Food supply chains and resilience to shocks: evidence from India's COVID-19 lockdown

We study the disruption of food supply to households and reduced farm‐to‐market arrivals in India's food supply chain during the COVID‐19 lockdown. We focus on the relationship between logistics quality (and performance) and the intensity of disruptions across India's states. We find four policy‐relevant findings: (1) Food consumption expenditure was higher in states with better logistics quality; (2) These states recovered more quickly from farm‐to‐market disruptions with higher agricultural market arrivals in the later phases of the lockdown; (3) Rural food supply chains turned out to be as vulnerable as urban ones; and (4) Expenditure on cereals and pulses faced large reductions.