Effects of pandemic on food supply chain (global)

Food supply chain includes five stages, which is agricultural production,

postharvest handling, processing, distribution and consumption.
COVID-19 pandemic doesn’t directly affect the production like diseases
such as foot and mouth disease, bird flu etc. as it doesn’t spread directly
through living things or agricultural products. However, due to this
pandemic, substantial restrictions on transportation of goods, including
land, air and sea transportations had been set by governments around
the world, as well as immigration of labour. For example, in France, trucks
for food distribution was dropped to 60% since restriction in France,
which is 30% before pandemic.

Meanwhile in developing and underdeveloped countries, temporary

employment is common for planting, sorting, harvesting, transporting
crops to markets etc. The supply chain is significantly affected due to
absence of local or migrant workers due to risk of sickness or travel
restrictions forced by lockdown. This situation not only weakens the
production abilities, at the same time affect the food safety as the disease
directly affect their health and movement. Labour shortage due to
COVID-19 pandemic caused severe interruption in labour intensive
sectors such as livestock production, planting, harvesting and crop
processing. Although shortage of farmworkers was a major issue before
COVID-19, it could be deduced that COVID-19 pandemic did make it
worse than before.

The labour shortage during production caused declines in agricultural

business. These conditions lower the efficiency of food delivery process
and caused problems in continuously providing food supply to market.
Most manufacturers are susceptible to interruption in food supply as they
are highly dependant on domestic markets. Logistics barriers due to
pandemic had disrupted the food supply chains, and further declines the
value of goods due to their short shelf life.

Agricultural

Most agricultural activities are dependent on season & weather. Hence,

these activities need to follow a detailed tuned schedule with flexibility for
immediate actions could be carried out when needed. Due to strong
connection between each stages in food supply chain, a minor delay will
result in huge loss of yield & output. Many reports showed that farmers
were forced to destroy their products due to restrictions caused by
pandemic. For example, in US, Dairy Farmers had been dumping 14
million litres of milk everyday due to the disrupted supply chain. In UK,
chair of dairy farmers reported that around 5 million litres of milk are at
risk in one week. Meanwhile in India, tea plants were reported been lost
due to logistical challenges. Logistical efficiency is required to be
maintained as it is the key factor for global food industry. The largest
issues in food supply chain are getting raw materials from suppliers and
ensure food flow to end users continuously. Food quality, freshness, and
food safety, all these aspects could be affected as well. Impact of
pandemic on agriculture activities mainly relate to intensity and
composition of agricultural contributions. Impact might vary depending on
type of product and different countries. Hence, a specific attention on
logistic challenges should be kept on food supply chain.

Processing

The disruption of food supply chains affects food processing plants as

well, especially the labour intensive plants. Production had been reduced
or temporary stopped in many plants caused by workers who were tested
COVID-19 positive. Besides, workers were hesitant to work as they
thought they may get the disease at work. Based on a research in US,
there were at least 462 meat packaging, 257 food processing plants and
93 farm & production facilities were affected by pandemic. Closure of food
plants did affect the food supply chain, as producers had been forced to
discard the farm animals. That’s the only solution for them as they can’t
find any plants that buying livestock from them. The decrease in supply
will cause the increment on price of meat products. Greater demand of
consumer resulted in empty shelves, some supermarkets had limited the
number of meat products for a single customer to buy.

Food processing facilities are identified that they are potential sources for
the pandemic. Firstly, it is hard to keep social distance in food plants as
workers literally stand side by side in long period of time at production
lines. Besides, the noisy environments in plant will lead to shouting or
talking loudly for communication purpose. This will cause more release of
droplets to the air. Employees that travel using public transport increase
the chance of spreading and getting the disease. Cool and humid
environment is also the factor causing spread of COVID-19. Centralised
food manufacturing is another factor caused disruption of food chains
during pandemic, due to the its rigid and lengthy supply chain.

As a result, the pandemic affected the contractual transactions in food

supply chains. Moreover, it also affected the supply demand balance.

Strategies for food supply chain

Due to disruption in food supply chain, we need to put more attentions on

food waste generation. Before pandemic, around one-third of food
produced for human was wasted across food supply chain stages. Based
on literature, a study had indicated that COVID-19 resulted in 12% higher
food waste generation on household level. Due to the increase in food
waste generation, more collection and processing centres are required to
recover food wastes generated during production, processing and
consumption.

