COVID-19 and Food Security Progress Report

By Jonathan Crush, University Research Professor, and Zhenzhong Si, Postdoctoral Fellow

The Hungry Cities Partnership research team at BSIA, WLU, UW and Nanjing University was recently awarded a CIHR-led Operating Grant under the Canadian 2019 Novel Coronavirus (COVID-19) Rapid Research Funding Opportunity for a project on Assessing and Mitigating the Food Security Consequences of COVID-19 in China. The project is underway and making rapid progress. We therefore wanted to provide the BSIA community with an information update of work in progress. So far, we have:

• • Set up a COVID-19 and Food Security section on the Hungry Cities Partnership website which provides full details of the project and the research team led by Jonathan Crush at BSIA and Taiyang Zhong at Nanjing University.
  • Completed the first phase of fieldwork including an online survey on the impact of COVID-19 and quarantine measures on household food security in the cities of Nanjing and Wuhan in China. The survey examines how the pandemic and its containment measures affect food consumption in Wuhan and Nanjing, and how affected households evaluate the social and policy countermeasures in response to these effects. Over 2,300 respondents participated in the online survey including 1,445 in Nanjing and 919 in Wuhan, the epicentre of COVID-19 in China. We are now in the process of conducting follow-up phone interviews with over 600 online survey participants who expressed their willingness to discuss their personal account of food challenges and strategies during pandemic.
  • Established a Resources database which provides links to media resources on COVID-19 and food security impacts from news outlets around the globe. This resource base curated by Maria Salamone already has over 300 entries and is updated daily with the latest news, commentary and opinions, organized regionally.
  • Curated a section of Blogs from prominent local, national and international scholars and commentators exploring different facets of the relationships between COVID-19, food security and migration. Currently there are 20 blogs posted with new ones added daily. Topics explored include:
    Coronavirus Threat Looms Large for Low-Income Cities
    How COVID-19 May Disrupt Food Supply Chains in Developing Countries
    Preventing Global Food Crisis Caused by COVID-19
    Wars Kill People, Fighting Pandemics Saves ThemBlogs by project personnel include:
    Is It Fair to Blame Unsanitary Wet Market Conditions in China for the Coronavirus Outbreak?
    Lessons from China: Ensuring No One Goes Hungry During Coronavirus Lockdowns
    Will COVID-19 Keep Out of Africa?
    COVID-19 Lockdowns and the Global Migration Regime
  • The HCP Moving on Empty: Food and Migration Facebook page and Twitter accounts curated by Bronwen Dachs in Cape Town contain regular updates on project work as well as more general stories about the relationships between the pandemic, food security and migration in the Global South.
  • The project has garnered considerable media attention and Zhenzhong Si has been interviewed and quoted in a wide range of national and international media outlets.

Please do address any questions about the project to Jonathan Crush at jcrush@balsillieschool.ca