Impact of COVID-19 on agriculture supply chain in India and the proposed solutions

Abstract

This paper aims to determine the impact of COVID-19 on the agricultural supply chain in India and proposed the solutions for resilient supply chain to cope up with the pandemic situations now and in future. The data was collected through semi-structured interviews with the farmers, wholesalers, and retailers in the Uttarakhand region. The findings show that several complications such as lack of supply from other states, accessing the passes for the procurement from mandi, the arrangement of the vehicle for transport, transportation restrictions, labour shortage, inefficient cold chain facilities, panic buying, fluctuation in prices, and lack of collectors/aggregators have led to disruptions in agriculture supply chain during the pandemic. Hence, the study proposed the supply chain model integrating the information and communication technology in operations that can connect all the players without largely depending on the physical interaction for the transactions and to easily cope up with the uncertainties.