Economic thoughts on COVID-19 for Canadian food processors

In this paper, I explore the potential effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on Canadian food processors. First, COVID-19 may have an impact on food processing economic activities because of supply and demand shocks. Second, the impact of COVID-19 on food processing may depend on the type of products and the size of the processors. The effects of measures taken by the government to flatten the epidemiological curve on the economic activities of the food processing sector are uncertain.     

E-commerce and supply chain resilience during COVID-19: Evidence from agricultural input e-stores in China

COVID-19 has caused major disruptions to agricultural supply chains around the world. Researchers and policy-makers are interested in identifying means to reduce the disruptive effects caused by the pandemic. We investigate the impacts of COVID-19 on the operation of e-commerce stores (in short, e-stores) specialising in agricultural inputs. The difference-in-differences method (DID) is employed to estimate the causal relationship between COVID-19 and online sales of agricultural inputs using data from 54,244 agricultural input e-stores registered in 118 prefecture-level cities across 15 provinces and hosted on two major Chinese e-commerce platforms. The results show that COVID-19 led to a substantial growth in monthly sales of agricultural input e-stores, and this growth of online sales varied across store scales and by types of agricultural inputs. In particular, e-stores selling seeds and seedlings experienced a larger growth in sales than stores selling agricultural machinery and implements, and the mid- and larger-scaled e-stores experienced more growth of sales than micro- and small-scaled e-stores. Further analysis reveals that the growth of online sales of agricultural inputs was driven mainly by an increase in the quantity of customer orders (QCO). The findings of this paper underscore the importance of e-commerce in ensuring the resilience of the agricultural supply chain during the pandemic period.     

The COVID-19 pandemic and agriculture: Short- and long-run implications for international trade relations

The COVID-19 pandemic has put unprecedented strain on food supply chains. Given the ever-increasing degree of globalization, those supply chains very often stretch across international borders. In the short run, countries have largely been working to keep those supply chains intact and operating efficiently so that panic buying is cooled and shifts in consumption habits arising from personal isolation can be accommodated. Once the crisis has passed, based on what has been learned regarding the international food system's resilience, governments may wish to strengthen institutions that govern international trade. On the other hand, based on their COVID-19 experience, governments may feel that they are too dependent on foreign sources of supply and may wish to reverse the impacts of globalization on their food systems. As a result, they may become increasingly isolationist, eschewing international cooperation. Which of these opposing forces will prevail may depend on the paths economies follow after the disequilibrium precipitated by the pandemic.     

Food security and Canada's agricultural system challenged by COVID-19

The effect of COVID-19 on Canadian food security is examined from two different perspectives. COVID-19 creates a unique “income shock” that is expected to increase the prevalence of household food insecurity. This food insecurity can be measured by utilizing the Canadian Community Health Survey (CCHS). More fundamentally, COVID-19 heightens household concern about the capacity of the Canadian food system to ensure food availability. Despite surges in demand and supply chain disruptions, we currently do not observe broad, rapid appreciation in food prices. This suggests that there is an adequate supply of food for the near term. There is less certainty over intermediate and longer time periods because so many factors are in flux, particularly the rate of increases in sicknesses and deaths across the country and globally. Data on these health factors and elements of the food supply chain are needed to predict beyond a short time frame. In this regard, we discuss three ongoing considerations—ease of capital flows, international exchange, and maintaining transportation—that will help ensure food availability in the longer run.     

Agriculture,transportation, and the COVID-19 crisis

In this short paper, I assess how COVID-19-related disruptions in transportation services, as well as new demands for transportation services, could impact Canadian agricultural supply chains. The brief analysis reveals that agricultural access to bulk ocean freight, rail movement, and trucking has generally improved in the pandemic, bolstered by the reduced demand for these transportation services by other sectors of the economy. The intermodal containerized movement of grains and food products has seen some disruption from the lack of empty containers in North America. The widespread consumer adoption of physical distancing measures has vastly increased the demand for retail food pickup and delivery services to the point where these services are being rationed by long wait times. From a policy perspective, there is an apparent need for (a) continued supply chain monitoring and industry engagement, (b) the proactive development of strategies to deal with absenteeism and other potential threats to the supply chain, and (c) an assessment of the economic and health merits of providing additional public resources to provide greater access to grocery pickup and delivery services.     

