Covid-19 triggers largest disruption of livelihoods in human history

The Covid-19 pandemic in South Asia has triggered the largest disruption of livelihoods in human history, affecting over 1.7 billion people. The disruptions to supply chains, lack of access to health and nutrition services, and overwhelmed social protection system is leading to increased food and nutrition insecurity in the region. To address many of the long-standing issues underpining food insecurity and poverty the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) officially released the 2020 Global Food Policy Report (GFPR) today.
The IFPRI 2020 Global Food Policy Report (GFPR) highlights the central role that inclusive food systems play in meeting global goals to end poverty, hunger, and malnutrition, and offers recommendations for making food systems more inclusive for four marginalised groups including smallholders, women, youth, and conflict-affected people. The report also provides analysis on transforming national food system in several countries like Bangladesh and Ethiopia, and advice on development of food system in different regions worldwide.
 “Over the past two decades, Nepal has gone through atypical structural transformation, marked by desertion of agriculture and epic out-migration of young people,” chair of IIDS and former vice-chair of NPC Swarnim Wagle said, adding that after Covid-19, reliance on remittances will fall, and there is urgency to find gainful jobs for millions. “Renewed agriculture can become a source of inclusive growth if we incentivise high-value-to-weight products and food processing, streamline the subsidy regime through targeted digital transfers, and invest heavily to combat deficits in hard infrastructure as well as the softer menace of childhood malnutrition.”
“These efforts need to be undergirded by enhanced capacities across all tiers of Nepal’s newly federated governance structure,” he added.
“Food systems provide opportunities to improve food and nutrition security, generate income, and drive inclusive economic growth, but even in prosperous times too many people are excluded from fully participating in them and securing these benefits,” said director general of IFPRI Johan Swinnen. “In times of crisis like today, inclusion is an even greater imperative for protecting the most vulnerable.”
“Covid-19 has struck the world at a time when experts were already deliberating on the need for a paradigm shift in the agri-food sector that could address the broader challenges of sustaining the humanity,” member NITI Aayog of India Ramesh Chand said, adding that Covid-19 is expected to lead to a significant shift in dietary preferences, adding new dimensions to the food system thinking.
South Asia’s steady progress has reshaped the region’s diverse food systems over the past decade. This regional transformation has been marked by strong economic growth, rising real wages, and the expansion of nonagricultural sectors. In recent years in South Asia the growth rate of high-value foods has been greater than that of cereals. The increase in income and greater diet diversity has also led to growth of the food processing sector. Yet post-harvest losses continue to be high in South and Southeast Asia compared to other regions.
“South Asian economies are transforming. Real wages are rising, shares of agriculture in GDP are declining, and nonfarm employment in much of the region has surpassed that of farm employment,” director of South Asia, IFPRI Shahidur Rashidsaid, adding that these structural changes will bring about changes in food system with new challenges, the challenges of ensuring that food system transformation is efficient, inclusive, and sustainable.
The report recommends three key policy levers which will be critical in making the food system transformation inclusive and sustainable: (1) reforming agricultural input subsidies and price supports; (2) improving the targeting of social protection programs; and (3) building effective institutions for governing the emerging food system. Reforming some of the age-old programs on agricultural subsidy and price policies could free up public funds, to invest in fostering more inclusive, equitable, and gender- and nutrition-sensitive food systems.
In South Asia, social safety net programmes can be effective platforms for making food systems inclusive. “IFPRI-WFP’s Transfer Modality Research Initiative in Bangladesh found that providing young mothers cash transfers combined with nutrition behaviour change communication reduced child stunting by three-times the national average decline,” senior research fellow and country representative of IFPRI-Bangladesh Akhter Ahmed said, adding that this is substantial evidence on the potential of social transfers to enhance nutrition.
Establishing effective institutions for food system governance is another strong policy lever for inclusive food systems. “Food system governance have significant potential for promoting an inclusive food system but the political will is required to provide adequate funding and to respond to bottom-up pressure from consumer rights groups and civil society organisation,” programme leader at the Pakistan Strategy Support Programme of IFPRI Abdul Wajid Rana said.
“Indian agriculture has shown great resilience during the Covid-19 pandemic,” secretary at the DARE and director general at ICAR Trilochan Mohapatra said, adding that it has, however, also highlighted the needs for policy thinking beyond staple food to ensure nutritional balance and environmental sustainability. “The current pandemic will accelerate the process of nutrition-sensitive, inclusive and sustainable agricultural growth.”
The report also features chapters analysing developments in agri-food systems in Africa south of the Sahara, the Middle East and North Africa, Central Asia, and Latin America and the Caribbean.
A virtual event was co-organised by IFPRI South Asia, Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) and Trust for Advancement of Agricultural Sciences (TAAS) yesterday, to present the highlights of the report in the South Asian context. The policy makers and thought leaders shared their perspectives in light of the Covid-19’s impacts on our food systems.
The Covid crisis has accelerated the importance to reshape our food systems making them more inclusive, sustainable, and resilient. The disruptions to supply chains, lack of access to health and nutrition services, and overwhelmed social protection system have led to increased food and nutrition insecurity in the region. Consequently, the awareness and need to work towards inclusive food systems have been amplified for all countries in the region.

