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Many countries around the world rely on temporary migrant workers for planting and harvesting crops. In Australia, for example, 50% of farmworkers are temporary migrants.

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In Europe, for example, it is estimated that there has been an overall shortfall of more than one million seasonal workers.

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In order to combat the shortage of farm labor, many governments launched aggressive recruitment campaigns to find “agricultural armies” closer to home.

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Even with such initiatives, the problem continues, and some have argued for a move towards the mechanization of planting and harvesting crops.

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In New Zealand, the innovative company Robotics Plus has built a prototype of a robot that can pick kiwis. The company is currently working on robots that can pick other crops.

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The problem with relying on such robotized agriculture is that it is only accessible to the wealthiest of farmers and therefore does not provide a solution for those of lesser means.

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In addition to labor shortages, there were early concerns about a shortage of fertilizers coming out of China. Since China came out of lockdown, however, these concerns have diminished.

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In terms of food processing, the main impact of Covid-19 has been seen in meat processing facilities, which have been heavily affected by social distancing and labor shortages.

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Meat processing plants tend to be confined spaces, and so strict social distancing rules are necessary for workers’ safety. Enforcing these can significantly reduce operational efficiency.

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Furthermore, despite the implementation of strict social distancing measures, clusters of the virus have been found in meat processing plants in several countries.

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This may be because the machines in processing plants are very noisy, which forces workers to shout and therefore expel more virus particles than usual.

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In many cases, plants have been shut down or made to operate at reduced capacity. According to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), cattle and pig slaughter in the US was 40% less in April 2020 than in April 2019.

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In fact, the US appears to have been hit particularly hard when it comes to meat production, perhaps because their processing is concentrated in just a small number of plants.

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Across the US, meat producers have been forced to take the drastic approach of euthanizing unsold grown animals in order to prevent overcrowding.

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Other food processing operations have been affected by Covid-19 too, although to a lesser extent. Grain handling, for example, is less labor intensive and has therefore taken a lesser hit.

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In terms of food transportation, there are three main ways to take food from A to B: bulk (ships and barges), containers (by boat, rail, or truck) and other road transport, and air freight.

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Cereals and oil seeds are normally shipped in bulk, meat and dairy in refrigerated containers and trucks, and perishable products in the carriage of passenger airplanes.

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While bulk shipments have seen no severe disruptions, the stark reduction in passenger flights has resulted in major disruptions to the air freight transportation network.

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Transportation by container has been affected more than bulk shipments, but less than air freight. Commercial road transport in April 2020 was roughly 20% lower than normal in both Canada and the US.

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The food type most heavily affected by transport disruptions is therefore perishable goods, such as fruits and vegetables. Cereal supplies, by contrast, have not been severely impacted.

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Some local farmers are capitalizing on the way in which Covid-19 has affected the transportation of food supplies, and are using it to show that we should all be buying hyper-local.

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There has also been a renewed interest in the possibility of underground farming as a way to make better use of the resources available to us.

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The pandemic triggered a sharp increase in the number of people cooking at home. When lockdowns were enforced in the middle of March 2020, restaurant reservations fell to nearly zero.

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This brought with it a few important changes to the way food supply chains operate. As the sales of “food away from home” dwindled, the retail demand for food skyrocketed.

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There was a sharp increase in the sale of frozen and packaged foods. For example, in the second half of March 2020 sales of frozen foods in France were 63% higher than the year before.

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In the same period in Germany, sales of packaged foods were 56% higher year-on-year. Similar changes in consumer behavior were also seen in other countries.

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Such a shift in demand is not easy for supply chains to absorb, not least because products that would normally go to restaurants cannot always be sold to retailers for the same price.

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For example, restaurants tend to use more cheese on pizzas than people do at home, meaning that restaurants need bigger blocks of cheese than retailers do.

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Restaurants are also an important provider of resources to food banks, and with restaurants closed many food banks are going without at a time when their services are most needed.

(BBC) (OECD) (Oxford Academic)

See also: What are "essential items" in different countries.

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