CRPs and Platforms adapted research, capacity building, collaboration methods, and budgets to meet the challenging circumstances posed by the pandemic.

Lockdowns, travel restrictions, and other public health safety measures continued to affect the work of CRPs and Platforms in 2021. Some data collection activities were started or resumed, but these situations were not consistent and depended on national and institutional policies. Restrictions on movement and physical gatherings also impacted policy support and capacity building.

The pandemic still largely restricted labor, including fieldwork and in-person surveys. Local partners took responsibility for implementing fieldwork, with virtual support provided by researchers. As demand for germplasm surged to pre-pandemic levels in 2021, the CGIAR Genebank Platform relied on assistance from partners and invested in automated irrigation equipment to protect harvests amid ongoing movement restrictions.

In-person data collection methods were replaced by phone or virtual interviews and surveys. The CRP on Policies, Institutions, and Markets (PIM) analyzed phone data from India and Nepal to understand how COVID-related lockdowns affected women’s access to agricultural extension. In Myanmar, researchers from the CRP on Agriculture for Nutrition and Health (A4NH) carried out surveys to monitor the pandemic’s impacts on income, food insecurity, and diets, as well as short- and long-term welfare.

Pandemic-related disruptions to the global supply chain continued to drive prices upward in 2021, affecting CGIAR research activities and partners. In response to rising prices of genotyping and consumables, the Excellence in Breeding Platform actively engaged with vendors and key stakeholders to ensure proper mitigation, while finding ways to streamline and reduce administrative expenses.

CRPs and Platforms relied on virtual and hybrid methods to ensure that research and capacity development continued without interruption. Most trainings, webinars, and other engagement activities were carried out online in 2021. For example, A4NH adjusted their implementation of extension and other planned activities to use digital platforms, virtual trainings, radio, and television broadcasts. Researchers from the CRP on Water, Land and Ecosystems (WLE) transitioned from in-field capacity building to a series of online e-learning modules that shared insights, tools, and approaches to better anticipate and actively manage synergies and trade-offs.

The Platform on GENDER reported that by hosting their flagship conference “Cultivating Equality: Advancing Gender Research in Agriculture and Food Systems” entirely online, they were able to reach more participants through live and recorded sessions, including participants who would not have otherwise had time or funding to attend. Although online engagement was critical to maintaining progress, many noted that restrictions on in-person gatherings remained a major challenge.

The COVID-19 pandemic has presented opportunities to work in different ways. Changes to working methods and improvement plans developed during the pandemic will need to be reviewed as travel seems likely to resume in 2022.

In 2021, CGIAR and its Centers continued to revise priorities, along with adapting research, capacity building, collaboration methods, and budgets to meet the changed circumstances presented by the pandemic.

The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the need to change the way we use our natural resources, manage agricultural production, and design food systems. The global crisis also emphasizes the importance of global collaboration around open science, data sharing, digital tools, and leveraging computational power to accelerate research. The kinds of data and analytics now available have significantly improved our ability to understand such crises. At the same time, the Platform on Big Data in Agriculture noted that the ongoing challenges posed by COVID-19 have emphasized the need for more interoperable and available data, especially as programs continued to have limited access to the field.

In 2021, CRPs and Platforms built upon ongoing analyses of COVID-19 impacts and initiated new studies to better understand the pandemic’s impacts on food systems, diets and nutrition, and poverty.

Several CRPs undertook research to assess the effectiveness of policy actions taken in response to the pandemic. Within the CRP on Policies, Institutions, and Markets (PIM), an evaluation of the delivery of social protection programs in the context of COVID-19 in Africa revealed that many poor Africans did not receive sufficient assistance during the pandemic, despite swift adjustments to existing social protection programs and the launch of many new initiatives.

In Asia, researchers from the CRPs on Maize (MAIZE) and Wheat (WHEAT) assessed the impacts of initial responses on major farming and food systems in 25 countries. Government policies that prioritized food availability and affordability contributed to moderate resilience within these systems.

