The COVID-19 pandemic shakes nearly all industries and sectors across the globe. The very reason that the agricultural and food sector is recognized as the essential business also make it comparatively vulnerable to the strike of the pandemic that requires limited movement regulation and stringent social distancing measure to contain the spread of virus. This paper attempts to provide a bird’s-eye view of the trends and evolution in the agriculture and food market as well as the impacted stakeholders along the supply chain under the pandemic in the United States and the European Union. Focus industries include dairy, meat, fruits, vegetables, and wine. We present various policy responses and implementations across these two continents on the same page in this article, parallel with the fluctuations in the marketplace, which aim to help correct or adjust both the short-run and structural issues facing producers, distributors, retailers, and consumers. Retrieved from publicly available datasets, trends of price and imports for fruit and vegetable markets in United States are summarized while wine price patterns are sorted for selected EU member countries. We find that most policies or programs are not crop-specific but rather focus on certain industry, use holistic approach to enhance whole-farm wellbeing, and add flexibility to existing programs to ease the economic pressure facing producers and food businesses. We expect to bring in further discussions and reflections on the market dynamics and shed light on both developed and under-developed effective strategies used to revive and sustain the agri-food sector.
Keyword: COVID-19, agricultural production, supply chain, meat, produce, wine, policy response
The COVID-19 pandemic shakes nearly all industries and sectors across the globe. The very reason that the agricultural and food sector is recognized as the essential business also make it comparatively vulnerable to the strike of the pandemic that requires limited movement regulation and stringent social distancing measure to contain the spread of virus. This paper attempts to provide a bird’s-eye view of the trends and evolution in the agriculture and food market as well as the impacted stakeholders along the supply chain under the pandemic in the United States and the European Union. Focus industries include dairy, meat, fruits, vegetables, and wine. We present various policy responses and implementations across these two continents on the same page in this article, parallel with the fluctuations in the marketplace, which aim to help correct or adjust both the short-run and structural issues facing producers, distributors, retailers, and consumers. Retrieved from publicly available datasets, trends of price and imports for fruit and vegetable markets in United States are summarized while wine price patterns are sorted for selected EU member countries. We find that most policies or programs are not crop-specific but rather focus on certain industry, use holistic approach to enhance whole-farm wellbeing, and add flexibility to existing programs to ease the economic pressure facing producers and food businesses. We expect to bring in further discussions and reflections on the market dynamics and shed light on both developed and under-developed effective strategies used to revive and sustain the agri-food sector.
Keyword: COVID-19, agricultural production, supply chain, meat, produce, wine, policy response