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Two years after the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, the health, economic, and social disruptions caused by this global crisis continue to evolve. The impacts of the pandemic are likely to endure for years to come, with poor, marginalized, and vulnerable groups the most affected. In COVID-19 & Global Food Security: Two Years Later, the editors bring together contributions from new IFPRI research, blogs, and the CGIAR COVID-19 Hub to examine the pandemic's effects on poverty, food security, nutrition, and health around the world. This volume presents key lessons learned on food security and food system resilience in 2020 and 2021 and assesses the effectiveness of policy responses to the crisis. Looking forward, the authors consider how the pandemic experience can inform both recovery and longer-term efforts to build more resilient food systems. ; Chapter 1. Beyond initial impacts: The evolving COVID-19 context and food system resilience FOOD SECURITY & POVERTY Chapter 2. COVID-19 impacts on food systems, poverty, and diets: Lessons learned from country-level analyses Chapter 3. Impacts of COVID-19 on global poverty and food security: What more do we know now? Chapter 4. Despite COVID-19, food consumption remains steady in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia Chapter 5. Crowdsourced data reveal threats to household food security in near real-time during COVID-19 pandemic Chapter 6. Waves of disease, waves of poverty: New evidence on the economic impacts of COVID-19 and political instability in Myanmar Chapter 7. Impact of falling remittances amid COVID-19 on Yemen's war-torn economy Chapter 8. Short-term impacts of COVID-19 in rural Guatemala call for a closer, continuous look at the food security and nutritional patterns of vulnerable families Chapter 9. COVID-19 undermines incomes, livelihoods in rural Myanmar AGRICULTURAL PRODUCTION & VALUE CHAINS Chapter 10. COVID-19 and food inflation scares Chapter 11. COVID-19, agricultural production, and food value chains Chapter 12. Resilience of urban value chains during ...

This Working Paper takes comprehensive stock of the impacts of the first two waves of COVID-19 (in Q2 and Q4 2020) on the microfinance sector in Myanmar. We discuss potential impact pathways, review policy responses to the crisis, and present new quantitative analysis based on a set of surveys with respondents throughout the agricultural value chain. Additionally, we briefly review impacts since the military takeover on February 1, 2021. Overall, various disruptions to the microfinance sector, particularly during peak periods of COVID-19, significantly reduced overall lending from April 2020, onward. These disruptions, along with disruptions to external financing, led to greater informal borrowing, likely greater indebtedness, and lower food security. However, policy responses and financing accommodations to microfinance institutions (MFIs) in Q2 and Q3 2020 cushioned the sector against widespread insolvency. The events since the military takeover are creating new challenges, exacerbating the aforementioned impacts, and raising new risks of MFI insolvency and broader crises around food security, indebtedness, and poverty. Considering these findings, stakeholder recommendations underscore the importance of easing the movement of international and domestic goods. Efforts should be focused on meeting the MFIs' need for loanable funds through mechanisms such as exchange rate hedging, credit guarantees, and loan enhancement, while continuing to encourage flexibility around existing financing. When the time comes for a full recovery, there should be a focus on facilitating additional financial injections so that MFIs can more effectively restart lending operations. ; Non-PR ; IFPRI1; MyanmarSSP; MAPSA; CRP2; 4 Transforming Agricultural and Rural Economies ; DSGD; PIM ; CGIAR Research Program on Policies, Institutions, and Markets (PIM)

Objectives: The COVID-19 pandemic is expected to have extensive effects on healthcare systems. The Government of Bangladesh has concerns about diminished coverage and quality of maternal and child health services, but little published information exists on service provision, utilization, and adaptations. We examined changes to maternal and child health and nutrition service delivery and utilization in urban Bangladesh during and after the enforcement of COVID-19 restrictions and identified adaptations and potential solutions to strengthen service delivery and uptake. Methods: We conducted longitudinal surveys with health care providers (n = 45), pregnant women (n = 40), and mothers of children < 2 years (n = 387) in February 2020 (in-person) and September 2020 (by phone). We used Wilcoxon matched-pairs signed-rank tests to compare the changes before and during the pandemic. Results: Most services for pregnant women remained available during COVID-19 restrictions, with the provision of antenatal care (ANC) services falling by 6.6 percentage points (pp). Services for women and children which require proximity, however, were more severely affected; weight and height measurements fell by 20–29pp for pregnant women and 37–57pp for children, and child immunizations fell by 38pp. Declines in service utilization were large, including drops in facility visitations (35pp among pregnant women and 67pp among mothers), health and nutrition counseling (up to 73pp), child weight measurements (50pp), and immunizations (61pp). The primary method of adaptation was provision of services over phone (37% for ANC services and 44–49% for counselling of pregnant women or mothers with young children). Conclusions: Despite adaptations to service provisions, continued availability of routine maternal and child health services did not translate into service utilization. Further investments are needed to provide timely and accurate information on COVID-19 to the public, improve COVID-19 training and provide incentives for health care providers, and ensure availability of personal protective equipment for both providers and beneficiaries. ; Non-PR ; IFPRI5; CRP4; POSHAN; Alive and Thrive; 2 Promoting Healthy Diets and Nutrition for all ; PHND; A4NH; SAR ; CGIAR Research Program on Agriculture for Nutrition and Health (A4NH)

