COVID-19 impacts on food systems, poverty, and diets: Lessons learned from country-level analyses

In COVID-19 and global food security: Two years later, eds. John McDermott and Johan Swinnen. Part One: Food Security & Poverty, Chapter 2, Pp. 22-29 ; With the outbreak of COVID-19, governments attempted to contain the spread of the virus by limiting the movement and interaction of people through a variety of measures, including restrictions on domestic and international travel, social distancing, and “lockdowns” that temporarily shut down non-essential businesses (IFPRI 2020). While governments had control over these domestic measures, they could do little to shield economies from disruptions to global trade or declines in foreign investment and tourism. Amid uncertainty about how the pandemic would unfold, IFPRI worked with local partners during 2020 to develop economywide models to analyze the impacts of COVID-19 measures on economic growth, food systems, and livelihoods in approximately 30 countries (Pauw, Smart, and Thurlow 2021). Initially, social accounting matrix (SAM) multiplier models were used to trace quarterly and annual shocks during the 2020 calendar year. The real-time analysis provided by these results could potentially be used by policymakers to inform the design of COVID-19 restrictions (for example, in terms of sector targeting or duration) and remedial measures (such as targeted cash transfers or firm subsidies).