Food supply chains: Business resilience, innovation, and adaptation

Private sector enterprises all along food supply chains must play a central role in food system resilience and transformation; the pandemic revealed some of the sector’s weaknesses and strengths that can help to build greater resilience and reach other Sustainable Development Goals.

Key messages

• The pandemic disrupted food supply chains through government-imposed lockdowns and restrictions, affecting labor supply, input provisioning, logistics, and distribution channels, and shifting consumer demand for food.
• Impacts differed by the degree of integration and modernization of food supply chains.
• “Transitioning” supply chains were the most vulnerable — these chains are long but still poorly integrated, face infrastructure limitations, and are dominated by SMEs that depend heavily on hired labor.
• Traditional supply chains also suffered, but less so being generally short and relying on family labor.
• Modern, integrated supply chains were better positioned to adapt and innovate. Businesses that were able to “pivot” or innovate rapidly fared well, using either their own capacity or intermediaries to expand e-platforms for supply and delivery.
• Ongoing trends, most notably the growth of supermarket-style retail, e-commerce, and food delivery, were accelerated by the pandemic.
• Recent innovations such as e-commerce offer opportunities for SMEs in food supply chains.

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