COVID-19, Agriculture and Food Security (Briefing Note n°5)

This briefing note is the fifth output of the COVID-19 Observatory. It outlines our basic understanding of the current crisis and will be regularly updated and complemented with content on other specific subjects.

Agricultural systems, and their problems, must be examined in their specific national and regional context if we are to develop short-term solutions for the coming weeks and months while the Covid-19 crisis continues; and then, later, long-term solutions that strengthen the resilience needed to cope with the aftermath of the Covid-19 crisis, a continuing challenge that may be prolonged, or may return or recur later.

Our analysis considered problems at several levels but oscillated continually between these because of the close connection between them. We therefore looked at:

-  global diagnosis of the impact of measures to contain the Covid-19 coronavirus;

-  global markets in agricultural products;

-  local systems, composed of agricultural value chains;

-  the “granulometry” of agriculture and ecology sectors.