Sustainability of the agri-food supply chain amidst the pandemic: Diversification, local input production, and consumer behavior

The COVID 19 pandemic was a two-edged sword; it exacerbated the already inefficient agri-food system but, in doing that, made us reflect, rethink possible and sustainable solutions to address SDG's 1, 2, 11, and 5. A lot has been written on the immediate effect of the pandemic on different crops/animals and nodes of the value chain. In this chapter, we look at the negative and positive effect of the pandemic on sustainability in the context of a dynamic agri-food chain focusing on areas of localized input supply and food system sustainability, diversification, and Resilience, and consumer behavior Surveys were carried out in May/June, 2020 to understand the effects of COVID 19 on the agri-food system in Southern, West, Central, and Eastern Africa and strategies to secure sustainable solutions and resulting policy implications. For this chapter, we reflect on the results from 10 countries from Southern and Eastern Africa. Results show that farmers in Eastern Africa had a diverse portfolio of processed livestock products than those in Southern Africa. Secondly, most farmers in Eastern Africa had diverse processed products. Thus, product diversification created resilience capacities for dairy systems. Diversity in access to inputs also increased the resilience and sustainability of supplies during precarious periods. The findings also reveal that sustainable consumer behavior during pandemics goes beyond responsible consumption. Instead, consumers need to rethink and devise consumption models that alleviate the food consumption-related effects of the pandemics and increase the availability and consumption of alternative products with social, economic, health, and environmental impacts.