The Compounded Effects of COVID-19 Pandemic and Desert Locust Outbreak on Food Security and Food Supply Chain

The COVID-19 pandemic and locust swarm outbreaks pose a significant threat to global food systems, causing severe disruptions in both local and international food supplies from farm to fork. The main objective of this study is to understand and identify the disruptions during the crises and create a map of how resilience can be established to recover and sustain the food supply chain (FSC) functions as well as food security. The detrimental impacts of the compound crises on the FSC are explored and the effects of the affected areas are estimated under optimistic and pessimistic scenarios. As a response to the disruption caused by the crisis in FSCs, reactive and proactive solutions are proposed to develop resilience at the food sector level. In the short term, the reactive solutions, consisting of smoothing the food demand, supply and delivery, and food production and processing, can be borrowed. In the long term, the proactive solutions can be conducted by developing multi-level short intertwined FSCs. Our comprehensive investigation of the resilience elements in diverse operations and potential strategies should contribute to the improvement of FSC resilience in the face of ongoing and growing threats.

Automated summary

The study examines the significant threats posed by the COVID-19 pandemic and locust swarm outbreaks to global food systems, proposing reactive and proactive solutions to address disruptions and enhance resilience in the food supply chain. Short-term solutions focus on smoothing food demand, supply, delivery, production, and processing, while long-term strategies involve developing interconnected short FSCs to improve resilience.