新冠肺炎疫情对全球食物安全的影响及对策

当前,新冠肺炎疫情已在全球扩散,许多本就因为冲突、自然灾害或气候变化而深陷食物不安全的国家和地区的防疫形势也日益严峻。虽然目前全球食物供给总体充足,食物价格稳定,但疫情的快速蔓延将给全球食物安全带来威胁。由于隔离和边境关闭,市场、供应链和贸易受到波及,全球食物的供给受到影响。食物流通渠道可能因运输中断和更加严格的检疫措施而受阻,运输成本和贸易成本增加、效率降低。一些国家为保障国内食物供应而采取限制出口的行为,将影响依赖于粮食进口的国家进口粮食,也不利于依赖于出口初级农产品的低收入发展中国家出口农产品。封锁措施带来的经济影响使居民收入和购买力下降,居民获得充足的营养食物变得更加困难。食物安全不再是一个区域性问题,而是一个需要共同应对的全球性问题,各国应当共同努力,加强合作和全球治理,对最弱势群体采取迅速的保护和援助措施。既要确保国内食物供应链的正常运行,同时,应该保持贸易开放,并利用和创新电子商务保障食物供应,保障全球粮食安全。     

COVID-19 and the Canadian cattle/beef sector: Some preliminary analysis

Canada's cattle/beef sector has already weathered a shock after a 2003 case of BSE resulted in closed borders and industry restructuring. Now, the sector has to adjust to similar shocks due to COVID-19. This paper examines the supply chain from the consumer up to the cow–calf producer by considering consumer reactions, labor market constraints, and supply response. A quarterly market model of North American cattle and beef markets is used to examine price and revenue impacts associated with the market disruptions. Depending on the scenario, there is considerable price and revenue suppression at all levels of the market.     

Framing consumer food demand responses in a viral pandemic

In this paper I explore several issues related to how the COVID-19 pandemic might impact consumer demand for food. These impacts relate to the structure of preferences in the context of a pandemic, income and time constraints, and price effects. Discussion includes accounting for differential impacts of COVID-19 on demand for food across sociodemographic characteristics, and several high-level issues and observations related to where and how consumers shop and what they buy. My own thinking leads me to conclude that demand-side factors will account for most of the changes we see in retail food market. These demand-side effects will be dominated by income effects, the opportunity cost of time, and longer planning horizons on the part of consumers.     

The impact of COVID-19 on the grains and oilseeds sector

While downstream distribution and demand is likely to be hampered by the labor and income effects of COVID-19, Canada is expected to produce over 88 million tons of grains and oilseeds in 2020. Canadians have valid concerns about delays related to their changing needs as millions move their purchases from food services to retail groceries, but they should not worry about our overall supply of calories. Despite some shortages, the supply chains for flour and cooking oil are not likely to be blocked for an extended period. Learning from the coordinated needs of the BSE crisis in the beef sector, the federal government developed Value Chain Roundtables in 2003, including one for grains. These roundtables bring together government and industry to tackle the issues that face each sector's major needs, including food safety, transportation infrastructure, and market access. A working group made up of various roundtable members was set up specifically to deal with COVID-19-related supply chain challenges. This gives both industry and government a venue to attack any choke point or breakdown within our agrifood supply chains—the exact response we need at this time. A preestablished forum for discussion of critical issues at these roundtables, assuming the right players are active and present, cannot hurt, but it would useful for future planners and researchers if the federal government could clarify any positive impact they have.     

Economic thoughts on the potential implications of COVID-19 on the Canadian dairy and poultry sectors

The dumping of milk, the offering of hospitality size goods in grocery stores, and the closure of processing facilities are examples of the disruptions caused by the pandemic to the dairy, poultry, and egg sectors. These supply management sectors, however, are more resilient to the impacts of COVID-19 than other sectors as producers are generally more financially stable, losses are pooled, and production/marketing efforts are coordinated.     

Labor issues and COVID-19

The COVID-19 pandemic has prompted Canada and several other countries to impose an economic shutdown to prevent a deadly public health crisis from becoming much deadlier. In the agriculture and food sector, several hundred thousand restaurant workers have lost their jobs. The rise in unemployment, the closing of restaurants and schools, and social distancing have triggered demand reductions for certain commodities and foods and demand increases for others, bringing along changes in demand for inputs including labor. Canadian employers of temporary foreign workers (TFWs) are facing delays and additional constraints in recruiting, but so have US and European employers of TFWs. Rising food security concerns are making protectionist trade policies popular. Domestic and foreign firms may export less and do more foreign direct investment, inducing trade in jobs.     