The unsustainable agricultural production mode of "high input and high output" has imposed a heavy burden on China's ecosystems, and severely restricted the sustainable development of the country's agrifood systems. Taking long-term prevention and control of agricultural nonpoint-source pollution as the key approach can play an important role in upgrading country's agriculture to circular and renewable agriculture-food-ecological system circulation. Currently, the five major sources of agricultural nonpoint-source pollution in China are livestock, poultry and aquaculture; chemical fertilizers; pesticides; crop residues; and waste plastic films. The Chinese government has issued corresponding policies and measures to carry out prevention and control at the source and end, which have achieved initial results. Its accurate grasp of policy direction and policy implementation provide lessons for other developing countries. Several years of treatments have resulted in remarkable reduction of nitrogen and phosphorus emissions from the livestock and poultry farming, but the pollutant emissions of the aquaculture are increasing, and the utilization rate of chemical fertilizers and pesticides is still relatively low compared with that of developed countries. China mainly relies on policies and legal means, and government subsidies to control agricultural nonpointsource pollution in the short term. However, more emerging options should be explored to establish a long-term mechanism to prevent and control agricultural nonpoint-source pollution and to transform the agrifood systems to become even greener, including property rights arrangements, interprovincial ecological compensation, green finance, and brand building for ecological agricultural products. ; Non-PR ; IFPRI4; 3 Building Inclusive and Efficient Markets, Trade Systems, and Food Industry; DCA ; DSGD

In 2020, PIM findings contributed to seed policies in Nepal and Uganda, Malawi's extension strategy and approval of insect-resistant cotton, a nationwide program aimed at improving the effectiveness of public service delivery in Uganda, social protection programs in Egypt, and school gardens for better nutrition in Papua New Guinea. At the global level, PIM research was used to shape strategic decisions of organizations such as the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, GIZ, the Inter-American Development Bank, the UK Government's Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office, the World Bank and the World Health Organization. PIM tools were incorporated in universities' curricula in India and South Africa. Examples of PIM innovations scaled up by partners in 2020 are private sector seed marketing in Ethiopia, picture-based insurance in Ethiopia, India and Kenya, and tools for inclusive governance of natural resources in India and Peru. ; Non-PR ; IFPRI1; CRP2; 1 Fostering Climate-Resilient and Sustainable Food Supply; 2 Promoting Healthy Diets and Nutrition for all; 3 Building Inclusive and Efficient Markets, Trade Systems, and Food Industry; 4 Transforming Agricultural and Rural Economies; 5 Strengthening Institutions and Governance; G Cross-cutting gender theme; Capacity Strengthening ; PIM ; CGIAR Research Program on Policies, Institutions, and Markets (PIM)

Over the course of the pandemic, research on how COVID-19 has affected agricultural production and food value chains has evolved: as coronavirus infection rates rose and fell and governments instituted a range of responses, the research focus shifted from projecting what might happen to reflecting on what did happen. Early studies focused on the immediate effects of the lockdowns and other restrictions on food supplies. Later studies began to delve more deeply into the diverse private and public countervailing responses — as governments sought to offset the negative impacts of lockdowns — and their effectiveness in maintaining food supply and demand. The growing number of relatively high-quality studies on agriculture and food supply chains allows for some assessment of factors that appear to have diminished or aggravated the impacts of the pandemic. The analytical framework and the methodology used to develop our findings are summarized in Box 1. ; Non-PR ; IFPRI4; CRP4; CRP2 ; MTID; DGO; A4NH; PIM ; CGIAR Research Program on Agriculture for Nutrition and Health (A4NH); CGIAR Research Program on Policies, Institutions, and Markets (PIM)

