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Across the world the COVID-19 crisis is compromising agri-enterprises’ ability to continue business as usual and, in some cases, is threatening the survival of some firms beyond the crisis, particularly small businesses comprised of farm enterprises, traders, food manufacturers, distributors and retailers across food chains. The brief highlights the critical role that these companies play in maintaining functioning food systems during the crisis. Recommendations target a mix of ministries, public institutions, food industry associations, local business service providers and chambers of commerce. Also available in Chinese, Spanish, Arabic, French and Russian.

This topic addresses the resilience of agricultural livelihoods and the food system to COVID-19. Lessons learned by those who have had to manage disasters indicate that it is critical to understand, monitor, and anticipate the impacts of crises on agriculture and agricultural livelihoods early on. Timely and accurate monitoring enables evidence-based policy decisions to be made; acting in advance enables unwanted impacts on food security and nutrition to be avoided. Managing this crisis requires a targeted and concrete — yet holistic — approach focused on ensuring availability, and stabilizing access to food. Also available in Spanish. 

The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic presents an exceptional and unprecedented challenge for competent authorities with responsibilities for national food safety control systems to continue conducting routine functions and activities in accordance with national regulations and international recommendations. In many countries, competent authority staff are largely working from home, teleworking being the normal practice, and all face-to-face meetings cancelled or rescheduled as teleconferences. It is challenging to maintain, without interruption, routine activities such as the inspection of food business operations, certifying exports, control of imported foods, monitoring and surveillance of the safety of the food supply chain, sampling and analysis of food, [...]

The FAO Regional Office for Latin America and the Caribbean and FLAMA will establish a joint strategy to monitor and advertise the activities of regional wholesale markets and supply centres during this period of crisis due to COVID-19 pandemic. The purpose of this newsletter is to periodically share the main prevention strategies adopted by the wholesale markets and report on their activities and operating conditions to guarantee the food supply since they continue to fulfill their strategic and critical role in the food supply of cities. By delivering objective information and electronic links, we hope that this document can contribute [...]

This bulletin provides decision-makers in governments, the private sector and civil society with useful information and resources to support the design and implementation of actions against the effects of the pandemic in Latin America and the Caribbean. The resources and information contained in the bulletin come from FAO, as well as from governments and other institutions that are contributing to the common goal of containing the effects of the pandemic. The Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) is a valuable partner in this bulletin, and we hope that other multilateral organizations will join us in future editions. Also [...]

COVID-19 poses significant challenges to an already strained rural context in Africa. The growing direct impact of COVID-19 is affecting health, in terms of morbidity and mortality, as well as quickly overburdening health care services with negative repercussions for non-COVID related health problems, but even before COVID-19 had spread in Africa, the socio economic impact was felt. The sharp decline in demand and production from the most economically developed countries where contagion had initially hit hardest—China, EU and the USA—has caused a global recession, with direct repercussions in Africa. With the spread of the virus in the continent, containment measures, [...]

According to the FAO Global Information and Early Warning System (GIEWS), cereal production in 2019 and the estimated closing stock in 2019/20 are both near record highs and supplies in Europe and Central Asia (ECA) and around the world are estimated to be sufficient. As a result, global cereal markets are expected to remain balanced and comfortable despite worries over the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic. However, localized disruptions, largely due to logistical issues, have caused some snarls in food distribution systems and food supply chains in some domestic markets. Though the anticipated duration and magnitude of these disruptions are unlikely [...]

This brief highlights some of the identified and perceived impacts of the COVID-19 crisis on development aspects interconnected with the forest sector, with a particular emphasis on the impacts on the production and trade of forest products. It proposes a series of recommendations as a basis for policy development in the aftermath of the crisis, and highlights potential opportunities to leverage the progress achieved so far, to ensure that decades of advances are not reversed. Although the forest sector is traditionally seen as more resilient (harvesting cycles are longer than other commodities), the multi-faceted contribution of the sector to broader development [...]

The initial direct impact of COVID-19 is on health, in terms of morbidity and mortality, with quickly overburdened health care services. The containment measures taken to curb the impact of COVID-19 have indirectly been socially and economically devastating and will significantly set back efforts to achieve the 2030 Agenda, including SDGs 1, 2 and 10 on poverty, food security and inequality. Inequality between countries and within countries is strongly conditioning the direct and indirect effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, and these inequalities will likely worsen due to COVID-19. However, rising inequality is not inevitable; national institutions, politics and policy can [...]

While the immediate impact of COVID19 in most parts of the world has been primarily urban, the economic impact of COVID19 spread quickly to rural areas. In most cases, the contagion will eventually follow. Most of the world’s poor and food insecure live in rural areas, and although physical distance, relative isolation, lower population density and their own production of food play in favour for rural areas, they are particularly vulnerable to suffering severe impact from the pandemic and the ensuing economic contraction. Rural areas, particularly in the developing world, are much less prepared to deal with the direct and [...]