Temporariness made interminable: Pacific Islander farmworkers in Australia and the enduring crises of global agricultural production

Drawing on long-term ethnographic fieldwork with Seasonal Worker Programme (SWP) workers in south-east Australia, I reflect in this paper on the experience of interminable temporariness and on its implications for the structural conditions underpinning contemporary horticultural labour in Australia. Although in many ways reflective of the specificities of a unique historical moment, the interminable temporariness experienced through the COVID-19 pandemic also speaks to broader, enduring conditions produced within contemporary Australian agriculture. Here, the restructuring of the agri-industry produces for many what Lauren Berlant describes as the “impasse” or “crisis ordinariness” of life under neoliberalism. At the same time, logics of development—including racialized imaginaries and border regimes—articulate with agricultural guest worker schemes in ways that seek to fix whole populations and regions in relations of suspended hope. In this context, I argue, the pandemic exposed and intensified structural vulnerabilities and unequal distributions of risk, which are encoded in the political economy of farm work in Australia, while also cleaving open new, if tentative, possibilities for agency and solidarity.     

Risk management in Canada's agricultural sector in light of COVID-19

The unexpected introduction and spread of COVID-19 has presented significant challenges for every aspect of Canadian society. Although the food and agricultural sector is positioned better than most, there are many risks that will need to be managed in the coming months. The suite of Federal-Provincial-Territorial Business Risk Management (BRM) programs delivered under the Canadian Agricultural Policy framework are meant to assist farmers in managing risks; however, there are no corresponding specialized programs for agribusinesses. The underlying structure of the BRM program was developed decades ago and certainly not with any thought to the possibility of a global pandemic. This article considers to what extent the BRM program and, more broadly, government programming will assist farmers in managing new risks. By default, the article is speculative in nature given that we are currently at the onset of the pandemic in Canada.     

新冠肺炎疫情冲击粮食安全:趋势、影响与应对

新冠肺炎疫情在全球加速扩散蔓延,引发全球粮食市场异常波动以及对中国粮食安全的担忧。疫情对后期全球粮食生产与贸易的影响将进一步加大,全球粮食市场波动有可能进一步升级。随着全球金融市场充分释放流动性,国际投机资本若炒作农产品市场,爆发类似2008年粮食危机的风险将越来越高。分析表明,中国粮食安全保障体系总体上可从容应对全球粮食市场波动升级的挑战,但大豆等农产品进口需防控国际市场波动风险。本文认为,要高度重视全球粮食市场波动的可能风险和挑战,必须加强监测、及早谋划,系统应对、综合施策。包括:有效管控输入性不稳定预期对国内粮食市场的干扰和冲击;进一步强化粮食生产能力建设;构建国家粮食安全保障风险治理体系;完善重要农产品储备体系;强化农产品全球供应链管理;加强国际粮食安全、贸易和投资政策协调。     

从全球视角分析在新冠肺炎疫情下如何保障食物和营养安全

流行性传染病的爆发往往伴随着食物与营养安全的风险。本文首先从全球视角回顾流行性传染病爆发对食物与营养安全的经验与教训,其次分析新冠肺炎疫情对中国食物和营养安全的潜在冲击,最后对如何在防范新冠肺炎疫情下保障中国和全球居民的食物和营养安全提出政策建议。本文分析指出,短期内中国食物与营养相对安全,但需要警惕疫情对中长期食物安全的影响。鉴于新冠肺炎疫情传播呈现全球化趋势,为防范全球食物和营养安全的系统性风险,需要加强全球合作,采取包括保障食物供应链畅通、保持贸易开放、减少对农业生产的冲击及关注贫困人口等综合应对措施。     

Food Safety and Private International Law

Abstract

One response to rising consumer concerns pertaining to food safety has been private industry and public sector initiatives to put in place traceability systems. One of the objectives of traceability systems is to enhance the deterrence role played by legal liability. When supply chains cross international boundaries, private international law governs liability. This paper explores the relationship between food safety, traceability, legal liability and private international law with the interface of Canadian and US law as the example. The conclusion is that, even when legal systems have a similar basis and governments cooperate in enforcement, the complexity of private international law will inhibit the role of traceability and liability in raising food safety standards.     

