Coronavirus: Is world hunger coming our way?

In prior blog posts, I looked at how the meat industry in the United States is being impacted by coronavirus. One interesting point is that Canada, Brazil and the US account for 65% of world meat trade. We know that US meat production is being impacted by coronavirus. And there is speculation that coronavirus cases in Brazil are being seriously undercounted. I've also mention how this could potentially impact farmers and the fruits/vegetables that come our way from these farmland. Could the impact of coronavirus cause global hunger issues?

The New York Times has this to say:

National lockdowns and social distancing measures are drying up work and incomes, and are likely to disrupt agricultural production and supply routes — leaving millions to worry how they will get enough to eat.

. . . Already, 135 million people had been facing acute food shortages, but now with the pandemic, 130 million more could go hungry in 2020, said Arif Husain, chief economist at the World Food Program, a United Nations agency. Altogether, an estimated 265 million people could be pushed to the brink of starvation by year’s end.

. . . But logistical problems in planting, harvesting and transporting food will leave poor countries exposed in the coming months, especially those reliant on imports, said Johan Swinnen, director general of the International Food Policy Research Institute in Washington. While the system of food distribution and retailing in rich nations is organized and automated, he said, systems in developing countries are “labor intensive,” making “these supply chains much more vulnerable to Covid-19 and social distancing regulations.”



CNN provides some additional details:

Famines could take hold in "about three dozen countries" in a worst-case scenario, the executive director of the World Food Programme (WFP) said in a stark address on Tuesday. Ten of those countries already have more than 1 million people on the verge of starvation, he said.

. . . Ten countries were singled out as particularly at-risk, after housing the worst food crises last year; Yemen, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Afghanistan, Venezuela, Ethiopia, South Sudan, Sudan, Syria, Nigeria and Haiti.

Coronavirus is causing economic declines across the globe. As addressed above, this could cause global hunger. This indicates that countries must carefully balance their economies and the spread of the virus. If a country wasn't/isn't able to immediately control the outbreak, they probably need to pursue this balancing act. If they aren't able to thread the needle, they are probably going to have to deal with a version of the Arab Spring that spread across North Africa and the Middle East that started in late 2010. And, of course, some of the impacts associated with the virus are totally outside of their control.

The Intercept reports about other knock on effects on poverty and non-coronavirus health issues:

A new analysis by researchers from King’s College London and Australian National University, under the aegis of the United Nations University World Institute for Development Economics Research, for example, warns that the economic contraction caused by Covid-19 could push an additional 500 million people — about 8 percent of the Earth’s population — into poverty, reversing 30 years of economic improvement.

. . . Meanwhile, the World Health Organization notes that a diversion of resources could have especially devastating effects on the fight against malaria. Under a worst-case scenario, in which all insecticide-treated bed net campaigns are suspended, and there is a 75% reduction in access to effective antimalarial medicines, fatalities from the mosquito-borne illness could reach 769,000 — double the number of deaths in 2018 — effectively wiping out 20 years of gains in suppressing malaria mortality. Similarly, a new analysis by researchers at Imperial College London found that in low- and middle-income countries, disruptions to health services could cause deaths from HIV, tuberculosis, and malaria to increase by up to 10, 20, and 36 percent respectively over five years. 

Worse case scenarios are always interesting to read, but I wish the article would provide what the base case forecast is.