The Importance of Agri-food Systems in Tackling the Pandemic

Virtually every country on the planet has emphasized the role of food security—availability, access, stability and food safety—in overcoming the COVID-19 pandemic. With mobility restrictions, supermarkets have been filled with people looking for food and hygiene supplies.

There is a correlation between healthy nutrition and our body’s immune response to any disease, which is possible only by accessing a constant supply of a recommended variety of foods. The demand for citrus fruits as sources of vitamin C, for example, increased five-fold in some markets.

These circumstances bring to light the importance of countries’ food sovereignty, which implies meeting much of these basic needs with domestic supply, based on a strong and resilient productive base. In addition, considering that COVID and other diseases throughout history have been caused by animals, livestock sanitary policies become more important than ever.

The pandemic also exposes the economic and social gaps in our countries, the food vulnerability of poor families, and of those that have become jobless, causing financial limitations to access these nutrients. Countries’ response to mitigate the social emergency has been diverse (bonuses, transfers, direct deliveries), because if we were to add a food crisis to the current situation, we would have a much more lethal threat.

Even so, difficulties have been observed at the primary production level, in many cases due to reduced availability of transport to distribute production, but also for the supply of inputs, equipment and the need to ease measures for transport of labor to the fields, which require urgent action. Ecuador, for example, quickly activated four agro-logistic corridors to ensure these flows to cities.

Governments are working on mechanisms to ensure that food production and marketing continue to operate, including international food trade. For example, China resumed its purchases of grains and fruit, among others, thus reviving the export markets of many of our countries, which would be severely restricted without such demand. We must recall that Latin America and the Caribbean accounts for approximately 25% of global food exports.

Public leaders in several countries have also been disseminating guidelines and best practices for stakeholders throughout the agri-food chain. In addition to the concern about safety and traceability we have now other warnings about the health of operators and possible contagion to consumers. Stamps or seals that certify traceability may perhaps need to be implemented in the near future to reassure us that every step of the process in everything we buy at the stores is “COVID-free.”

A critical dimension of these systems is precisely buyer and consumer habits. For example, in Peru, the census conducted on urban markets (2016) already noted that 75% of people in Lima buy their food mainly in these markets, and in the provinces, the number rises to about 90%. This predicted that these would be a focus of large concentrations of people, which went against recommendations to prevent further contagion. Therefore, the organization of these markets and good practices on social distancing and sanitary management will be key to contain the virus—and other future crises.

Furthermore, restaurants and other prepared food businesses came to a grinding halt, which in some countries has been offset by the use of delivery services, but in general, this is one of the hardest hit sectors, which will have to expedite its adaptation to new business models in order to survive. In addition to various innovations, reopening of brick-and-mortar establishments will have to meet rules on social distancing, protection and traceability, as we have already seen in China and other countries, with greater advantages compared to Latin America, thanks to their level of digitalization.

In sum, we cannot predict what the global landscape will look like in a few months, but there is no doubt that the agri-food systems that make our daily lives possible have a lot on their plate, and will require major efforts to handle it.