3.2 Pandemic and epidemic: COVID‑19 and African swine fever
This subsection presents and analyses the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic and ASF – two recent biological disasters – on agriculture and food security. These disasters did not only have wide ranging impacts on human and animal health, but also had cascading impacts on agrifood systems and exacerbated disaster risk in society at large. This section provides an overview of impacts on agriculture and agricultural producers in 19 countriest classified as being in a food crisis,u and then zooms in on a cross-country analysis of 11 food-insecure countries to provide insights on how restrictions imposed to stop the spread of the pandemic affected the already precarious situation of agricultural production and food security in those countries. Referring to and building on available literature on the impacts of the pandemic on the agriculture sector, the findings in this section are generated from DIEM monitoring surveys carried out between 2020 and 2022 in over 44 000 farming households in 19 countries.v Results offer insights and recommendations on how policymakers and practitioners can incorporate lessons learned into future multihazard DRR and response plans, strategies and disaster risk financing arrangements.
The evidence of severe implications of transboundary animal diseases on economies and food security is presented within the section on the ASF epidemic. A viral disease of domestic and wild pigs, ASF has been framed as one of the most serious animal health threats ever. The 2019–2020 spread of ASF had wide-ranging negative impacts at the global scale, causing substantial socioeconomic losses across the pig value chain, threatening production, food security, livelihoods and impacting global markets. Although not transmissible to humans, ASF poses significant threats to food security and sustainable development. This section also offers solutions and ways forward to address and manage TADs through risk-informed preventative and anticipatory approaches – including adopting One Health approaches at the global, regional, national and local levels.
3.2.1 EFFECT OF COVID-19 RESTRICTIONS ON CROP PRODUCTION
It is estimated that between 691 and 783 million people in the world faced hunger in 2022. This is 122 million more people than in 2019, before the global COVID-19 pandemic.148 Populations in food crisis countries were severely affected by restrictions enforced in 2020, affecting household incomes across economic sectors. Even though the COVID-19 pandemic was primarily a health crisis, it had cascading impacts on livelihoods, agrifood systems, inputs, services and production.
Despite exemptions for the agricultural sector on the restrictions imposed in many countries, initial assessments from DIEM surveys show that pandemic-related measures negatively affected farmers’ livelihoods. The pandemic disrupted food systems through labour shortages, impeding seasonal labour movements, particularly for labour-intensive production systems. Disruptions in transport and logistics services for agricultural products also pushed down farm-gate prices just as retail prices were driven up, affecting farmers’ incomes as the cost of living increased.
The DIEM survey reports highlighted that the immediate impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on agriculture had negatively affected farmers’ livelihoods despite restriction exemptions for the agriculture sector. In Bangladesh, the price of rice and food increased by more than 35 percent, while farm-gate prices dropped due to transportation and market access restrictions, particularly for short shelf-life products.149 In the Niger, households reported exceptional difficulties in marketing their products due to increased transportation costs, low farm-gate selling prices for farmers, and low demand from traders who were unable to travel to the farms.150 Similar trends were observed in India.151
A cross-country analysis conducted by FAO on the agriculture sector in 11 food-insecure countriesw found that the COVID-19 pandemic had caused a shock to food security and livelihoods comparable to that of conflicts or natural hazard-induced disasters.152 Building on data collected between June and November 2020, the study showed how within the agriculture sector, restrictions affected subsectors differently. Impact pathways largely depended upon the frequency with which households needed to secure production inputs, supply chain constraints and the ability to store or keep the agricultural product when facing delays accessing markets.