Locusts may remain in Nepal for over a month, to hit food security

Experts have projected that the outbreak of locusts in Nepal may last for more than a month, and it may hit food security.
The entry of locust swarms into the country after fall armyworm and the Covid-19 pandemic is going to pose food security in Nepal. Food insecurity has also been compounded by coronavirus containment measures like lockdown, which has disrupted production and supply chains.
“A swarm of adult and premature locusts entered Nepal from Bara district via India yesterday,” former director general of the Department of Agriculture Dr Dilliram Sharma said, adding that it may remain in Nepal for around a month. “A premature locust can survive for a month while a mature one can survive around two weeks.”
“If a matured locust cannot lay eggs, it won’t survive for more than two weeks and it has to fly back to Rajasthan in order to lay eggs,” he added.
Likewise, locust, which usually migrates in large numbers – some 80 to 100 million – and destroys crops voraciously, however has entered Nepal in a swarm of few hundred thousands only. “So it could be controlled using insecticides.”
But the locusts, which had entered Nepal from southern plains are now traveling toward the western hilly regions as well. The swarms of locusts were also sighted in various other districts like Rupandehi, Palpa, Bara, Sarlahi, Parsa, Dang and Kathmandu.
According to the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) of the United Nations (UN), the desert locust (Schistocerca gregaria) is considered the most dangerous of all migratory pest species in the world. It threatens people’s livelihoods, food security, the environment and economic development. They can reproduce rapidly, migrate long distances, devastate crops and pastures and can easily affect more than 65 of the world’s poorest countries. Nepal might be in for a massive food insecurity, if locusts start ravaging crops amid this Covid-19 pandemic.
The FAO report reads that the desert locust has the ability to change its behaviour and appearance, under particular environmental conditions – unusually heavy rains – and transform itself from a harmless individual to part of a collective mass of insects that form a swarm, which can cross continents and seas, and quickly destroy a farmer’s field and his entire livelihood in a single morning.
Before entering Nepal, the locust must have been sighted in India and Nepali experts failed to monitor their movement, and the government also had claimed that the locust will not enter Nepal. But the government estimation came wrong, as it had happened in the case of coronavirus.
After reports of millions of hectares of land under attack by billions of locusts in Africa, China, Pakistan, and India, the government had formed a five-member task force in late May to study the possibility of their arrival in Nepal. However, a preliminary study by the task force had said that locusts are unlikely to invade Nepal.
Experts also said that the movement of the swarms will depend on the direction of the wind. The wind has been blowing west to the north for the last two days.
According to the FAO, an adult desert locust can consume roughly its own weight in fresh food per day that is about two grams every day. “A one square-kilometer size swarm contains about 40 million locusts, which eat the same amount of food in one day as about 35,000 people, 20 camels or 6 elephants,” the FAO report reads.
After sudden attacks from locusts reported in different districts yesterday, the Agriculture Ministry called an emergency meeting, inviting government officials and experts from all seven provinces, and asked them to be on high alert. “Nepal had experienced its first locust attack in 1962,” according to the ministry. “However, the worst locust attack was observed in 1996 when swarm incursions destroyed 80 per cent of crops in Chitwan and partially damaged crops in Makwanpur, Mahottari and Bara districts.”

