COVID-19 impacts on Flemish food supply chains and lessons for agri-food system resilience

Abstract Context Resilience represents the ability of systems to anticipate, withstand, or adapt to challenges. Times of great stress and disturbance offer opportunity to identify and confirm key contributors to agri-food system resilience. The COVID-19 pandemic and its related consequences constituted major shock, challenging the resilience of many agri-food systems worldwide. Objective This paper aimed to report the immediate effects of the COVID-19 crisis on various key actors from Flemish food supply chains. By analysing and assessing the observed impacts of and reactions to this crisis from a resilience perspective, it also aimed to gain empirical evidence on resilience-enhancing characteristics of agri-food systems to sudden shocks. Methods A first, quantitative step of our mixed method approach measured 718 farmers' experienced impacts and applied strategies following the crisis through an online survey. A second, qualitative step captured impacts and responses from other key actors downstream the food supply chain through 22 in-depth interviews and 18 on-line questionnaires. Data gathering and interpretation followed a conceptual framework for analysing resilience of agri-food systems to external challenges, that we developed based on the literature. The framework states that resilience actions stem from three types of resilience capacities: anticipatory, coping and responsive capacities. These are determined by both resources allocated by system actors, as well as by resilience attributes from the system. Results and conclusions The COVID-19 crisis induced a simultaneous dropped demand for food products in the hospitality industry and risen demand in retail. This shifted demand significantly disturbed food production, processing and marketing processes in terms of labour organization, planning, operation, logistics, and economic returns. Perceived impacts varied extensively across actors from the agri-food system, mostly depending on their marketing strategy, customer base, and flexibility and diversity of their practices. Reported reactions to this crisis revealed that resilience capacities varied according to actors' abilities to negotiate prices, adjust production processes, and maintain or reorient sales. Some agri-food sectors showed higher responsive capacity because of a higher connectivity and self-organization within the system. Significance Our findings suggest that flexibility and diversity, despite their tendency to diminish price optimums, increase resilience capacities, which may be more beneficial to systems for thriving in turbulent and uncertain environments. A more tangible, operationalized understanding of resilience is necessary to effectively improve agri-food system resilience. Our conceptual framework proved a valuable tool for operationalizing resilience assessments to major shocks.