Essential agriculture,sacrificial labor,and the COVID-19 pandemic in the US South

As farmworkers were reframed as “essential” workers during the COVID-19 pandemic, US growers demanded unfettered access to foreign farm labor. After initially announcing a freeze on all immigration processing, the Trump administration bowed to farmers' demands, granting a single exception for agricultural guestworkers under the H-2A visa program. Through a focus on H-2A farmworkers in Georgia, this paper highlights how the pandemic exacerbated farm labor conditions in the US South. The author interrogates these conditions through the lens of racial capitalism, exposing the legacies of plantation political economies and a longstanding agricultural labor system premised on devaluing racialized labor. These histories are obscured by the myth of agricultural exceptionalism—the idea that agriculture is too different and important to be subject to the same rules and regulations as other industries. Agricultural exceptionalism naturalizes the racial capitalist system and informs state responses that privilege agricultural production through the exploitation of farmworkers, remaking “essential” farmworkers as sacrificial labor.     

Traceability and ethical concerns in the UK wheat—bread chain: from food safety to provenance to transparency

Traceability systems that track both physical entities and their less tangible attributes are increasingly widely used in contemporary food supply to meet a range of regulatory and commercial objectives, including a growing number of ethical concerns. Even with a traditional combinable and blended food crop such as wheat to bread there is clear evidence of traceability from the variety and crop in the field through to the mill to the bakery to the shelf. This study examines the traceability systems that have emerged in the wheat to bread supply in the UK, and the ethical concerns that have emerged within this supply process. The study reveals that these ethical concerns are dynamic and evolving and are contested. In the case of the supply chains studied, a priority concern with safety aspects has been followed by an emerging greater focus upon the provenance of the wheat and flour and upon the environmental impacts of the more industrialized supply chains. A study of the traceability schemes in the chains and the views of the stakeholders reflects quite restricted ‘fields of ethical vision’. The governance and the transmission of information along the chains to the final consumer are quite restricted and partial, inhibiting transparency. The realization of greater transparency and ethical traceability to address different moral perspectives will need further changes in the governance and operation of the supply chains.     

供应中断事件前后石油价格变化分析

突发事件造成的重大石油供应中断前后油价的变化取决于:供应中断的规模、直接供应中断恢复的时间、突发事件有无引发其他事件造成新的供应中断的可能、欧佩克对待供应中断的态度和国际社会对突发事件的干预等因素。欧佩克对各类供应中断均会作出增产决定,其总产量将达到甚至超过突发事件前的总产量。产油国战争或罢工结束时的油价基本和突发事件前相当,战争或罢工事件结束对油价的影响作用结束。革命结束时的油价要高于革命前,革命事件对油价仍有一定的影响。     

Smart farming and short food supply chains: Are they compatible?

The challenge of sustainability and the need to secure the production of high-quality, affordable and healthy food, have led to the emergence of alternative food production/distribution schemes that, based on technological or organizational innovation, can increase food production without burdening the environment. Both smart farming and short food supply chains (SFSCs) are considered as promising solutions towards this target. From a theoretical standpoint, the introduction of smart farming technologies into SFSCs could increase the value-generating capacity of short food supply schemes. However, a pivotal question is whether such technologies are compatible with SFSCs. In this study, following a mixed research design, we analyze Greek farmers’ and consumers’ perceptions of the compatibility between smart technologies and SFSCs, and we examine the extent to which compatibility perception affects willingness to engage in “smart SFSCs.” Quantitative results revealed that perceived (in)compatibility is central in predicting this willingness for both farmers and consumers. The qualitative strand of the study uncovered the existence of two different types of compatibility. Actual compatibility refers to the consistency of smart technologies with the technological advancement of farms and the real everyday needs of farmers. Symbolic compatibility relates to the meanings attributed to both SFSCs and smart technologies by farmers and consumers. In sum, the results indicated that smart technologies are viewed as tools that can lead to a conventionalization of SFSCs, thus altering their optimally distinct nature. Policies targeted at the promotion of smart farming should go beyond traditional views of smart technologies as tools that increase farm efficiency, by paying more attention to their compatibility with different “agricultures” and to the ways they can transform farming systems.