Livestock and cash crop producers were among the most severely affected, reporting difficulties in accessing inputs, selling their products, accessing pastures (due to movement restrictions) and accessing international markets. Coping mechanisms, including delaying sales or proceeding to distress sales if feeding herds became too costly, helped these producers avoid total losses. For petty traders and producers of fish and vegetables, the inability to access markets caused a complete loss of rapidly perishable goods and caused an immediate income shock. Other DIEM monitoring survey reports found bottlenecks to access inputs in almost every country surveyed.153,154,155,156,157,158,159,160,161,162,163
Additional assessments of the COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns in various countries confirmed a contraction in agricultural input supply and labour shortages as well as reduced delivery of veterinary services.164 The overwhelming majority of smallholder farmers surveyed in 2021 in South Africa could not purchase seeds and seedlings, and over 75 percent faced constraints in accessing mechanized equipment for the 2020/21 crop cycle.165 Farmers in Bangladesh, India and Pakistan were affected by a shortage of labour and of intermediate inputs including fertilizer, pesticides, seeds, livestock feed and even power supply, particularly for the kharif season.166 In Bangladesh, over 90 percent of farmers had difficulties sourcing agricultural inputs, manpower and machinery for rice planting, harvesting and threshing and over 60 percent faced difficulties in commercializing their produce, leading to food price increases.167 In India, over 50 percent of farmers reported the disruption of supplies for one agricultural input, over one-third reported higher fertilizer prices, and farmers who faced lower farm-gate prices and higher production costs faced difficulties in repaying debts, exacerbating supply chain tensions and eroding coping capacity.151
As restrictions were loosened, the spike in food prices across countries decreased and prices stabilized168,169 but did not return to pre-pandemic levels, and income shocks caused by reduced farm-gate prices or production losses affected food security by reducing farmers’ purchasing power. The COVID-19 pandemic had lingering effects on the agriculture sector, causing supply chain crises that continued to push prices upwards despite the global economic recovery in 2021.
Although transportation disruptions within countries were normalized at the end of lockdowns, international movement restrictions affected the highly concentrated fertilizer trade. This pushed the price of agricultural inputs upwards, leading the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) to warn that it “could weigh on yields and crop production in 2020 and 2021, particularly in developing countries.”170 Successive waves of COVID-19 subvariant epidemics also prompted additional restrictions in countries, particularly in regions where access to vaccines remained limited. As shown in FIGURE 35, difficulties in accessing transportation were high in 2020 and peaked in 2021, and then generally decreased in 2022. Conversely, access to inputs increased sharply in 2021 and 2022 in many regions.
FIGURE 35 PERCENTAGE OF FARMERS REPORTING DIFFICULTIES TRANSPORTING PRODUCTS AND ACCESSING INPUTS
![Source: Meta-analysis of Data in Emergencies (DIEM) Monitoring data (FAO, September 2022). FAO. 2022. Data in Emergencies (DIEM) – Monitoring: Monitoring of shocks and agricultural livelihoods in priority countries. In: FAO. Rome. [Cited July 2023]. https://data-in-emergencies.fao.org/pages/monitoring](../img/CC7900EN_fig35.jpg)
In 2022, long after COVID-19 restrictions had been lifted, farmers across many countries continued to report challenges in gaining access to chemical inputs and seeds. In Myanmar, difficulties led to a reduction in area planted and a decrease in production.158 Reduced access to fertilizer was the primary explanation for the reduction of the area of wheat planted in Pakistan.171 In the Near East, difficulties in accessing inputs were compounded by devaluation of the national currencies in Lebanon and Iraq.172,173
COVID-19 and area planted
The results of the regressions show that planted areas were more likely to be reduced for cereal and vegetable crops than for fruit or cash crops, where the latter are produced for their commercial value rather than for use by the grower. The models considered the impact of rainfall anomaly, gender of household head and conflict. As expected, the models found that these factors contributed to a reduction in the area planted.
The results show that when COVID-19 restrictions were implemented during the main planting season, there was an unambiguous reduction in the area planted. The log-odds coefficient for restrictions on people gathering is -0.157, with a 95 percent confidence interval,x which translates into an average predicted probability of farmers reporting less or much less area planted that increases from around 22 percent, without gathering restrictions to roughly 50 percent, if the gathering restrictions were very stringent (when groups of ten or fewer people were banned). The negative impact of gathering restrictions extended to the growing period when the crop cultivated was rice, which must be transplanted after the first planting period.
When controlling for the closure of business in addition to stay-at-home orders, holding gathering restrictions constant, the chances of reducing the area planted increase from a probability of about one-third without stay-home restrictions to 50 percent when staying home was a requirement, with a log-odds coefficient of -0.127, and the closure of businesses more than doubled the chances of reducing the area planted – from 29 percent to 64 percent – when holding the level of other restrictions constant, as it deprived farmers of access to inputs and equipment or animals for land preparation.
COVID-19 and perceived harvest change
Consistent with the results of the analysis of changes in planted area, producers of fruit and cash crops were comparatively less affected than those of staples (cereals and pulses). Much of the negative changes in harvest are explained by changes in the area planted, with an average predicted probability for farmers affected by workplace closure during the time of planting of reporting a reduction in harvest reaching 97 percent (against 40 percent without business closure restrictions).
