A Critical Analysis on the Global Effect and Impact COVID-19 has on Agriculture and a

suggested way forward for The Bahamas

Shanequia S. Bethell

The Bahamas Agriculture & Marine Science Institute

A Critical Analysis on the Effect and Impact COVID-19 has on Agriculture and a suggested way
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A Critical Analysis on the Global Effect and Impact COVID-19 has on Agriculture and a

suggested way forward for The Bahamas

The World Health Organization defines coronavirus disease of COVID-19 as “and

infectious disease caused by a newly discovered corona virus” (WHO) and this virus presents

itself in infected persons as a respiratory illness. Johns Hopkins website states that there are

many types of Corona virus, however, a coronavirus identified in 2019, SARS-CoV-2 has caused

a pandemic of respiratory illness, called COVID-19. (Lauren M. Sauer, M.S., Johns Hopkins

Medicine) The virus was first identified in Wuhan China in December 2019. On January 30,

2020, The World Health Organization announced a “Public Emergency of International concern”.

On March 11, 202 COVID-19 was proclaimed to be a pandemic. To date COVID-19 has

claimed 3.72 million lives and 173 million persons have been infected.

“During this pandemic, the most vulnerable have been hardest hit…We must increase our

resilience. We must work together and take an integrated approach to health, hunger, climate

and equity crisis – no one is safe from COVID-19 until everyone is safe.” -Volkan Bozkir,

President of the United Nations General Assembly

It is clear that this pandemic impacted not only global public health but all Industries

across the globe have been affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, and most in a negative way.

With the onset of the pandemic came lockdowns and curfews around March of 2020 by countries

in their attempts to contain the spread of COVID-19, while impacting their economies and the

agricultural section was not left untouched.

With sustainable Agriculture being one of the key components in the FAO strategic

objectives to World Food Security in their aim to eradicate global hunger and poverty, this may

present with some challenges. As the pandemic progresses, this progress stimulates governments
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to place restrictions on movement which results in labor shortages, and farmers not being able to

bring products to their markets. In the OECD-FAO Agricultural Outlook for 2020-2029 it is

stated that this pandemic is expected to depress demand in the next few years and could further

undermine food security. (The OECD-FAO Agricultural Outlook 2020-2029), therefore it is

important to research how the COVID-19 pandemic is impacting Agriculture, seeing that it is

plays an important role in food security. Below in (Table 1) it shows the main pandemics that

occurred during the 20th century:

Name Time period Type Death toll Reference

Spanish Flu 1918-1919 H1N1 More than 50M Farmer (2019)
Asian Flu 1957-1958 H2N2 virus 1.15M Du et al. (2009)
Hong Kong Flu 1968-1970 H3N2 virus 700,000 and 1M Wang-Shick (2017)
32M (estimate, March
HIV/AIDS 1981-present Virus WHO (2020b)
2020)
COVID-19 2019-Present Coronavirus 36,405 (31 March 2020) WHO (2020c)

M: Million.
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The Global Impact of COVID-19 on Agriculture

The Covid-19 Pandemic resulted in unemployment, movement restrictions on people and

import and exports, loss of income, loss of life, insecurity and uncertainty. This result was felt

globally. However, these results were due to actions by Global leaders who only sought to save

lives and prevent the spread of COVID-19. As a result, the agriculture and food industry were

impacted by unemployment, loss of income, restrictions on imports and exports and people

movement/travel. The below graph shows the result of a survey conducted in March 2020 by

Chicagos’s Booth School of Business.

The key findings of this survey revealed that Leisure and hospitality workers may be hit

the hardest and the in the 100 largest US cities alone, more than 1.42 million jobs could be lost

due to coronavirus recession. Agriculture is notably the key component in improving incomes,
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eliminating poverty and food security for the marginalized sector. The world bank, under pre-

COVID conditions stated that the development in agriculture was supposed to have feed 9.7

billion people by 2050 and provide employment opportunities and reduce poverty. Now during

COVID-19 there are global shared concerns such as the imposing of restrictions on movement of

agricultural commodities, disruptions in the supply chain, unemployment, and farm operations.

Affected the most are agrarian societies (India, Vietnam), where 12-16% of their GDP comes

from agriculture. As a developed country, The US is not untouched, with California, who

supplies over 1/3 the country’s fruits and vegetable, expressed concerns over the limited outflow

of agricultural produce. In Canada, AG Growth suspended its global operations in Italy, India,

France and Brazil. Agriculture would be further impacted by the decline in global growth since

in the US the GDP was reduced by $1.5 trillion, thus leading to a reduction in global trade that

impacted the Chinese economy.

Agricultural markets are expected to be impacted by COVID-19 for the next decade

(OECD, December 2020).

