Roles Played by the Governments on Agricultural Logistics Operations during the COVID-19 Pandemic and Lockdown. A Systematic Literature Review

Abstract

This paper documents the roles played by governments in agricultural logistics operations during the global COVID-19 pandemic and lockdown. Specifically, the paper reports on the roles played by the Chinese Government as a case study for developed countries and the roles played by the East African countries’ governments. Systematic literature review was carried for existing literature published between December 2019 and June 2021. Hence, the study conducted systematically by reviewing related literature on roles played by governments in agricultural logistics operations during the global COVID-19 pandemic and lockdown. The paper found that every government has tried to put efforts to ensure the movement of agricultural products within and across the supply chain partners including exemption of food delivery trucks from road restrictions, fining some price-gouging businesses who seemed to make food less affordable; establishing measures to ensure availability of supplies of agricultural inputs for production, provision of technical services and financial support, introduction of robot delivery and exemptions from Value Added Tax (VAT) to agricultural products and related inputs. This study is review in nature and it based on China and East Africa countries only from December, 2019 to June 2021. So, empirical study is needed on this study. Also, adding study period could improve the quality of results. The study make immense contribution to the existing literature on the role of government in enhancing agricultural logistics amidst global supply chain disruption.