COVID-19 pandemic resulted in tough conditions for human resource

management. The change in working conditions, adoption of new work
policies and reduction of human contact, all these contribute to difficulty
in human resource management. Company or organizations need to
respond to current situation. For example, before entering the facilities,
all people including workers, visitors, suppliers and contractors should be
checked for any COVID-19 symptoms. Workers should be provided face
protection equipment and gloves as well. Facilities should consider about
reduction of working hours and rotation of employees as well. Break time
should be adjusted as well to prevent overcapacity. Moreover, facilities
should build dividers or barriers to maintain social distance during
working session. Robotic machines can be used to lower the risk related
to COVID-19 infected workers by replacing humans in food processing
operations. Social distance is maintained as number of workers is
reduced.
We mentioned about centralization of food manufacture in the effect of
food supply chain above. Hence, decentralization of food manufacture
could be carried out as well to avoid problems caused by centralization of
food manufacture. Low scale facilities could be built and located near to
consumer. By doing that, storage and transportation costs could be
reduced, and environmental impacts could be minimised. To conclude,
decentralization contributes flexibility in food supply chain.

Industry should consider and determine the possible alternative

transportation routes and reduction in number of workers due to
restrictions. Local labour force should be trained as there is cross border
restriction. Besides, agricultural workers are now important. They should
be ensured working under better conditions and getting higher paid. In
order to ensure continuous food production, agricultural inputs should be
taken as essential products. Collections centres should be planned based
on their distance to manufacturer. In addition, it is compulsory to use the
logistics facilities in the most optimum manner. This helps to ensure food
protection through coordination in supply chain. Either government of
private should invest in storage centres.

Moreover, digital commence could be an aid for the interaction and

trading activities among stages of food supply chain. E-commerce offers
chance to reduce the cost required and increase demand at the same
time. For small scale producers, they were having issues in accessing
market. Hence, e-commerce could be introduced to them for selling their
crops in higher price and reaching more customers without involvement of
intermediaries.

Recommendations for small farmers

Countries should take steps to ensure safety of agricultural workers.

Firstly, agricultural production collection centres should be built at
locations that could be easily reached due to mobility reduction. Besides
high capacity storage, storage structures should be improved as well for
minimisation of food loss.

Food bank also play an important role as it helps to coordinate with

farmer associations that making the contractual agriculture arrangement.
It helps farmers by making new markets. Farmers could sell their unsold
products to food bank and this connects farmer and vulnerable people
during this pandemic. Besides, countries could open access of modern
storage facility to them and allows them to sell their product at higher
price in future by improving their access to financial loan. Countries
should have more attention on developing e-commerce for them.
Communication through internet allows exposure of products to more
consumer and could help farmers to find lower price inputs.

Governments should lift the trade restriction and border barriers to ensure
accessibility of small-scale farmers and produces to market when the
situation is under controlled and enforce rules & regulations to prevent
spread of the COVID-19.

Suggestion for government and business

Government should form a crisis committee to provide possible solutions

for effect of COVID-19 on food supply chain without waiting for execution
of strategies to be carried out too long. The committee is formed to
observe current conditions and recommend actions to be taken for
reduction of effects on agricultural production and food supply. In Turkey,
Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry had formed the COVID-19
Commission.

Governments should announce response plans to lay a hand on

agricultural industry after the pandemic had been controlled or stabilized.
In Turkey, Ministry of Agricultural and Forestry announced precautions
and funding aid for farmers and manufacturing facilities. Meanwhile in
Canada, Agriculture Response Program was announced that 50 to 75
percent funding aid which do not have to be paid back with rules and
regulations applied. In USA, Department of Agriculture dedicated
programs and flexibilities to help agricultural producers that are affected
by pandemic.

Governments should support food production by establishing emergency

provisioning strategies. However, shortage of labour force is still an issue
for carrying out agricultural activities. Government should come out with
policies state that agricultural workers are critical person and exempt
them from travel limitations, but at the same time ensure that they are
following all SOP set. US government did that by highlighting importance
of agricultural workers as consider them critical infrastructure worker.

