How COVID-19 Drives Higher Levels of Hunger and Malnutrition

To say COVID-19 has had an impact on the world is an understatement. Not only has the virus wreaked havoc on public health and the economy, but the stability of food systems and the ability for many people, now unemployed, to purchase food. 

As a result, COVID-19 is driving up hunger and malnutrition in hunger hotspots and creating new epicenters of hunger across the world. By the end of 2020, it’s estimated that 12,000 people per day could die from COVID-19 linked hunger issues. It may even kill more people than the virus itself.

While many food manufacturers at the top are continuing to churn a profit, COVID-19 sheds light on the factors that have drastically shaped the world’s broken food system.

COVID-19 Fuels Hunger

People were already dying from starvation due to war, the climate crisis, inequality and a flawed food system. Millions more are experiencing hunger and malnutrition as unemployment and a major economic slump are brought on by the pandemic. Here are some factors contributing to the current landscape of global hunger:

Mass Unemployment

On top of severe movement restrictions, the slowdown of economic activity has led to mass job losses over the past several months. With a lack of income and social support, millions of people worldwide cannot afford to eat. Estimates from the International Labour Organization show 305 million full-time jobs have been lost due to the pandemic, with women and young people hit particularly hard. As a result, nearly half a billion people could be pushed into poverty. Across the world, 61 percent of people work in the informal sector, making up domestic workers, street vendors, delivery drivers and daily wage laborers on construction sites. However, all these jobs have been hit hard by the pandemic causing poor job security and no access to the benefits that come with formal employment, like health insurance.

Food Production Pushed to the Edge

Across developing countries, small-scale producers (mainly women) form the backbone of the world’s local food systems. They produce food and provide employment, but they are among the most affected by hunger brought on by the pandemic. Travel restrictions that contain the spread, and illness among workers, impact farmers who have been unable to plant and harvest crops or access markets to sell their crops or buy seeds and other farming products. In pastoralist communities, they cannot move their animals toward seasonal sources of food and water, which ultimately affects their health and livestock. Even when the lockdown was easing, many producers face difficulties. For instance, many small-scale farmers loan their land as collateral, but there is now a fear that failed harvests could see them losing their lands. In other cases, land deal consultations have continued causing an increased risk of land grabs.

Limited Humanitarian Aid

Humanitarian assistance has become more difficult to give during the pandemic. Restrictions on movement, people and supplies on top of the precautions required to protect public health during aid distribution, is slowing efforts to reach people in need of food. In some countries like Mauritania and Chad, aid agencies have had to limit or suspend humanitarian aid. 

Currently, about 24 percent of the COVID-19 Global Humanitarian Response Plan (GHRP) that requires $7.3 billion has been funded. Only 9 percent of the funding required to limit food insecurity has been pledged. In Yemen, rations were halved for 8.5 million people in the northern part of the country and Afghanistan has received only 6 percent of the total $60 million they need to fund food security programs due to the onslaught of COVID-19.

Financial cuts are greatly impairing the ability of agencies like Oxfam to respond timely when the COVID-19 has exacerbated hunger. Institutional donors have also been slow to process and local humanitarian organizations on the COVID-19 frontline have limited funding.

A Broken Food System

Before the pandemic occurred, the model for agricultural production relied heavily on chemical inputs to grow crops for export. However, it failed to offer food security and improve poverty for millions of people across the globe. Huge inequalities show that small-scale farmers who grow more than 70 percent of the food consumed by people living in Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa, along with the 1.7 billion people who work on farms, plantations and fishing boats are still not able to produce enough food to help others escape hunger.

Governments in lower-income countries have failed to invest in agriculture and rural economies, leaving small producers without the information, infrastructure and technological means to access markets, improve productivity or technology and more. As a result, the pandemic has caused these situations to drastically worsen as the virus spread makes people ill and unable to work and as social distancing rules take hold to prevent that spread.

Governments must take action to control the spread of the coronavirus, but urgent action is also required to end the growing hunger epidemic. By focusing on better ways to provide emergency assistance and new models to more resilient and sustainable food systems that work for all people and the planet, we can start to slow the increase of hunger caused by the coronavirus pandemic. While this will take time now, action to rebuild these systems is required not only while we await a vaccine but also to build long-lasting improvement against hunger worldwide.