Resilience, endogenous policy responses to COVID-19, and their impacts on farm performance

Tharcisse Guedegbe; Adesoji Adelaja; Justin George

doi:10.1016/j.worlddev.2023.106254

Resilience, endogenous policy responses to COVID-19, and their impacts on farm performance

World Dev. 2023 Aug:168:106254. doi: 10.1016/j.worlddev.2023.106254. Epub 2023 Apr 6.

Authors

Tharcisse Guedegbe¹, Adesoji Adelaja², Justin George²

Affiliations

¹ Africa Fellow and Consultant at the World Bank, Washington DC, USA.
² Department of Agricultural, Food and Resource Economics (AFRE), Michigan State University (MSU), East Lansing, MI, USA.

Abstract

Policy measures aimed at containing the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic had unintended consequences on economic activities globally. In this study, we isolate and investigate the short-term partial impacts of six such measures on the farm and nonfarm incomes of agricultural households and examine the related resilience factors. Using Nigeria as a case study, we find that the COVID containment measures had mixed effects on farm and non-farm incomes in the short run. These varying effects are due to households' resilience and vulnerability factors, including land size, wealth, income diversification, involvement in processing activities, and reliance on hired labor. Our findings highlight the need for more targeted health crisis containment measures which consider the uniqueness, diversity, and regional heterogeneity of agriculture, especially the potential implications for farm viability.

Keywords: COVID-19; Containment measures; Curfews; Lockdowns; Pandemic; Policies; Resilience; Shocks; Stay-at-home.