Logistic operations are essential in maintaining continuous flow of delivery

of foods. To maintain the logistics operations, more infrastructure
investment are required. With a higher investment, the logistic operations
could have more supervision services, better sanitation systems, and
increase in usage of digital documentation and operations. Besides,
government should set standard & strict hygienic control in distribution
sectors for preventing transmission of virus. Health and safety of logistics
workers should be taken care as well.

Government should predict the yield from production and determine the
national food stocks required to prevent shortage or excess condition that
may occur due to banned import or limited export. A better management
of food stocks in different regions should be considered. Non-food usage
of farm products should be lowered down. Different type of models such
as local models, regional models and crop yield information modes should
be selected to understand the impact of the pandemic and government
could make decisions based on the models.

Food waste on consumer level

Before COVID-19, there has been large amount of food waste production
happening around the world. In Malaysia, a country that has a well-known
status for a large variety of food wastes roughly 16,688 tonnes of food
daily according to Solid Waste Management and Public Cleansing
Corporation (SWCorp) deputy chief executive officer Mohammad Diah
Wahari (Sharif, 2018).

In a larger scale, it is believed that one third of all food produced in the
world are lost or wasted. And that one third of food equals to about 1.3
billion tonnes of food costing the global economy close to $940 billion
each year (Randy Jagt, 2020). As these numbers rise each year, the year
2020 poses a drastic change in terms of everything including food waste.
To understand one of the main causes of food wastage, we dive into the
consumer level food waste as it is one of major factors for it.
Furthermore, we will be focusing on its magnitude of disturbance in the
food chain supply system due to Covid-19. Understanding how a change
in consumer behaviour could ultimately disrupt the amount of food
wasted. There are two different aspects on consumer level food waste,
direct and indirect food wastage.

Consumer level direct food waste

During the pandemic, the behaviour of consumers towards food has mix
reaction. From one research paper, it is observed that the COVID-19
lockdown improved food shopping performance while at the same time
have a positive behavioural change regarding food wastage (Jribi et al.,
2020).

From a survey done by the research team, the data collected states that
out of 284 people who did the survey, around 85% of the respondents
declared that no food was wasted during that period of time as they have
come up with different strategies of saving, storing and eating leftovers
due to loss of financial grip (Jribi et al., 2020). While on the other hand,
some consumers overbought their food supply for stockpiling after
hearing news regarding a lockdown (Roe, Bender and Qi, 2020). The main
reason is because going out often for food supplies will increase the
likelihood of getting infected by the coronavirus hence resulting in
overbuying in one go.

While some household reportedly have excessive amount of food stored in

their pantry, many other household struggles to maintain food security
due to overbuying from the other half of the consumers since the offset of
Covid-19. This poses a great deal of problems as general stores and
supermarkets shelves were wiped clean, food wastage was happening in
an exponentially manner due to overbuying and some household did not
have enough food supplies because of the same reason too.

Other than overbuying food supplies, a few other root causes of food
wastage are inappropriate storage and overcooking. However, the issue of
consumers overbuying food was then eliminated after realizing the
negative contribution towards food wastage in the first few months of the
lockdown. When there was another spike in different countries at the
beginning of summers, consumers were relatively more experienced in
post-Covid food sourcing when compared to March where the pandemic
has just started to arise, food wastage were greatly reduced (Roe, Bender
and Qi, 2020).

Consumer level indirect food waste

However, the global food waste issue during the pandemic does not just
surge at the consumer level, it chains react to a lot of retailers too. Due to
the presence of Covid-19, most of the affected countries had decided to
have regulations regarding consumers eating habits in a restaurant.
Restaurant needs to rearrange their furniture at a layout where each
customer obeys the ‘social distancing rule’ which is defined as at least a 1
meter distance apart from everyone to lower the risk of spreading the
diseases.

The implementation of this rule has lowered the seating capacities of

customer in restaurant hence food in stockpiled were wasted as the
number of customers has decrease greatly. Other than that, many people
choose to make a meal from scratch in homes rather than risking their
health and ordering food in a busy restaurant. This matter further
contributes to the food waste issue in retail restaurants.

While in other parts of the world, food retailers were forced not to open at
all for months due to their government lockdown policy in early 2020. By
the time those retailers reopen, food has already gone bad and were
thrown away into bins. Furthermore, many workers were forced to stay at
their homes. Even if the policy of shops closing has been lifted, retailers
would not be able to open due to low number of employees. This further
drives up the amount of food wasted among food retailers.

