Response and resilience of agricultural value chain to COVID-19 pandemic in India and Thailand

COVID-19 has had a profound impact on agriculture, nutrition, and consumption impacting food system value chain, creating shortage of labor, and increasing food inflation. Global lockdown leading to logistic restrictions has forced the producers and consumers to explore new markets. Despite various social protection systems and safety nets, informal sector has been vulnerable, bearing the brunt in dealing with the challenges till their livelihood return to normal. Double disasters greatly impact small island developing states or other nonagrarian economies that are highly vulnerable to food insecurity. FAO predicts that undernourished people could rise between 83 million to 132 million in 2020 due to pandemic. Despite the challenges some stakeholders across the value chain have experienced positive returns. This chapter would take a stock of positive and negative implications on various stakeholders in agriculture and food system value chain in India and Thailand. It would share cases, where digital technologies reacted rapidly to mitigate the impact and highlight additional strategies to build resilient agriculture systems in the future.