Background: COVID-19 transmission rates in South Asia initially were under control when governments implemented health policies aimed at controlling the pandemic such as quarantines, travel bans, and border-, business-, and school-closures. Governments have since relaxed public health guidelines which resulted in significant outbreaks moving the global epicenter of the COVID-19 pandemic to India. Systematic ongoing public health surveillance of the COVID-19 is needed to inform disease prevention policy to re-establish control of the pandemic within the region. Objective: To inform public health leaders about the state of the COVID-19 pandemic, how South Asia differs within and between countries and from other global regions and where immediate action is needed to control the outbreaks. Methods: We extracted 62 days of COVID-19 data from public health registries and calculated traditional and enhanced surveillance metrics. We use an empirical difference equation to measure the daily number of cases in South Asia as a function of the prior number of cases, the level of testing, and weekly shift variables based on a dynamic panel model that was estimated using the generalized method of moments approach by implementing the Arellano-Bond estimator in R. Results: Traditional surveillance metrics signal that South Asian countries have an alarming outbreak with India leading the region with 310,310 new daily cases using the 7-day moving average. Enhanced surveillance indicates that while Pakistan and Bangladesh still have a high daily number of new COVID-19 transmissions, 4,819 and 3,878, respectively, their speed of new infections declined from April 12-25, 2021 from 2.28 to 2.18 and 3.15 to 2.35 daily new infections per 100,000 population, respectively, signaling their outbreaks are contracting and heading in the right direction. In contrast, India's speed of new infections per 100,000 population increased by 52% during the same time period from 14.79 to 22.49 new cases per day per 100,000 which constitutes an outbreak. Conclusions: Relaxed public health restrictions plus novel variants fueled the second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic in South Asia. Public health surveillance signals that shifts made to policy plus new variants correlate with a dramatic expansion in the pandemic requiring immediate action to mitigate the spread of COVID-19. Surveillance is needed to inform leaders if policies result in pandemic control. ; PR ; IFPRI3; COVID-19 Policy Response (CPR) Portal; CRP2; 3 Building Inclusive and Efficient Markets, Trade Systems, and Food Industry; 4 Transforming Agricultural and Rural Economies; 5 Strengthening Institutions and Governance; Feed the Future Initiative; ISI ; DSGD; PIM ; CGIAR Research Program on Policies, Institutions, and Markets (PIM)

Background: Since the emergence of the COVID-19 outbreak, Government of Bangladesh (GoB) has taken various measures to restrict virus transmission and inform the people of the situation. However, the success of such measures largely depends on a positive public perception of the government's ability to act decisively and the transparency of its communication. We explored public perceptions of pandemic management efforts by the Bangladeshi health sector decision-makers in this study. Methods: As this qualitative research was conducted during the COVID-19 pandemic, data was gathered through seven online mixed-gender focus group discussions involving 50 purposively selected clinicians and non-clinicians. Results: The study participants concurred that, from the outset, decision-makers failed to engage the right kind of experts, which resulted in poor pandemic management that included imposing lockdown in periphery areas without arranging patient transport to the center, declaring certain hospitals as COVID-19 dedicated without preparing the facilities or the staff, and engaging private hospitals in care without allowing them to test the patients for COVID-19 infection. Several participants also commented on ineffective actions on behalf of the GoB, such as imposing home quarantine instead of institutional, corruption, miscommunication, and inadequate private sector regulation. The perception of the people regarding service providers is that they lacked responsiveness in providing treatment, with some doctors misleading the public by sharing misinformation. Service providers, on the other hand, observed that decision-makers failed to provide them with proper training, personal protective equipment, and workplace security, which has resulted in a high number of deaths among medical staff. Conclusions: The Bangladeshi health sector decision-makers should learn from their mistakes to prevent further unnecessary loss of life and long-term economic downturn. They should adopt a science-based response to the COVID-19 pandemic in the short term while striving to develop a more resilient health system in the long run. ; PR ; IFPRI3; DCA ; SAR; DSGD

The COVID-19 pandemic presents an opportunity to address existing gender inequalities through social protection. Program designs should be adjusted to account for gender, in a manner informed by existing analysis, while taking a long-term approach. Related issues of political economy, coordination, and financing that have gender considerations should be explored in future guidance. Because these are complex issues and unintended consequences of programming are possible, more research is needed on intersections of social protection, gender and pandemics, where ethically feasible. At a minimum, monitoring statistics should be sex- and age-disaggregated and, where possible, data should be collected to ensure risks to beneficiaries do not increase. Taken together, these policy adjustments and new evidence can lay the groundwork for more gender-sensitive social protection systems in LMICs both during the crisis and beyond. ; Non-PR ; IFPRI4; CRP2 ; PHND; PIM ; CGIAR Research Program on Policies, Institutions, and Markets (PIM)

