Livestock Products’ Price Behavior during Covid-19 Pandemic Era in Java, Indonesia

Abstract

The pandemic era of Covid-19 may affect decreasing willingness to pay people in Indonesia, especially for livestock products that consider high-income elastic such as beef, broiler meat, and eggs. A study was conducted to analyze price behaviour on livestock products before and during the Covid-19 pandemic to anticipate future price fluctuations. A total of 480 weekly consumer prices of beef, broiler meat, and eggs had been used in the study from July 2019 until December 2020. The data has been gathered from National Online Market Information System-Livestock by the Food Security Agency of the Ministry of Agriculture divided into two periods, i.e. before March 2020 as a period of non-pandemic and after March 2020 that considered as during pandemic era. Data from six provinces in Java were analyzed in the study. The data used were the prices of three main livestock products, namely beef, broiler meat, and eggs, and weekly data from six provinces in Java (DKI Jakarta, West Java, Central Java, DI Yogyakarta, East Java, and Banten). The results indicated that all provinces in Java were significantly affected by consumer price changes of beef, broiler meat, and eggs (P<0.001). The beef price, region, and time variables and their interactions were significantly affected by price changes (P<0.001). However, the price of eggs has been affected by the time variable (P<0.05), while that of their interaction was not affected significantly (P>0.3). The results indicated that consumers' beef price has the most affected due to the Covid-19 pandemic era in Java, while price eggs and broiler meat were not too affected by price changes.