COVID-19 & Global Food Security: 2 Years Later

COVID-19 and Global Food Security: 2 Years Later was published by the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) in March 2022. It builds upon the lessons presented in the earlier volume, COVID-19 & Global Food Security (2020). While the previous book focused on the pandemic’s many disruptions to food security during the first half of 2020, the new volume looks at the lessons learned over the subsequent 18 months – lessons that have a bearing on food security and food systems resilience.

The impacts of COVID-19 on incomes differed significantly between sectors and between rural and urban areas. The employment and income effects were more severe in non-agricultural sectors and urban households. However, as rural households are typically poorer than urban households, income loss posed a significant risk to food security here too. One study estimates the median increase in poverty rates to be between 8 and 9 percentage points, with substantial variation across countries. It suggests that about 65 per cent of the increase in poverty has occurred in rural areas.

This e-book is organised in four sections: food security and poverty; agricultural production and value chains; nutrition, health, and social programs; and policy responses and implications. Each section includes two types of contributions. The first are new syntheses of lessons on key topics such as country impacts, food price changes, value chain fractures, social protection case studies, and fiscal and monetary responses and policy recommendations. The second are new or updated blogs from the IFPRI COVID-19 series.

(IFPRI/ile)

Read more on the IFPRI website, where you can also download the e-book COVID-19 & Global Food Security: 2 Years Later