COVID-19 is spreading through the developing world. Many low- and middle-income countries are now reporting growing numbers of cases and imposing rigorous lockdown regulations in response, which impact all aspects of the economy. How will COVID-19 affect food-supply chains (FSCs) in developing countries? The evidence suggests that the impacts will be felt widely, but unevenly. Farm operations may be spared the worst, while small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in urban areas will face significant problems. Governments will have to develop policies to respond to these varied impacts to avoid supply chain disruptions, higher food prices, and severe economic fallout for millions of employees. ; Non-PR ; IFPRI4

Most countries exempted agri-food systems from "lockdown" policies introduced in early 2020 to curb the COVID-19 outbreak. Yet these policies had economywide implications, implying that even exempted sectors were indirectly affected by disruptions to supply chains and falling consumer demand. After its first confirmed case, Nigeria's federal and state governments implemented lockdowns across most cities and states. This included closing all borders and many non-essential businesses. Nigeria also faced declining remittances and export demand caused by the global recission. We estimate the economywide impacts of these lockdown policies and global shocks using a multiplier model of Nigeria calibrated to a 2018 social accounting matrix. We simulate Nigeria's 8-week lockdown (March–June), as well as "recovery" scenarios until the end of 2020. Simulations draw on information from official data, policy announcements, and interviews with government agencies and private sector and industry groups. Findings indicate that total GDP fell 23% during the lockdown. Agri-food system GDP fell 11%, primarily due to restrictions on food services. Household incomes also fell by a quarter, leading a 9% points increase in the national poverty rate. Given the scale of these economic losses, our recovery scenarios indicate that, even with a rapid easing of restrictions and global recovery, Nigeria is unlikely to escape a deep economic recession. We conclude that, while food systems were exempt, they were not immune to the effects of COVID-19. Protecting food supplies should be a priority alongside government efforts to address the health consequences of the pandemic. ; Non-PR ; IFPRI4; CRP2; 4 Transforming Agricultural and Rural Economies; UNFSS; COVID-19 Measuring Impacts and Prioritizing Policies for Recovery ; DSGD; PIM ; CGIAR Research Program on Policies, Institutions, and Markets (PIM)

These historically unprecedented times require unconventional responses. Yes, there are several examples of countries that in the past have abused "unconventional monetary approaches," leading to high bouts of inflation, strong devaluations, balance of payment crises, and corruption. Yet, with prudence, these approaches should now be used to finance specific public expenditures, such as cash transfers and safety nets for the poor and vulnerable, and certain public investments, and to keep firms operating. In any case, money always enters into the economy through specific actors (at present, mainly the owners of the assets being bought by the central banks), and not by equally endowing each citizen with the same amount of currency (as in Milton Friedman's parable of "helicopter money"; Friedman 1969). A universal income would do the latter, and some of the recent rescue packages in developed countries moved in that direction. The methods suggested here would ultimately make the channels through which an expanded money supply gets into the economy more democratic. ; Non-PR ; IFPRI4; COVID-19 Food Trade Policy Tracker; UNFSS ; LAC

The country is facing a damaging combination of political, economic, social, and health crises, playing out amidst extreme uncertainty. The current situation is to a large extent the continuation of a very complex political and social history. The more recent period opened after the ousting of the dictator JeanClaude Duvalier (known as Baby Doc) in 1986 and a sequence of military governments, when in 1990 Haiti had the first free election in modern history. The democratically elected president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, was then driven from office by yet another military coup in 1991 but, after UN sanctions, free elections were again held in 1995. Concerns about security and the limitations of the fragile government to keep peace led to the establishment of the United Nations Mission in Haiti (UNMIH), a peacekeeping operation carried out between September 1993 and June 1996. The Mission was reestablished (MINUSTAH) in April 2004, after a rebellion took over most of Haiti and President Bertrand Aristide resigned. MINUSTAH ended in 2017, when it was replaced by a new UN compact (see below). Since 1995 there have been a sequence of free elections, but not without controversies and violence. In addition, the country suffered a series of very damaging natural disasters during this period, particularly the lethal earthquake of 2010 (from which Haiti has never fully recovered), but also a series of tropical storms and hurricanes (tropical storm Jeanne in 2004; hurricane Dennis in 2005; further tropical storms in 2008; hurricane Sandy in 2012; and hurricane Matthew in 2016, the strongest in decades). Recently, Haiti also experienced drought conditions that affected agricultural production. Furthermore, at the end of 2010 a cholera outbreak was reported, which ended up killing thousands of people, and whose source was a camp of UN peace-keeping soldiers. ; Non-PR ; IFPRI1; 4 Transforming Agricultural and Rural Economies; 5 Strengthening Institutions and Governance; COVID-19 Measuring Impacts and Prioritizing Policies for Recovery ; LAC; MTID