During the harvest period, lockdowns were found to be associated with odds of reporting positive harvest changes of only 73 percent of those who were not under restrictions. In other words, while holding other factors constant, the average predicted probability of reporting negative harvest changes was 55 percent when farmers were not subjected to lockdown during the harvest period, and it was as high as 75 percent if they were under lockdown restrictions during that critical time.
Likewise, gathering restrictions are associated with odds of only 56 percent reporting an increase in harvest compared to places that were not under these restrictions at harvest. Holding other factors constant, this implies that restrictions on gatherings during the harvest period nearly doubled the likelihood of reporting negative harvest changes, with a probability of 77 percent. Workplace closure during harvest is also associated with a 64 percent lower chance of reporting positive harvest changes, thus increasing the probabilities for farmers to report a reduction in their harvest from roughly half to 84 percent while holding other factors constant.
COVID-19 restrictions and access to inputs
Finally, the analysis shows the associations between COVID-19 restrictions and the likelihood of farmers reporting difficulty in accessing agricultural inputs. Those who were most likely to be affected by difficulties in accessing agricultural inputs were cereals and pulses producers, while fruit and cash-crop producers were significantly less likely to report such difficulties, particularly cash-crop producers.
The results show that restricting internal movements during the growing period significantly increased the likelihood of reporting such difficulties, likely because the growing period is a time when smallholder farmers in developing countries also earn income from secondary sources, which were more affected by COVID-19 restrictions.
Controlling for the price of rice shows how access to inputs for smallholder farmers – who account for most of the respondents – is conditional upon access to food markets. This is a critical reminder that COVID-19 restrictions affected access to inputs not only through supply shocks, but also through their immediate negative impact on income sources by impeding access to food and labour markets for farmers.y,174
Stay-at-home requirements as well as international trade restrictions during the planting season were the restrictions that most heavily affected access to inputs in this subset of countries, increasing the odds of reporting difficulty in finding inputs by 33 percent and 53 percent, respectively. Internal movement restrictions during the planting period also reduced the likelihood of farmers complaining about access to inputs, something that can easily be explained by the reduction in planting areas associated with this restriction.
BOX 11 Methodology to estimate THE IMPACT OF THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC on agriculture using the Data in Emergencies (DIEM) INFORMATION SYSTEM
Using data from DIEM surveys and DIEM survey reports across 11 food-insecure countries, the pandemic impact channels on agriculture production are characterized. Agricultural production was affected by reduced input access or labour shortages. Disruptions in transport and logistics for agricultural products led to a decrease in farm-gate prices. Meanwhile, retail prices increased, affecting farmers’ incomes as the cost of living rose.
Ordinal logistic regressions are employed to assess the correlation between COVID-19-related restrictions and changes in planted area, perceived harvest changes, and access to inputs. Distinct impacts are evaluated for producers of cereals, vegetables, fruits and cash crops. The models considered the impact of rainfall anomaly, gender of household head, and conflict. The effects of COVID-19 restrictions are estimated depending on their time of implementation (planting period, growing period, harvest) and their types (closure of business, stay-home orders, internal movement restrictions and gathering restrictions).
Farmers particularly needed access to inputs such as seeds during the planting season, when restrictions were most harmful, and the lack of such inputs has the most damaging effect on agricultural production. Many individual survey reports support this conclusion. In Sierra Leone, for example, it was reported that seeds, particularly vegetable seeds, were difficult to supply due to COVID-19 restrictions. In Somalia, in 2021, farmers who reduced the area they planted largely explained such reductions as the result of the inability to control pest diseases, difficulties accessing seeds and generally higher input prices.175 The inability to import spare parts for essential machinery for land preparation was also reported to reduce access to essential machinery, causing reductions in planted areas.
During the planting period, in order of magnitude, the closure of businesses, stay at home orders, gathering restrictions and internal movement restrictions were the most damaging to agriculture. During the harvest period, labour availability, gathering bans and workplace closure impeded agricultural production, including by stopping workers from reaching fields where extra labour was needed.
The above factors were associated with a reduction of area planted and lower agricultural production. This is particularly concerning in low- and lower-middle-income countries, where a vast proportion of the population relies on subsistence agriculture, and in countries where food security can easily be threatened by fluctuations in agricultural production.
