Global assessment of the impacts of COVID-19 on food security

Abstract

In this paper we present the first global assessments of COVID-19's impacts on food systems and their actors, focusing specifically on the food security and nutritional status of those affected in low and middle-income countries. The assessment covers 62 countries and is based on the analysis of 337 documents published in English, French, Spanish and Portuguese. The review confirms the magnitude and the severity of an unprecedented crisis that has spread worldwide and has spared only a few. The analysis shows that the dimension of food security that has been most affected is accessibility, with reasonably solid evidence suggesting that both financial and physical access to food have been disrupted. In contrast, there is no clear evidence that the availability of food has been affected. Overall, data suggests that food systems resisted and adapted to the disruption of the pandemic. This resilience came, however, at great costs, with the majority of the systems' actors having to cope with severe disruptions in their activities. In contrast, grocery stores and supermarkets made billions of dollars in profits in 2020.

Keywords: COVID-19; Food security; Food systems; Global assessment.

Fig. 1

The different elements of the framework used in this review to assess COVID-19 impact on people's food security.

Fig. 2

Geographical coverage of the review (i.e. countries discussed or mentioned in the documents included in this review).

Fig. 3

Impact pathway of COVID-19 on food systems and their different actors based on a Sankey approach. The thickness of the connecting lines is proportional to the number of times a connection between two elements was mentioned across the different documents. Numbers in the diagramme refer to the numbering system used in Table 1.