Inclusive food systems needed to boost development, resilience

The rapid spread of Covid-19 and efforts to contain it are generating growing concerns that food insecurity, malnutrition, and poverty may escalate, particularly among marginalised people in the developing world. “To build more resilient, climate-smart, and healthy food systems that help people withstand these types of shocks policymakers must prioritise making them inclusive,” according to the 2020 Global Food Policy Report, released today by the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI).
“Food systems provide opportunities to improve food and nutrition security, generate income, and drive inclusive economic growth, but even in prosperous times too many people are excluded from fully participating in them and securing these benefits,” said director general of IFPRI Johan Swinnen. “In times of crisis like today, inclusion is an even greater imperative for protecting the most vulnerable.”
The report highlights the central role that inclusive food systems play in meeting global goals to end poverty, hunger, and malnutrition, and offers recommendations for making food systems more inclusive for four marginalised groups – smallholders, women, youth, and conflict-affected people – as well as analysis on transforming national food system.
More than 60 per cent of people in low income countries are employed in agriculture and smallholders comprise more than 70 per cent of farm units in Africa south of the Sahara and 85 per cent of farms in South Asia. “The rapid expansion of food markets across Africa and Asia offers tremendous potential for many of these smallholders to benefit, if they can increase farm production or engage themselves in food distribution, processing and other parts of the supply chain where ample well-paying employment opportunities will emerge,” it reads, adding that many smallholders lack the means and kind of support to gain from growing food demand, currently. “Initiating and sustaining a process of inclusive transformation requires supporting smallholders’ market access by investing in basic infrastructure, creating market incentives, and promoting inclusive agribusiness models.”
“But it is as important to invest in the ‘hidden middle’ of supply chains where millions of small- and medium-scale enterprises already operate in food processing, storage, logistics and distribution,” director of IFPRI’s Markets, Trade and Institutions Division Rob Vos said, “Getting this right will be essential to lift smallholders from poverty and food insecurity.”
Women are already making significant contributions throughout food systems, but these contributions are often not formally recognised, and women often face constraints that prevent them from engaging on equitable terms. Increasing women’s decision-making power and control over resources and assets such as credit, land, and training helps empower them to contribute to food systems in ways that benefit both men and women. “Women’s empowerment can spur a wide range of improvements that often reverberate throughout households and societies – from agricultural productivity, to household food security and dietary quality, to maternal and child nutrition,” said senior research coordinator at IFPRI Hazel Malapit.
Across the developing world national food systems are already transforming rapidly, creating challenges and opportunities to make them more inclusive to all these groups. Case studies of these transformations in Bangladesh, Ethiopia, Nigeria, and Viet Nam provide useful examples of the drivers and components of change, as well as the promising entry points for actions that can increase inclusion. “Approaches to food system transformation must be country specific, as each country’s food system is unique,” said director of the CGIAR Research Programme on Agriculture for Nutrition and Health John McDermott.
Governments can foster these inclusive food systems by enacting laws, policies, and regulations that provide basic infrastructure, create the right market incentives, promote inclusive agribusiness models and leverage the potential of digital technology. Additionally, investments in human capital in areas such as secure land tenure rights, improved access to information, and stronger social protections can lower the barriers to participation that man marginalised groups face.
“The spread of Covid-19 has highlighted how vulnerable we all can be to global shocks,” Swinnen said, adding that greater inclusivity in food systems is not a panacea for this or any other crisis, but it is a critical part of strengthening our resilience. “Times of crises also offer opportunities for change and it is essential that we act now so that everyone, especially the most vulnerable, can recover from the Covid-19 shock and be prepared to withstand future shocks.”
The report also features chapters analysing developments in agri-food systems in Africa south of the Sahara, the Middle East and North Africa, Central Asia, South Asia, East and Southeast Asia, and Latin America and the Caribbean.