The results presented above should be considered in conjunction with the findings of other cross-country assessments on the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the agricultural sector. While more research is necessary to assess the lasting impact on the health of food security shocks versus illness and death caused by COVID-19, maintaining operations is critical for agricultural production and food security.
3.2.2 EPIDEMIC: AFRICAN SWINE FEVER AS AN EXAMPLE OF TRANSBOUNDARY ANIMAL DISEASES
Transboundary animal diseases such as ASF can have catastrophic impacts on sustainable development, affecting the livelihoods and food security of the people involved in the livestock value chain and impacting global markets. Although historically endemic to eastern Africa,176 ASF was reported across Africa, the Americas, Asia, Europe and Oceania between January 2020 and March 2022. It affected over 1 million domestic pigs, caused the loss of 1.8 million animals as a result of deaths of affected animals as well as animals culled and disposed of as a control measure.177
ASF is one of the most complex viral diseases affecting both domestic and wild pigs. Considered one of the most serious global animal health threats in history, ASF has a case fatality rate close to 100 percent and there is no effective and safe commercial vaccine or treatment available at present.178 Transmission can occur through direct contact with an infected pig, ingestion of pork (pig meat) or other contaminated pork products, fomites, vehicles, shoes, and through competent vectors, for instance arthropod vectors such as soft ticks of the genus Ornithodoros.179 The main pathways for ASF spread are the movement of pigs due to trade, sale of infected meat, spread via fomites such as farm or veterinary tools and free-range pig raising.
Human-mediated transmission of ASF is the prevailing driver of global spread, with long distance jumps followed by endemic persistence and spread to neighbouring areas and countries. Since January 2020, ASF has been reported in 35 countries across five continents.z The global consequences of the spread of ASF have been most evident since its spread into Asia, due to China’s pig meat market being the largest in the world. Accounting for approximately 45 percent of global production and consumption, the introduction of ASF into China led to supply shocks that affected global pig markets.180 Between 2018 and 2019, the outbreak of ASF in China caused more than 1.2 million pigs to be culled.181
Production and market impacts of African swine fever in China and globally
Between the first ASF outbreak in China on 3 August 2018, and 1 July 2022, a total of 218 outbreaks have been reported to the World Animal Health Information System of the World Organization of Animal Health (WOAH). Culling has been demonstrated to diminish the peak value and cumulative number of ASF cases by 99 percent, and combined with improvements in the detection rate of infectious pigs and biosecurity spread, it is an effective measure against ASF in China.182 However, the culling of 1.2 million pigs as of 2019 has led to heavy economic losses.181
While the national average price of live pigs did not change substantially in 2018 (RMB 12.2 per kg as of 1 August 2018 compared to RMB 13.1 per kg as of 28 December 2018), the interprovincial pig spreadaa rose from RMB 2.01 per kg to RMB 8.1 per kg during the same period.ab
By the end of 2019, it became evident that the national demand for pork could not be met, as indicated by the average pig and pork prices, which skyrocketed to 161 and 141 percent higher than pre-ASF levels, respectively. The impacts of both ASF and the COVID-19 pandemic compounded, and pork production in China in 2020 decreased by 25.8 percent compared to 2017.183
In terms of volume, pork production in China experienced a 22 percent contraction when comparing 2017 to 2019.184 However, over the same period, the breeding sow population contracted by 35 percent. The liquidation of the breeding herd as a precautionary measure against ASF temporarily increased the domestic pork supply by approximately 25 percent.
While the Government of China tried to stabilize pork prices by releasing pork reserves to the market, the gap covered by the reserves was not enough to have a substantial impact on prices. For example, the pork reserves released by the government in 2019 and 2020 represented just 0.4 percent and 1.8 percent of the domestic pork production, respectively.
China tried to partially cover the gap by importing pork, which increased from 1 501 000 tonnes to 5 281 000 tonnes. Pork imports to China went from 20 percent of the global pork trade in 2017 to 45 percent in 2020. Relative to domestic pork production, imports went from 2.8 percent in 2017 to 14.5 percent in 2020, partly due to the contraction in domestic production described above. The increase in imports had global implications and pork prices on the international market increased drastically. This opened new opportunities for exporting countries but affected importing countries, which had to compete with China for pork procurement.
