Muhammad Shahbaz, Mansoor Ahmed Koondhar
The COVID-19 (a.k.a. coronavirus) has influenced the global economy and all primary, and secondary industries. The secondary industries which include the commercial and non-agricultural industries can possibly compensate for the losses by working overtime once the situation improves, but the primary or agricultural industry is of higher risk and is rather more severely affected by COVID-19. A significantly negative impact on agriculture damages the entire global food system. It affects both supply and demand for agricultural products, which will be materialized differently in the short and long-run. COVID-19 has disturbed the supply chains of agricultural products, from farm production to processing, whole seller to the retailer, from national to international markets. This pandemic not only influenced the demand and supply but also influenced the supply of farm inputs such as labour and capital. Apart from direct influence, there are also some microeconomic factors which indirectly affect the demand and supply chains of food and other agricultural products, such as fluctuation in exchange rates, oil prices, credit constraints and increasing rate of unemployment weighs on agricultural growth and national economic growth.
Pakistan is an agricultural country with more than 40% of arable land and produces enough food to meet the food demand of its about 220 million population. Pakistan’s agriculture accounts for 22.85% in value-added to national GDP and almost 70% of the population is directly or indirectly involved in the agricultural industry. The sudden outbreak of COVID-19 has not only brought unprecedented challenges to the agricultural industry of Pakistan. The containment policies of keeping social distance, strict control of public and private transports have been adopted by the government to prevent or at least slow the spread of COVID-19. Though reasonable these policies have led to an increase in food demand and prices of agricultural products in urban areas and a decrease in rural areas due to short supply. March and April is the peak time for harvesting some of the core grain crops, fruits, and vegetables but due to disruptions of supply to markets and lacking storage facilities owing to increasing temperature day by day is summons the heavy loss to farmers which will directly affect the livelihood and rural income and slowing agricultural economic growth. Let’s take the example of tomato, in the mid of 2019, the price of tomato rises to 300-400 rupees per kilogram. Therefore, during the season of Rabi crops farmers cultivate the tomato more than the previous year. It is obvious if the area increases the production will defiantly increase. But at the harvesting time of tomato sudden outbreak of COVID-19 has closed all possible markets and channels’ such as restaurants and transport which decrease the supply of tomato and the price of tomato fallen to 5 Rupees per kg. Finally, farmers let animals graze the tomato field and eat them out in order to get free land from tomato crop and prepare for spring ploughing which is most important for food security in the near future along with farmer’s livelihood. But due to restrictions on traffic farmers are facing problems in getting seed, fertilizer, pesticide, and farm labour.
In addition to the planting crops, COVID-19 has caused major problems for livestock and poultry because both have life cycle and need food to survive. Due to the strict controls on transport to supply the feed for livestock animals and chicken has become very difficult for farmers. The supply of chicken has been reduced due to the closing of the restaurant, marriage halls, and canteen e.t.c. Therefore, farmers need to feed them longer than normal life cycle, and some farmers’ renting contracts are arrived on due dates but due to unable to supply products into the market and bear heavy losses. Considering the old growers’ situation new implemented poultry farms and newly hatched baby chicks were released into the baran areas. An almost similar situation is facing livestock milk-producing farms. Due to lockdown and strictly forbidden to open the restaurants, ice cream shops, caterings etc. supply of milk has stopped for those farmers who sell the milk in the open market, and that farmers bring the competition situation for those sellers who sell the milk in communities, housing societies because they have fixed the milk price with consumers. As the open market’s milk price fallen from RS 3700 per 40 litres to Rs 200 per 40 litres, they have started to sell milk in communities and housing society’s relatively much lower price than fixed price growers. Thus, the consumers start to play the price preference game with the fixed price milk seller, and the consumer offers the two choice preferences to the seller i.e. either reduce the milk price or quite selling milk to them. Finally, fixed price sellers have also reduced the milk price which has made it very challenging to run the livestock farm and sustainably feed the animals.
Considering the migrant and temporary labour which frequently travels for short-term stays, particularly during the plantation and harvesting seasons, the outbreak of COVID-19 and effort to contain the spread has ceased the mobility of temporary labour. This is started to bring a direct and significantly negative influence on labour income and an increase in unemployment and poverty in rural areas. Take an example of Mango season, each year Mango picking starts in late April and during the mango picking season labour travel from northern to the southeast part of Pakistan, to engage in picking, loading, and boarding of Mango. But this year smooth Mango harvesting yet not started due to lake of technical labour resulting from restrictions on public transport. There are concerns that this year Mango may not be exported due to slump in the global economy and trade. This may then distort the demand and pricing in international markets and will also hamper domestic market affecting both mango growers and temporary labour income.
The government of Pakistan needs to implement the policies supporting value chains to meet food demand and ensure supply of sustainable agricultural products while keeping social distance. For the small and large-scale farmers, the government needs to subsidies and provide basic inputs to sustain the Kharif ploughing otherwise it will cause a food crisis at the end of 2020. Besides, the Government Pakistan needs to help the small to large scale farmers by reducing the interest rate of Microfinance Banks’ and reschedule the loans for at least a year. To keep the sustainable spring ploughing, supply of seed, fertilizer, pesticide and capital are necessary. Therefore, the green value chain is needed otherwise delay in ploughing will cause food insecurity, for the technical assistance, online services are also needed.
For food products i.e. vegetables, fruits, and milk emergency storage facilities and green supply chain are needed to meet the food demand and keep the prices stable owing to farmers’ income. In case of migrant labour, large scale farmers need to manage the private transport to bring the labour from northern areas to southeast and smoothly start Mangos picking. Small scale farmers’ collectively manage transport and facilitate labour travel from one place to another. Sustainable agricultural production may possible to increase employment leading to an increase in labour income making an impactful contribution to national economic growth.