Strengthen, implement right to food law: AI

Nepal must strengthen and implement its new law on right to food, if it is to meet its commitments to rid the country of hunger, malnutrition and food insecurity, according to a report published by the Amnesty International (AI) today.
The report, which is made public today, presents a detailed analysis of the Right to Food and Food Sovereignty Act, enacted last September in order to implement the rights relating to food guaranteed under the Constitution. According to Article 36 of the Constitution, every citizen has the right to be safe from the state of being in danger of life from the scarcity of food, and every citizen has the right to food sovereignty in accordance with law.
Hunger was one of the root causes of Nepal’s decade-long internal conflict, and it persists across the country. Nearly half of all the households in Nepal face food insecurity, and a tenth are ‘severely food insecure’. More than a half of all children under five years of age are anaemic, while more than a third of them have stunted growth.
In an important step towards realising its goal of ‘zero hunger’ by 2025, the Nepal government enforced Right to Food and Food Sovereignty Act in September.
However, as per AI’s briefing, Right to Food and Food Sovereignty Act requires amendment to make it effective. Besides, rules and regulations necessary to implement the provisions of the law need to be formulated.
“If the government of Nepal wants to ensure that no one goes hungry in the country, it must strengthen the law. The mechanisms, such as the rules and regulations, need to be crafted in a way that makes the right to food a reality for all,” said AI South Asia director Biraj Patnaik.
The law needs to be amended to clearly define terms and avoid unnecessary confusion and misinterpretation, which could weaken its effectiveness. As the law stands, it remains unclear what constitutes ‘hunger’ and ‘starvation’.
The report presents recommendations under 16 different topics, covering a range of issues such as increasing scope of legal protection to ensure that the right to food is extended to non-citizens; amending the Act to require an inquiry into any deaths resulting from starvation; and guaranteeing accountability against breach of duty to prevent starvation.
Nepal must also take meaningful steps to prohibit public authorities from interfering with people’s efforts to feed themselves. The law, in its current form, provides little protection to the people as stated in the AI briefing.
It also recommends that the law be specific on how the government will address the threat of starvation. There must be inquiries into any deaths resulting from starvation. It calls for marginalised communities, such as Dalits and land-dependent indigenous peoples, including Tharus, to be granted access to cultivable land.
The briefing recommends that specialised food councils be established throughout the country at national, provincial and local levels to monitor the implementation of the act.
“The authorities have an obligation to prevent malnutrition in all its forms," Patnaik said, adding, "Without addressing these weaknesses of the Right to Food and Food Sovereignty Act and consulting the appropriate stakeholders, Nepal will not be able to rid an estimated two million people of malnutrition in the country." He also stressed on the urgency to implement the act.
Right to Food was first recognised as an international human right in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948. In 1966, the International Covenant on Socio, Political and Economic Rights endorsed Right to Adequate Food. Since then, several other international conventions have endorsed this as a fundamental right. 
Nepal currently ranks 72nd out of 119 countries in the Global Hunger Index (GHI) which scores countries based on an assessment of the progress and setbacks they have incurred in combating hunger. Over 50 per cent of Nepal's households is food insecure, according to 2016 National Demographic and Health Survey.

Climate change to hit development gains

Unabated climate change would bring devastating consequences to countries in Asia and the Pacific, which could severely affect their future growth, reverse current development gains, and degrade quality of life, according to a report produced by the Asian Development Bank (ADB) and the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK).
Likewise, climate change will also make food production in region more difficult and production costs higher, according to the report. In some countries of Southeast Asia, rice yields could fall by up to 50 per cent by 2100 if no adaptation efforts are made.
Food shortages could increase number of malnourished children in South Asia by seven million, as import costs will likely increase in sub-region to $15 billion per year compared to $2 billion by 2050.
Under a business-as-usual scenario, a six-degree Celsius increase in temperature is projected over the Asian land mass by the end of the century. Some countries in the region could experience significantly hotter climates, with temperature increases in Tajikistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and the northwest part of China projected to reach eight degree Celsius, according to the report, ‘A Region at Risk: The Human Dimensions of Climate Change in Asia and the Pacific’, which was unveiled today.
"These increases in temperature would lead to drastic changes in the region’s weather system, agriculture and fisheries sectors, land and marine biodiversity, domestic and regional security, trade, urban development, migration, and health,” the report reads, adding that such a scenario may even pose an existential threat to some nations in the region and crush any hope of achieving sustainable and inclusive development.
More intense typhoons and tropical cyclones are expected to hit Asia and the Pacific with rising global mean temperatures. Under a business-as-usual scenario annual precipitation is expected to rise by up to 50 per cent over most land areas in region, although countries like Pakistan and Afghanistan may experience a decline in rainfall by 20 per cent to 50 per cent.
Coastal and low-lying areas in the region will be at an increased risk of flooding. Indonesia will be the most affected country in the region by coastal flooding with approximately 5.9 million people expected to be affected every year until 2100.
Increased vulnerability to flooding and other disasters will significantly impact the region – and the world – economically. Global flood losses are expected to increase to $52 billion per year by 2050 from $6 billion in 2005.
Marine ecosystems, particularly in the Western Pacific, will be in serious danger by 2100, while climate change also poses a significant risk to health in Asia and the Pacific. Already, 3.3 million people die every year due to the harmful effects of outdoor air pollution, with China, India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh being the top four countries experiencing such deaths.
A business-as-usual approach to climate change could also disrupt functioning ecosystem services, prompting mass migration – mostly to urban areas – that could make cities more crowded and overwhelm available social services, the report has warned. Moreover, a warmer climate for the region could endanger energy supply.
Climate change can exacerbate energy insecurity through continued reliance on unsustainable fossil fuels, reduced capacities of thermal power plants due to a scarcity of cooling water, and intermittent performance of hydropower plants as a result of uncertain water discharges, among other factors. Energy insecurity could lead to conflicts as countries compete for limited energy supply.
To mitigate the impact of climate change, report has highlighted importance of implementing the commitments laid out in the Paris Agreement. These include public and private investments focused on the rapid decarbonisation of the Asian economy as well as the implementation of adaptation measures to protect the region’s most vulnerable populations.