As proven in Asia, ASF can quickly spread in highly interconnected regions due to the constant movement of people and goods. Since the detection of ASF in Haiti and the Dominican Republic, collaborative efforts to respond to ASF are ongoing in the Americas.185 A recent risk assessment by FAO found that if the disease spreads throughout the Americas, more than 48 million pigs could be lost, leading to USD 7.8 billion in direct losses, including impacts on mortality rate, pork production, trade and market prices, and jobs.186 These losses would mainly occur in the four countries with large pig industries, namely the United States of America, Brazil, Mexico and Canada. In 2019, these four producers exported pork to over 100 countries, accounting for 27 percent of the global pork exports.187
Beyond direct costs, ASF can have a dramatic impact on food security in countries where pork represents an important source of protein. In the Americas, this is the case for Belize, Cuba, Ecuador, Haiti and Paraguay, which are more food-insecure than the regional average. In Haiti, Jean-Pierre, Hagerman and Rich reported that ASF-induced high prices lead to increased consumer expenditure losses by up to 200 percent over the outbreak period.188 Depending on the epidemic’s magnitude, it can also lead to an increase in the price of other animal proteins as consumer demand for substitutes rises. This was observed in 2019 in China, where chicken and beef prices increased more than 20 percent (year-over-year), leading to additional challenges for food security and nutrition. The impact of the introduction of ASF in the Americas has been extensively analysed and discussed in FAO’s risk assessment.186
The estimate generated with OutCosT for the cost of ASF outbreaks in Lao Cai province in 2020 is USD 826 911, which represents USD 234 per pig lost. For the same province, the number of pigs lost in 2019 was ten times higher than 2020. Using the findings from OutCosT in 2020, it can be estimated that the cost of the ASF outbreaks in the same province in 2019 was USD 8.6 million.ac The difference between the 2019 and 2020 cost reflects the rapid spread of ASF in its initial stages and the effectiveness of later control measures.
In the Philippines, ten provinces were affected by ASF in 2019, but by the end of 2020 it had affected 32 provinces. The cost per pig lost due to ASF in 2019 was USD 281,189 which can be used to assess the cost of ASF outbreaks in 2020, namely using the most likely proportion of the reduction in the number of pigs slaughtered (approach A) and using the higher bound of the proportion of the reduction in the number of pigs slaughtered (approach B). Details are as follow:
Calculating the number of pigs lost due to ASF as the most likely proportion of the reduction in the number of pigs slaughtered (38 percent),ad using 2019 as a reference year. Using this method, the number of pigs lost was 689 000.ae
The higher bound of the proportion of the reduction in the number of pigs slaughtered can be estimated using the contraction in the volume of pigs slaughtered between 2019 and 2020, which is 1.8 million heads. However, this contraction could be influenced by factors other than ASF that we cannot measure.af
Using these estimates, the approximate cost of the ASF outbreaks in 2020 in the Philippines was between USD 194 million and USD 507 million, 3.3 to 8.7 times higher than the cost in 2019. The high cost is unsurprising considering the large geographical spread in 2020. In Viet Nam and the Philippines the estimated losses were mainly due to domestic pigs and to national costs versus in Germany where the outbreak was in wild boars and due to the loss in the export market.
Tools like OutCosT can support countries in assessing outbreak costs under different disease spread scenarios and guide decision-making, including resource allocation for controlling the disease and preventing further spread. While the results can be easily extrapolated, it is important to calibrate the tool properly, so the results are consistent with local market conditions and policies in place.
Estimation of indirect losses
Assessing the indirect impact of ASF requires approaches such as value chain analysis because disruptions in a specific node of the value chain (in this case, the production node) have upstream and downstream spillover effects. There is some evidence of substantial implications of ASF for feed suppliers, despite the partial offset associated with shifting to other livestock species.190 Downstream spillovers are more evident due to the less efficient use of productive assets that diminishes the availability of production resources and inputs for downstream actors of the value chain. In Viet Nam, less than 35 percent of the job losses associated with ASF occurred in the pig sector, while the rest are distributed among other related sectors such as wholesale and retail sale, feed and veterinary services.191
In highly intensive systems, indirect costs of notifiable animal disease outbreaks such as ASF often significantly exceed the direct costs but remain poorly characterized due to their complexity. In a recent modelling effort, Savioli et al.192 reported that the most important measures for controlling ASF in the event of an incursion in Switzerland were related to transport and slaughter logistics, consumer demand, and the prevention of contact between wild boar and domestic pigs. The greatest costs associated with contact prevention were due to assumed partial or total depopulation of fattening pig farms to reduce herd size and therefore comply with the simulated control regulations.