Figure 6. Agricultural exports in constant 2004-06 value under baseline, upside and downside

scenarios, 2020-21 and 2029

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Source: OECD/FAO (2020), “OECD-FAO Agricultural Outlook”, OECD Agriculture statistics

(database), http://dx.doi.org/10.1787/agr-outl-data-en.

At the writing of this paper many countries have lifted many of the crippling restrictions,

however the damage is done and has resulted in a decline in demand and a drop in global

agricultural exports with some countries experience being worse that others. The forecast for

agriculture trade in 2022 onwards is forecasted to be positive with numbers projected to be the

same as before COVID-19, with many countries aggressively working along with FAO to ensure

that food sustainability is accomplished globally.

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COVID-19’s Impact on Agriculture in The Bahamas.

Agriculture in The Bahamas no longer has the glory it had in the 17th centuries - in

control of its own food system, The Bahamas was considered to be self-dependent and self-

sustainable. To date, The Bahamas imports 90% of its food products from the US, Brazil, Peru,

the UK and Canada and an estimated 7-10% comes from the Country’s Agriculture and Fisheries

Industry.

The Bahamas is considered to be a small island developing state and unfortunately at the

onset of COVID-19 had just experienced the impact of natural disaster in the name of Hurricane

Dorian, that added to the economic decline and a downward trend in the Agriculture Industry.

The main sectors of the Bahamian economy are the Tourism sector that accounts for more

than 60% of the GDP and employs 50% of the labor force, second is the financial sector that

encompasses 15% of the GDP. The Agricultural sector has little contribution to the local GDP

and accounts for about 5%. In the Tourism sector there was a loss of over 10,000 jobs in a

matter of months at the onset of COVID-19, the impact on the other sectors were basically the

same. The economy saw the closures of business, especially small business which led to more

job losses. The financial sector was affected eventually when unemployed persons could not

meet financial obligations.

Steps were taken to ensure that the country had an adequate amount of imported food

products, which proved somewhat challenging as many countries closed borders and reduced

export of key agricultural products. A national food plan was created in conjunction with the

Ministry of Agriculture and Ministry Of Heath to ensure that dietary and nutritional needs of the

people would be met if there was a boarder closure on imports. The Ministry of Agriculture in

their attempt to strengthen farmers production system, created a plan in which they would
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provide seeds, animal feed to farmers; hydroponic systems, greenhouses available to farmers

along with technical training and assistance with land clearing and providing livestock, financial

grants, as well as the launching of an aggressive backyard farming program by giving out

gardening kits.

The Way Forward…

Presently Agriculture in The Bahamas is still off to a struggling restart and with the

assistance of agencies like Inter-American Institute for Cooperation on Agriculture and Food and

Agriculture Organization of the United Nations it seeks to implement a Hand in Hand Initiative

project which includes the use of digital technologies to improve food nutrition and health,

climate resilience, agroecosystems and landscape management and productivity of farm and no

farm employment. There are four major goals being attempted:

1. Improving the efficiency of food and agricultural systems.

2. Increasing the sustainability of agriculture

3. Increasing the resilience of the agriculture and ecosystems to adapt to the climate

change and extreme events.

4. Increasing social inclusion, contributing to opportunities for employment and

income generating from different sources in the food industry.

Like others around the world Bahamians are a resilient people and many took advantage

of The Ministry of Agricultures Back Yard Gardening efforts. Proof of this is seen by Facebook

Groups like Bahamas Backyard Chickens, Backyard Gardening In The Bahamas for Newbies

and 242 Bahamas Backyard Farming, all of which has over 1000 and more members posting the

fruits of their labor. It is small initiatives like this that can start the spark of change in mind-set
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of Bahamians to begin changes in their diets that will accommodate sustainability in Bahamian

Agriculture.
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References

Varshney, D., Roy, D. & Meenakshi, J.V. Impact of COVID-19 on agricultural markets:

assessing the roles of commodity characteristics, disease caseload and market

reforms. Ind. Econ. Rev. 55, 83–103 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s41775-020-00095-1

OECD Policy Responses to Coronavirus (COVID-19)

COVID-19 and the food and agriculture sector: Issues and policy responses

29 April 2020

Agricultural markets are expected to be impacted by COVID-19 for the next decade

(OECD, December 2020).

IMF (2020), WORLD ECONOMIC OUTLOOK, April 2020: THE GREAT LOCKDOWN,

https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/

http://www.fao.org/3/nc701en/NC701EN.pdf

Figure 6. Agricultural exports in constant 2004-06 value under baseline, upside and downside

scenarios, 2020-21 and 2029

http://www.Bahamas.gov.bs/wps/wcm/connect/

http://www.fao.org/2019-ncov/q-and-a/impact-on-food-and-agriculture/en/