Other part of the hospitality sectors such as hotels, theme parks, bars
were also forced to close due to extremely low number of customers.
From the consumer standpoint, they are not likely to eat in retailers
during covid. This greatly affect the F&B retailers financially and also
causes large amount of food wasted. And from the retailers, they will
start to cancel bulk orders from suppliers hence creating another level of
food wastage (Bajzelj, 2020). Hence it is clear that a change in
consumers eating behaviour can have a chain effect on other level of food
waste too.

While many cancellations have been done between huge food suppliers
and many hospitality sector, suppliers had no choice but to let large
amount of food go to waste. In Idaho, a farmer dug ditches to bury over
450 tons of onions (David Yaffe-Bellany, 2020) and America largest dairy
cooperative, Dairy Farmers of America estimates that farmers are
dumping around 14 million liters of milk each day (David Yaffe-Bellany,
2020).

Transporting and sending these milk or food to areas of needs will only
put further financial strain on farms that has already been experiencing
half of their pay checks disappearing due to customers cancelling orders.
However, farmers are learning the people of America of their eating habits
and consumption rate, to reduce the amount of food that needs to be
discarded in the future.

Another type of supply chain shock and leading to huge amount of food
waste due to the presence of Covid-19 has nothing to do with consumers,
labor shortages. In India, migrant workers forced to stay in their home
villages and can’t go to the fields to work, resulting fresh fruits

While the pandemic does not seem to have an end now, consumers will
continue following the regulations given out by government and stay at
home. Hospitality sectors will have less customers, ended up canceling
orders from food suppliers and forcing these suppliers to dump away a
staggering amount of food, creating further food waste.

After half a year into the pandemic, most hospitality industries remain
close or partially open while other small businesses could not survive the
financial impact that this global catastrophe had brought upon them.
However, this pandemic has instilled a newfound appreciation towards
food supply chains among many people (Bajzelj, 2020).
Management and Reduction of food waste

The management and reduction of food waste and food loss is especially
important during the Covid-19 pandemic, as it has highlighted the
vulnerabilities in the production and distribution of food across the globe.
Fleetwood (2020) stated that the pandemic had caused a loss of crops in
the United States that was worth billions, due to a reduction in demand
from the hospitality industry, schools and businesses. Furthermore, up to
seven hundred thousand pigs were killed weekly in the United States due
to outbreaks of virus in the meat processing facilities. In addition, the
effect of lockdowns and travel restrictions along with the fear of virus
transmission lead to a lack of labour for the food industry. These are
compounded with the effect of reduced demand, causing crops to be
uneconomical to sell and being wasted (Latif and Niazi, 2020). These
issues are a result of various weaknesses and disruptions in the food
supply chain. Aldaco et al. (2020) found that more food waste was
generated in households, with a 12% increase compared to before the
Covid-19 outbreak. A study conducted by Jribi et al. (2020) reported that
there was in improvement in the awareness of food waste at the
household level. The study found that as the availability of food and
restriction of movement, along with potential reduction in income had
caused people to be more conscious with their food purchasing. However,
there was still significant food wastage, with the main reasons for
wastage being due to overcooking, buying too much food and
inappropriate storage of food.

In order for food waste to be reduced, various changes to the food supply
chain are required. Sharma et al. (2020) proposed solutions to reduce the
amount of food wasted throughout the food supply chain. The initial step
in the supply chain is obtaining raw materials to plant crops, with the
delivery of these materials such as seeds and fertilizer approved by the
local government, in order to allow transport of these materials to
proceed without being impeded. Furthermore, warehouses can be made
available by the government and private agencies in order to store
produce before distribution. The availability of transport services must
also be maintained, with facilities and protective equipment available to
workers involved in the distribution of food, such as drivers, warehouse
workers and farm workers. Restaurants can also be encouraged to sell
raw food to customers, as restaurants have the resources to purchase and
store food in bulk. Keyworker status for food processing should also be
implemented, with care and education provided to their children and
families, to ensure they are able to continue provide these essential
services.

