CONTEXT The COVID-19 pandemic caused unprecedented global disruption and continues to wreak havoc. Dire predictions were made about the risks to smallholder farmers in lower- and middle- income, but hard data have been lacking. We present the results from 9201 interviews with smallholder farmers from seven countries. OBJECTIVE The objectives are to describe: i) how farmers perceive the key effects of the COVID-19 pandemic and containment measures on livelihoods and food security; ii) the effects on agricultural activities; iii) the coping strategies households deployed. METHODS Household surveys were conducted as part of ongoing monitoring programs during the latter half of 2020. Sites in seven countries were covered: Burundi; Kenya; Rwanda; Tanzania; Uganda; and then Vietnam and Zambia. Findings are representative of smallholder farmers across multiple districts per country. RESULTS AND CONCLUSIONS Our results show that the effects of the COVID-19 containment measures were widespread and often perceived to be severe. Food purchase, off farm income, sale of farm produce, and access to crop inputs were all affected. In locations under more stringent restrictions during the time of the survey, up to 80% of households had to reduce food consumption or variety. Almost all households with off-farm incomes reported reductions, by half on average. A half to three-quarters of households (depending on the location) with income from farm sales reported losses compared to the pre-pandemic situation. In locations with more relaxed containment measures in place during the time of the survey, less frequent and less severe economic and food security outcomes were perceived by the respondent, with around 20% of households reporting negative outcomes. Mobility restrictions, reduced market access, crashes in sale price for agricultural goods, and soaring prices for food purchase were key factors. Sale prices generally dropped for all agricultural products in any given location, and affected not only high value perishable products, but also staple crops such as maize and cassava. Depending on the location, between 30% and 90% of the households applied coping strategies in response to the pandemic during 2020. There was an almost complete absence of official aid amongst households interviewed. SIGNIFICANCE Our results raise the thorny issue of how best to balance containment of COVID-19 against the wellbeing of the vulnerable rural population in lower- and middle-income countries. There is a risk that the buffering capacity of rural people will become exhausted. Possible policy measures to limit negative outcomes include i) tiered mobility restrictions with travel allowed for economic reasons; ii) short-term price guarantee schemes to stabilise the food system; iii) direct aid; iv) the timely re-installation of distribution channels for agricultural inputs.
The risk of malnutrition, particularly micronutrient deficiency, is high in large parts of Sub-Saharan Africa for smallholder farmers. Access to diverse and nutritious food is a key component of food security, and a major development objective. It is widely accepted that good access to markets can play a key role in improving nutrition at the foodshed level. However, the magnitude and even the direction of the effect of increased market access on household dietary diversity (and thus food security) is not universal, with studies showing divergent results. One reason for these divergences may be that models do not account for place-based mediation effects, that is, farmers' local context can affect whether (and the extent to which) access to market is important to their nutrition. Drawing on household survey data from 914 Kenyan smallholder farmers from ten counties in South and West Kenya, we used a novel methodology to evaluate the role of market access in determining household dietary diversity. This methodology combines the clustering of households along places with similar characteristics and multi-level regression analysis to understand the place based variation in effects of different factors on dietary diversity. We found that, depending on how “access to market” is measured, there can be significant impacts on dietary diversity, and this is mediated by farm characteristics. For small farms with already good market access, higher diet diversity is associated with cultivating larger areas and owning larger livestock holdings, but not with easier market access. For isolated larger farms with a focus on livestock production, higher diet diversity is associated with easier market access (i.e., proximity to road), as well as greater livestock diversity. For medium-sized farms with good market access, diet diversity is mildly correlated with easier market access (i.e., proximity to road) but significantly associated with greater crop diversity. The need to account for place-based mediating effects is clearly important and highlights an exigency for greater use and development of localized models that can capture the extent to which effects might change when contexts change.
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