Policy seminar: Food systems lessons from COVID-19

As COVID-19 continues to affect people around the world, an understanding of the scope of impacts from the pandemic and the lockdowns, mobility restrictions, and other policies enacted in its wake is only beginning to emerge. The CGIAR COVID-19 Hub recently released the first world-level assessment on the impacts of COVID-19 on food security. In a March 2 virtual policy seminar, lead author Christophe Béné, a CGIAR researcher from the Alliance of Bioversity International and CIAT, explored potential lessons that can be drawn from their findings, in relation to the resilience of food systems, as well as preliminary recommendations for building those systems back better.

Béné detailed the study, which considered food security as well as the food environment across more than 330 publications in four languages from 62 countries. They found, Béné said, that “the food system did not collapse, but its resilience was tested, and there were clear winners and losers.”

Photo credit: IFPRI