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Book (stand-alone)Agricultural trade & policy responses during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 2021
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No results found.Measures adopted around the world to contain the COVID-19 outbreak helped curb the spread of the virus and lowered the pressure on health systems. However, they also affected the global trading system, and the supply and demand of agricultural and food products. In response to concerns over food security and food safety worldwide, many countries reacted immediately to apply policy measures aiming to limit potentially adverse impacts on domestic markets. Covering the first half of 2020, the report provides an overview of short-term changes in trade patterns and policy measures related to agricultural trade that countries adopted in response to the pandemic. Despite the shocks caused by the COVID-19 pandemic and containment measures, the efforts of governments and agricultural sector stakeholders to keep agricultural markets open and trade flowing smoothly contributed to remarkably resilient value chains. Effects on global trade in food and agriculture remained limited to short-term disruptions at the very beginning of the pandemic. Governments’ policy responses covered a wide range of measures, including export restrictions, lowering of import barriers, and domestic measures. Most of the trade restricting measures were short-lived. International political commitments were pivotal in the coordination of a global response to the crisis and in deterring countries from taking unilateral measures that could have harmed food security in other parts of the world. However, COVID-19 is still spreading and may entail severe implications for access to food and longer-term shifts in global demand and supply of food and agricultural commodities. -
Brochure, flyer, fact-sheetAddressing negative socioeconomic impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic through social protection in Viet Nam
Supporting incomes and livelihoods with cash assistance in Dong Nai province
2024Also available in:
No results found.In late April 2021, Viet Nam faced its fourth wave of COVID-19, with over 895 000 new cases reported (FAO, 2022). COVID-19 and related restrictions hindered livelihood options and vulnerable households faced financial stress to cover basic needs. Some of them lost their income and were unable to return to home villages for a certain period of time. In addition, many people living in vulnerable households did not qualify for government social security assistance. Dong Nai is among the country’s top three provinces and city areas to be hit hardest by the COVID-19 pandemic and is home to over 3.2 million people, including more than 1.2 million workers, of which about 720 000 people are migrant workers from other provinces (FAO, 2022). The pandemic put a heavy burden on the provincial welfare and social protection system as hundreds lost their lives, more than 400 000 contracted workers lost their jobs, and many non-contracted workers lost their source of income because of the lockdown and other prevention and control measures (Dong Nai PPC, 2021; FAO, 2022). Additionally, due to travel restrictions, many were unable to return to their home villages and join their support networks. Thus, the intervention sought to sustain livelihoods by helping households cover basic needs during these times of hardship. Between November and December 2021, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) implemented an intervention in the context of the programme Scaling up Forecast-based Financing/ Early Warning Early Action (FbF/EWEA) and Shock Responsive Social Protection for disaster resilience in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). This brief documents the intervention which aimed to help households affected by the COVID-19 pandemic and related restrictions to cover their basic needs, including households already benefiting from existing social assistance and non-beneficiary households. More specifically, it sought to improve food security and prevent vulnerable households from resorting to negative coping mechanisms. -
Book (series)Realigning policy interventions on agricultural prices
Monitoring incentives in low- and middle-income countries during the first wave of COVID-19
2022Also available in:
No results found.COVID-19 has resulted in a shock to agrifood systems around the world, with the potential for low- and middle-income countries to be particularly affected. Although policy responses were more muted than during the 2007–2008 world food crisis, efforts to insulate from supply shocks and ensure local availability during COVID-19 have generally included export restrictions and import tariff reductions, among other responses. In an effort to enable rapid market monitoring and realignment, we develop a new indicator defined as a monthly nominal rate of protection “express” which seeks to isolate as much as possible the effect of trade and market policies on domestic prices in real-time in order to understand how they responded. This analysis examines changes to this indicator during the first wave of the pandemic in 27 low- and middle-income countries for the most-consumed staple cereals of the poor and food insecure. We show that agricultural price incentives declined by 12.6 percentage points compared to the same months in previous years, suggesting that retail domestic price spikes may have largely been mitigated or avoided. However, impacts varied across countries and commodities, and this indicator can serve as a tool for examining primary drivers of changes and conducting causal analysis to facilitate adequate agrifood policy responses to support economic recovery in the post-COVID-19 era.
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