Global food security is threatened by the effects of COVID-19 on international agricultural supply chains and locusts destroying crops and livelihoods in the Horn of Africa and South Asia. We quantify the possible impacts on global supplies and prices of wheat, rice and maize. We show that local production declines have moderate impacts on global prices and supply-but trade restrictions and precautionary purchases by a few key actors could create global food price spikes and severe local food shortages.Some major agricultural producing nations implemented export restrictions in the first half of 2020 1 , following market uncertainties triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic 2 . Several events compound COVID-19's disruption to supply chains, including locust infestations in the Horn of Africa and parts of the Middle East and South Asia 3 , shortages of farm labour 4,5 , a second wave of COVID-19 outbreaks and dry weather in Europe and South America 6,7 . COVID-19-related lockdowns can impact agriculture directly (mainly through restrictions to farm labour, which is one factor that can reduce yields), meaning that regions with high employment in agriculture may experience the largest losses in crop production. For example, the Ebola outbreak in West Africa in 2014 reduced labour availability for farming and led to a 20% decline in rice production 8 during the outbreak, with large economic impacts in the following year 9 .We quantified the impact of these various threats to the world supplies and prices of wheat, maize and rice. These crops form the backbone of global trade in staple crops, with high importance for food security; they comprise 43% of calories and 37% of protein directly consumed by the human population 10 . To determine the supply chain impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic and other threats to these key crops, we combined an analysis of impaired supply with a global agricultural commodity price model 11 including trade policies and storage. To quantify the impacts of crop failures, we developed scenarios that included a 1-in-5-year production decline due to drought and lockdown effects in three major exporting countries and a 1-in-20-year decline in production in the countries most threatened by the locust infestations as of May 2020. We compared these scenarios to a baseline scenario based on the joint Organisation for Economic Co-operation Development (OECD) and Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) supply and demand forecasts for 2020/21, which do not factor in these production shortfalls.Global stock-to-use ratios of rice, wheat and maize are at historically high levels (Supplementary Fig. 1). This situation is in

No abstract

Natural and man-made emergencies are regular occurrences in the Greater Horn of Africa region. The underlying impoverishment of whole populations is increasing, making it more difficult to distinguish between humanitarian crises triggered by shocks and those resulting from chronic poverty. Shocks and hazards can no longer be seen as one-off events that trigger a one-time response. In countries that are both poor and exposed to frequent episodes of debilitating drought or chronic conflict, information needs tend to be different from the straightforward early warning/commodity accounting models of information systems that have proven reliable in past emergencies. This paper describes the interdependent components of a humanitarian information system appropriate for this kind of complex environment, noting the analytical links between the components and operational links to programme and policy. By examining a series of case studies from the Greater Horn region, the paper demonstrates that systems lacking one or more of these components will fail to provide adequate information--and thus incur humanitarian costs. While information always comes with a cost, the price of poor information--or none--is higher. And in situations of chronic vulnerability, in which development interventions are likely to be interspersed with both safety nets and emergency interventions on a recurrent basis, investment in improved information is a good investment from both a humanitarian and a financial viewpoint.

No abstract

By limiting the quota of tobacco that each farmer can grow and by setting a price floor for tobacco, the tobacco program raises the price of American tobacco in order to raise the welfare of farmers. This paper estimates domestic demand and a representative foreign demand to produce an aggregate demand for American flue-cured tobacco. The intersection of this demand with hypothetical supply curves of varying elasticities determines a range of competitive equilibria. From these equilibria and examination of tobacco quota, this paper concludes that the program does not benefit farmers.