​Impact of COVID-19 Lockdown on Indian Agriculture: A Review

Abstract

More than 10 million laborer have been displaced from their usual workplaces during the suddenly announced lockdown by the government of India in 2020 in order to prevent and control the spread of one of the deadliest diseases of our times namely; COVID 19, popularly known as Sars Corona Virus in March - June 2020; as per the official figures provided by the GOI. There has not been a single sector that remained unaffected from the devastating impacts of COVID-19, not even agriculture. The impact of lockdown on agriculture is hard to measure as it involves a complex relationship between multiple direct and indirect factors like labour availability, lack of supply of raw materials from the agro-industrial sector etc. The lockdown period created severe economic implications (negative) for farmers (small, marginal and large), landless laborer and all the other agricultural stakeholders who had to face new challenges for earning their livelihood. The direct loss to the agriculture sector was estimated to multi-corers by various government officials while the indirect losses may be many folds of the direct loss. The marginal income of laborers in the agriculture sector was believed to be coming close to zero due to lockdown conditions. In addition to this, smart investments, improved technologies and standardized model frameworks must be designed for the agriculture sector to combat the COVID 19 impact. The current analytical review is focused on all the major factors associated with the agriculture sector that have been highly impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic, ranging from production, storage to procurement and selling. The lockdown has choked off almost all economic activities. In urban areas, COVID-19 forced widespread loss of jobs and incomes for informal workers. Estimated by the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy, unemployment shot up from 8.4% in mid-March to 23% in the first week of April 2020 further soaring to 30.9% by the end of April, 2020. We have also looked into the possible strategies that can be taken into consideration by the government as well as those associated with the agricultural-food sector. This pandemic has emerged several new challenges to the agricultural sector but has given us time to think and strategize things for better management in future. Suggestions have also been made to adopt alternate approaches and work in this newly created world with the ability of better resource handling.