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COVID-19: Agricultural trade and policy responses during the first wave of the pandemic in 2020

FAO support to the WTO negotiations at the 12th Ministerial Conference













FAO. 2021. COVID-19: Agricultural trade and policy responses during the first wave of the pandemic in 2020.FAO support to the WTO negotiations at the 12th Ministerial Conference. Trade Policy Brief No. 37. Rome.





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    Agricultural trade & policy responses during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 2021
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    Measures adopted around the world to contain the COVID-19 outbreak helped curb the spread of the virus and lowered the pressure on health systems. However, they also affected the global trading system, and the supply and demand of agricultural and food products. In response to concerns over food security and food safety worldwide, many countries reacted immediately to apply policy measures aiming to limit potentially adverse impacts on domestic markets. Covering the first half of 2020, the report provides an overview of short-term changes in trade patterns and policy measures related to agricultural trade that countries adopted in response to the pandemic. Despite the shocks caused by the COVID-19 pandemic and containment measures, the efforts of governments and agricultural sector stakeholders to keep agricultural markets open and trade flowing smoothly contributed to remarkably resilient value chains. Effects on global trade in food and agriculture remained limited to short-term disruptions at the very beginning of the pandemic. Governments’ policy responses covered a wide range of measures, including export restrictions, lowering of import barriers, and domestic measures. Most of the trade restricting measures were short-lived. International political commitments were pivotal in the coordination of a global response to the crisis and in deterring countries from taking unilateral measures that could have harmed food security in other parts of the world. However, COVID-19 is still spreading and may entail severe implications for access to food and longer-term shifts in global demand and supply of food and agricultural commodities.
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    Policy brief
    Analysing changes to price incentives during the first wave of COVID-19 2022
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    The COVID-19 pandemic has triggered a shock on agrifood systems around the world, with the potential for low- and middleincome countries to be particularly affected. As containment measures disrupt access to agricultural inputs and markets, governments have sought to insulate domestic consumers from world price fluctuations and ensure local availability by changing export and import policies and introducing price stabilisation measures, among other responses.
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    Indonesia’s agriculture sector performance during the COVID-19 pandemic: Towards a resilient agrifood system 2023
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    The COVID-19 pandemic has had a huge impact on food security in Indonesia. Ensuring food production and availability is a major concern for policymakers. The Indonesian government has historically made various efforts in this regard, encouraging and providing facilitation to farmers as the main producers of food, such as through the supply of agricultural inputs. In responding to the pandemic, the Indonesian government designed several programmes to protect farmers as food producers. The government was already carrying out these programmes before COVID-19 broke out but it increased their number and frequency during the pandemic. This paper examines the situation for several agricultural commodities as a result of the travel restrictions implemented under COVID-19. These restrictions affected the flow of goods, including of agricultural inputs and outputs. In addition, the paper compares conditions before and during the pandemic, assessing this within the broader context of government actions to address the challenges posed by COVID-19. It employs descriptive analysis, trend analysis and comparative analysis. The paper ends with an analysis of the adequacy of food consumption and food security in Indonesia and of the Social Safety Net (Jaring Pengaman Sosial – JPS) programme. As a result, the agriculture sector in Indonesia has withstood the shocks of the COVID-19 pandemic and its early restrictions relatively well. This can be seen in the economic growth (year on year) of the Indonesian agriculture sector, which was consistently positive for eight quarters (from the first quarter of 2020 to the fourth quarter of 2021) while at the same time total GDP growth in 2020 was negative. Specifically, the performance and relative resilience of the agriculture sector during the pandemic can be observed on several indicators, such as production, productivity, prices and trade in a number of main commodities, described below. During the COVID-19 pandemic, for all six commodities studied, no major shocks were observed on several indicators, including production, productivity, prices and trade. There were also no major shocks to food resilience. Responsive policies and assured provision of inputs were very important in facing the threat of food stock uncertainty. Indonesia’s government implemented several social safety net programmes, which suppressed the negative impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on food security. Policy recommendations for the government, to ensure the continued stability and resilience of agriculture and the food system.

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