Food supply chains and resilience to shocks: evidence from India's COVID-19 lockdown

Abstract

We study the disruption of food supply to households and reduced farm-to-market arrivals in India's food supply chain during the COVID-19 lockdown. We focus on the relationship between logistics quality (and performance) and the intensity of disruptions across India's states. We find four policy-relevant findings: (1) Food consumption expenditure was higher in states with better logistics quality; (2) These states recovered more quickly from farm-to-market disruptions with higher agricultural market arrivals in the later phases of the lockdown; (3) Rural food supply chains turned out to be as vulnerable as urban ones; and (4) Expenditure on cereals and pulses faced large reductions.