COVID-19, Agriculture, and Food Security in Indonesia

Abstract

COVID-19 pandemic has significantly impacted every part of human life, both economic and non-economic, including agriculture. As a country where many people still rely on agriculture, Indonesia faces a complicated situation if the pandemic continues because food production will be affected. Indonesia announced its first COVID-19 case in March 2020; in response to this, the government applied limitations on economic and non-economic activities. These actions slowed the commercial and industrial sectors, and many people lost their jobs, with middle-and low-income citizens being the hardest hit. The situation presents a high risk for food security due to the decrease in purchasing power and food supply chains not being able to run normally. This study aims to arrange food security strategies post-COVID-19 pandemic. This paper presents, to overcome the food-security issue after COVID-19 in Indonesia, emergency strategies such as controlling food price and providing subsidies for farmer are needed. And long term strategies such as making the food supply chain more effective and increasing food diversification also required. All people and parties need to participate in every relief program for any program to fight the COVID-19 pandemic to succeed.

Causal Impacts of Epidemics and Pandemics on Food Supply Chains: A Systematic Review

“…Finally, with the occurrence of pandemics and epidemics, family income may be lower than adequate due to temporary dismissal or permanent unemployment of a member [86]. The COVID-19 pandemic, for example, resulted in an economic slowdown with consequent job losses and decreased income [28,87].…”

“…All those impacts, as mentioned earlier, contribute to food insecurity of the vulnerable population. Food security is a global concern and is a challenge for many middle-and lowerincome countries [87]. The economic slowdown caused by COVID-19, with consequent job losses, decreased income, and disruption in SC, seriously threatens food security [28].…”

“…Absenteeism monitoring [69] Risk monitoring [103] Multiple sourcing [131] Information management and policy coordination with governments [12] Workforce adjustment Guidelines on seasonal workers and migrant workers [10,111] Temporary workers [80,114] Remote workforce training [93] Optimizing the familial or community workforce [87] Activities automation Mechanization and automation of activities with technology [8,56,79,101,132] Digital agronomic trainings and information through programs facilitated collaboratively with government [79] Computer-based statistical models [101] Greater reliance on automation [113] Health and Safety Protocols…”

“…Production volume changes (production rate) or stopping production (stoppage of production) [7,10,12,38,48,56,63,66,70,72,74,75,79,80,87,100,106,108,110,113,114,129,131,134,137,142,152,162,[169][170][171][172][173][174] Stability and business continuity plans…”

Development Strategies of the Local Auction Market of Agricultural Product in Indonesia

“…Owners of farmland and capital in rural areas are the only ones who benefit from higher food prices [7]. Finally, the Covid-19 outbreak has made farmers who are already poor more vulnerable [8]. According to data from the Indonesian Bureau of Statistics [2], the farmers' exchange rate was 102.09 at the start of the pandemic, March 2020, and then declined by 99.60 in June.…”