In 2021, several CRPs focused on analyzing the impact of COVID-19 on value chains. PIM researchers published findings from several studies launched in 2020/2021 to assess the effects of COVID-19 on coffee in Guatemala and Ethiopia, vegetables and dairy in Ethiopia, fruits and vegetables in Kenya, fish in Ghana, India and Nigeria, maize in Uganda, potato in Bangladesh, cassava in Vietnam and Cambodia, grape in India, and dairy and artichoke in Egypt.

In collaboration with the CGIAR COVID-19 Hub (hosted by A4NH), researchers from WHEAT and MAIZE analyzed the most critical, immediate effects of COVID-19 for different kinds of agricultural systems and their associated value chains in Central America and Mexico.

To better understand the impact of the pandemic on agricultural production systems, natural resources, and resilience, PIM scientists compared COVID-19 coping strategies among rural households in three Indian States, finding that villages included in a large-scale common land restoration program led by the NGO Foundation for Ecological Security were more resilient than the others.

In Bangladesh, scientists from the CRP on Roots, Tubers and Bananas (RTB) studied the effects of COVID-19 on livelihood outcomes. The CRP on Livestock (LIVESTOCK) examined the pandemic’s effects on GHG emissions from livestock systems in northern Kenya using proxy data and a framework based on changes in herd size, feed availability, and livestock movement.

CGIAR scientists in 2021 focused their assessments on the pandemic’s effects on nutrition and food security. A4NH researchers provided specific recommendations on mitigating the pandemic’s long-term effects on diets and nutrition.

The CRP also presented three modelling scenarios to estimate the impacts of pandemic-induced disruptions on child stunting, wasting and mortality, maternal anemia, and children born to women with a low body mass index in 118 low- and middle-income countries. Researchers also estimated the cost of six nutrition interventions to mitigate excess stunting and child mortality because of the pandemic.

Early investment in COVID-19 research by the CRP on Fish Agri-food Systems (FISH) leveraged additional funding for six projects tracking the impacts of COVID-19 on aquatic food supply chains in India, Nigeria, Kenya, and Egypt. FISH researchers also built upon research initiated in 2020 to evaluate the medium-term impacts of COVID-19 through surveys with respondents from aquaculture and fisheries value chains.

In 2021, the CRP on Water, Land and Ecosystems (WLE) continued its research on shocks to urban food systems in Sri Lanka. In Ghana, WLE researchers evaluated the response of stakeholders to COVID-19 in the water and sanitation sector, making recommendations to further strengthen resilience.

The gendered impacts of COVID-19 were assessed in 2021. In partnership with the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), the GENDER Platform evaluated the effects of different policies and support measures in Africa on women’s incomes, assets, livelihoods, food and nutrition security, and personal agency. The Platform recommended specific policy and programmatic actions to address gender-differentiated needs in the agricultural sector when responding to crises and cohosted a high-level policy dialogue with IFPRI, which included attendees from the African Union Commission, U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), and the Senegal Ministry of Agriculture.

Within LIVESTOCK, scientists using a One Health approach supported Kenya’s Ministry of Health to sequence the entire genome of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, and monitor different variants within the country. In Nairobi, researchers launched a sewage surveillance study to explore opportunities for mapping risk, which may become increasingly important as COVID-19 becomes endemic.

CGIAR research was used to inform policy decisions in 2021. Building on past PIM investments in economywide tools and social accounting matrices, PIM scientists continued using multiplier models to assess policy responses to COVID-19 and the pandemic’s short-term impacts in more than 20 countries. PIM researchers engaged closely with the Governments of Egypt, Myanmar, Nigeria, Rwanda, and South Africa to identify policy priorities to support recovery.

PIM scientists used IFPRI’s global general equilibrium model to examine the global impacts of COVID-19, suggesting that the global recession caused by COVID-19 will be much deeper than the 2008–2009 financial crisis. Almost 150 million people are estimated to have fallen into extreme poverty, with more severe impacts in urban areas.