic impacts of COVID-19 restrictions for fishery-dependent communities (FAO, 2020c). Countries with strong social protection systems in place were the most flexible to respond rapidly by adapting social protection programmes to the impact of COVID-19. Countries with weak social protection systems were less able to tailor programmes to attend the sector which is characterized by high informality. Several people who lost their employment were also left without any access to income support. The main type of social protection measures governments took to alleviate income losses in fisheries and aquaculture was temporary cash and in-kind transfers. The second most used type of programme was input subsidies.

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