Aldaco et al. (2020) stated that in addition to ensuring the resilience of

the food supply chain, the use of digital technology is also essential to
allow food suppliers to adapt to shifts in demand, such as the large
increase in online food purchasing during this pandemic. Government
support for small producers should also be implemented, such as the
provision of designated areas for the sale of locally sourced produce, with
appropriate safety procedures in place. This reduces the complexity of the
supply chain between the farm and the consumer, preventing disruption
and reducing food waste as a result. This is in contrast to the supply chain
for large retailers, which can be disrupted by lockdowns and an increase
in Covid-19 cases in other states or countries, causing large amounts of
food waste. These programs can also prevent the closure of small scale
farms, which leads to large amount of food waste, along with a loss of
income for farmers.

Approximately 54% of the world population is located in urban areas, with

the majority of their food supplied from farms located large distances
away from cities. As a result, disruptions in this supply chain caused by
Covid-19 have caused widespread food wastage and reduced food
security. In order to provide nutritious food at affordable prices and
reduce food waste, Lal (2020) suggested using urban agriculture to
supplement traditional farming. These include ground level and rooftop
farms, indoor food production, and urban livestock cultivation. The use of
urban agriculture addresses various issues faced by urban populations
due to the Covid-19 pandemic. The use of urban agriculture allows food to
be produced and harvested within short distances from the consumer.
This results in a reduction in the time required for produce to reach
consumers, lowering the risk of food spoilage and the amount of food
wasted at each stage of the food supply chain. Urban agriculture also
allows disruptions in the food supply chain to be mitigated, as
dependency on transport and retailers is reduced. Furthermore, the
implementation of urban agriculture has been found to increase access to
fresh vegetables for urban households (Algert et al., 2016).

The majority of food waste is disposed of in landfills, which leads to

increased emissions of greenhouse gases and incurs costs. In order to
manage the food waste created by the pandemic, the use of food waste
as a resource can be implemented. This ensures that waste produced due
to household food wastage or waste produced during food processing and
supply can be converted into products, reducing the environmental impact
of this waste. This is known as food valorization, examples of which were
studied by Lin et al. (2013).

Table 1: Examples of food valorization (Lin et al., 2013)

Source of food waste Product

Citrus peel Pectin

Dietary fiber

Bioethanol

Cashew nut shell Cashew nut shell liquid

Oils and fats Biodiesel

Glycerin

Lubricants

Paints and varnishes

An example of food valorization that was studied is the conversion of

waste citrus peel into various products. These include pectin, dietary fiber
and bioethanol. The valorization of citrus peel waste is significant as 50
wt% of the fruit is wasted after processing. As an estimated 15.6 million
tons of citrus peel is wasted per year, the use of citrus peel waste as a
resource would reduce the environmental impact of this waste
significantly. The extraction of cashew nut shell liquid from cashew nut
shells is also promising, as CNSL has applications in industries
manufacturing resins, polymers, and surfactants. There has also been
development into the use of used cooking oil to produce biodiesel. Used
cooking oil can be obtained from restaurants and food processing
facilities, along with households. This can then be refined to produce
biodiesel and sold to consumers. Various other products can also be
derived from used cooking oil and fats, such as glycerin, lubricants, paints
and varnishes. Furthermore, food waste can be used to produce biogas
through anaerobic digestion. The use of food waste as a resource can be
further developed through the development of biorefineries, which can
collect food waste from local municipalities and convert this waste into
products such as used oil, ethanol, and methane (Salimi et al., 2020).
These products can then be sold or used to produce electricity, allowing
profit to be made and preventing large amounts of food waste damaging
the environment. As a result, the segregation of domestic waste into food
waste and non-food waste is required, along with incentives or legislation
to ensure that households separate their waste correctly.

The reduction of food waste is the most effective way of reducing the
impact of food waste on the environment, along with the economy. This is
as energy and money is spent on the harvesting, processing and transport
of food, along with the disposal of food waste. As a result, the reduction
of waste that occurs during the supply of food is essential. This can be
done through the strengthening of the food supply chain, localization of
food production, along with urban agriculture. The management of food
waste is also an important part of minimizing the impact of food waste, as
the cost and environmental impact of food waste can be significantly
impacted by the method of disposal. The use of food valorization can be
implemented in order to reduce the impact of traditional methods of
disposal such as landfilling, by reducing emission of harmful gases and
allowing waste to generate profit.
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