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https://www.wsj.com/articles/indias-food-supply-chain-frays-as-people-stay-home-11586343607

ASIA

India’s Food Supply Chain Frays as People

Stay Home
Country’s reliance on people power to harvest, distribute and sell goods leaves it vulnerable during
coronavirus shutdown

By Rajesh Roy and Vibhuti Agarwal

April 8, 2020 7 00 am ET

NEW DELHI—Two weeks into the world’s biggest lockdown, India’s food supply chain is
struggling with a shortage of one of its crucial commodities: people.

Essential industries—such as growing, harvesting and delivering food—are allowed to operate

under the lockdown but the people who move the essentials from farm to fork aren’t showing
up for work. Stores say some basics such as eggs, yogurt and cooking oil are increasingly hard
to find, a development they say could point to bigger problems ahead if things don’t return to
normal in the coming month.

India’s food industry is the most fragmented in the world, with hundreds of millions of small
farmers selling through a system of millions of middlemen who eventually deliver to millions of
tiny shops, stands and carts. It depends on a lot of people doing things by hand.

That reliance leads to bottlenecks when people are afraid to go out, and a tough balancing act
between stamping out the virus and keeping a subsistence economy functioning. If the
hundreds of millions of people who are essential to the food industry all went out and did their
jobs, it would make it more challenging to maintain the social distancing necessary to prevent
the spread of the virus.

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“There are so many human interventions in the Indian supply chain,” said Subho Roy, a
researcher at the University of Chicago who has studied Indian agricultural markets. “There are
not a large number of people involved in nonessential, close-downable industries.”

Farmers in India’s breadbasket are about to harvest the wheat crop. But their seasonal helpers
aren’t showing up, and the few truckers willing to work are unable to buy food on the road and
are getting harassed by police. Some simply leave their vehicles on the highways and go home.

People at the wholesale markets around Delhi say fewer trucks are showing up and the workers
who unload them are absent. The mom-and-pop shops that sell products report that their
shelves have been cleared of some products by panic buying, but many regular deliveries have
stopped and they can’t get to the wholesale markets to do their own pickups because the
rickshaws they need to get there have disappeared.

“These are terrible times,” with many distributors having stopped delivering to stores, said
Rajeev Tayal, who runs a small grocery store in a New Delhi suburb. “I have no choice but to get
in my car, go to the distributors’ warehouses and lug heavy sacks of goods myself.”

India has limited mechanization, so moving goods requires a lot of people power. Wheat is
harvested by hand, not combines; burlap sacks of potatoes are loaded on trucks using lines of
men instead of forklifts; eggs reach shops on the back of bicycles, not refrigerated trucks. More
than half of India is involved one way or another in the growing, delivering and selling of food,
economists say.
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While the food supply chain isn’t supposed to be restricted by the lockdown, it is tough for
authorities to differentiate between someone who is going to pick up a few bags of rice for his
store and someone who shouldn’t be out. Meanwhile, much of the labor force is spooked and
doesn’t want to come to work even if they are allowed.

The wholesale vegetable and grain markets that feed New Delhi illustrate the problems. Buyer
arrivals have plummeted because of fear they would be breaking the law or could get infected
as well as the lack of public transportation. The traders and customers who do make it are
struggling with lack of help.

“There is no manpower: no one to load and unload the vegetables and a shortage of cleaning
staff,” said Vijender Yadav, an onion trader who works at a sprawling open market near New
Delhi. “This wholesale market is always dirty but never this bad.”

People lighting candles and lamps outside their huts on the streets of Mumbai on Sunday, amid
the world’s largest national lockdown in the face of the coronavirus.
PHOTO: DIVYAKANT SOLANKI EPA SHUTTERSTOCK

Fewer trucks are arriving as drivers abandon them, unable to cope with delays at state borders
and being repeatedly stopped by police. Meanwhile, the affordable roadside truck stops they
depend on have mostly shut down.

“All the eateries on the highways are closed. I have nothing to eat,” said Dhanraj Singh, a truck
driver who got stuck in the lockdown delivering tomatoes to New Delhi. “Everyone says we
should keep delivering essential supplies. But the supply link can continue only if we survive.”

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Farmers are predicting problems too. While most farms are small, many still require seasonal
help during harvest, often from other Indian states or even Nepal. Fear and travel restrictions
are keeping the help home.

Satnam Singh, a wheat farmer in the western state of Punjab, said his crop will be due for
harvesting next week but none of the 50 laborers he needs have shown up.

“My crop is ready but I’m worried about how I am going to harvest it,” he said. “The local
workers aren’t leaving their homes and those from other states have gone back to their
villages.”

The government had hoped online retailers, who have been transforming India’s
outdated supply chain, would step in to fill some of the gaps, but their operations have been
disrupted too.

Farmers sitting on bags of crops as they transport them to a market in Kolkata, India, on Saturday.
PHOTO: DIPA CHAKRABORTY PACIFIC PRESS ZUMA PRESS
Their armies of motorcycle delivery people were getting stopped in the streets and even
detained because police weren’t sure if they were an essential service. Walmart Inc.’s Flipkart
said it lost more than half of its warehouse and delivery staff, presumably as they were scared
to come to work. Some employees have started to come back now that the company has
ratcheted up salaries and reassured them the police will let them do their jobs.

India’s hobbled supply chain has still been delivering the very basics—wheat, rice and some
pulses—and should be fine if everything returns to normal when the lockdown is set to end
April 14. However, there is good chance some restrictions will continue and citizens will remain
home, causing shortages to worsen and spread to other products.

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“Out of the 10 things people order, I can only give them around three,” said Gopal Kumar, who
owns a general store in New Delhi. “Customers are getting worried and so are we.”

—Eric Bellman and Krishna Pokharel contributed to this article.

Write to Rajesh Roy at rajesh.roy@wsj.com and Vibhuti Agarwal at vibhuti.agarwal@wsj.com

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