Prompts economist Cullen: The length of pandemic can affect food supply

The foods you're eating while you're identified by the Coronavirus, the chances are that it's coming from a farm. Or it may have come from a large agricultural operation many miles away from your home. It may have been handpicked, perhaps by immigrant workers, and brought in from other cities, and perhaps even states.

But will your systems continue to bring you food until the global pandemic of coronary continues? Or the bread? Garments or cooking oil?

Coronavirus has already put the global economy out of control. Tens of millions of people have quit their jobs, as factories from Vuhan to Bahari have suspended operations.

What does this mean for the food we eat?

If you live in a rural environment, in a mild climate where the harvest season is developing, you can prepare for the eating of crops from your garden.

But if you live in the city like more than half the world's population, the chances are to rely on the global supply chain.

What happens when people who harvest fruit and vegetables get sick or have to enter quarantine? What happens when the packrs, who make sure the potatoes and onions are piled up and put in trucks to get to the cities, can't work? What happens when the wheat cannot be processed and sent to the oven?

Can we face global food shortages in the coming months?

Massive destruction of the global food supply system will come from the pandemic”, Chris Elliot, professor at Queen University in Belfast, wrote in a Twitter post.

But the shipment over the global food supply system was clear.

A prolonged pandemic crisis may quickly tighten the chains of food supply ʹ a network involving farmers, agricultural products, processing plants, transportation, retail and retail sales”, warned in a writing Maximo Cullen, chief economist at the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation.

Panic shopping in some countries has raised concerns that inventoryrs of vendors and merchants may be on the run.

In early April, the World Food Programme another United Nations agency attempted to provide security to nervous consumers.

The global trades for basic cereals are well supplied and prices are generally low”, the World Food Programme said in a report released on April 3rd.

“Cuts so far are minimal; food supply is sufficient and markets are relatively stable”, Elizabeth Byrs' spokeswoman was quoted.

However, soon we can see disruptions in food supply chains”, if large importers lose confidence in the reliable flow of basic food goods”, she said.

For industrialized countries, where the chains of food supply have already gone through a change because of changing habits and consumer tastes, this brings more uncertainty.

We're talking about radical changes in a food chain that was already going through a radical 48x1> change, he told REL James Tyllotson, retired professor of food policy and international business at Friedman School at Tufts University in the United States.

Who is more at stake?

For major industrial countries whose population tends to focus especially on urban and periphery centres, food supply chains are longer, more complex and, perhaps, more endangered.