Evaluating Agricultural Food Supply Chain Resilience in the Context of the COVID-19 Pandemic

Introduction

Since COVID-19 was declared a global pandemic by the World Health Organization (WHO), the virus has rapidly spread to almost every country in the world (WHO, 2020). Due to the high transmissibility of the virus, governments worldwide have implemented inhibition and control measures to contend against the outbreak, including self-isolation and maintaining social distance. However, these measures have caused severe border restrictions and blockades (Grida et al., 2020). At the same time, consumption has been suppressed in the short-term, and cross-border investment has been significantly delayed.

The outbreak of COVID-19 and the suppression measures taken by countries have put the global food system at an unprecedented risk (FAO, 2020). Taking China as an example, the blockade policy was implemented in Wuhan on 23 January 2020. On 29 January, 31 provinces and municipalities in China launched a Level I response. During this period, offline agricultural product stores were generally closed or semi-closed, resulting in a sharp decline in agricultural product sales in the short term (Figure 1). Small-scale producers were hardest hit by the loss of income (Workie et al., 2020). Simultaneously, the supply of agricultural products was suspended due to logistics and road blockages (Pu & Zhong, 2020). The epidemic also restricted labor movement, leading to a shortage of labor that disrupted planting, harvest, and other agricultural activities, and resulting in further economic losses (Balwinder-Singh et al., 2020).

The various problems caused by the epidemic pose significant challenges to supply chain resilience. The definition of supply chain resilience is the ability of the supply chain to resume operation after being disrupted (Reyes Levalle & Nof, 2017). Many studies have been carried out to explore supply chain resilience (White & Censlive, 2020). However, there have been some specific changes in the resilience structure of Agricultural Food Supply Chains (AFSC) affected by the epidemic. Therefore, in order to reduce the negative impact of the COVID-19 epidemic on AFSC, companies need to identify and analyze the main criteria that affect the resilience of AFSC. This research aims to answer three research questions: (1) In the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, what are the criteria for enhancing the resilience of AFSC? (2) What are the interrelationships between these criteria? (3) Which criteria have the greatest impact on the resilience of AFSC and require further analysis to support the future development of enterprises?

The organization of the remaining paper is as follows. The methodology for evaluating the resilience criteria and sub-criteria is discussed in Section 2. In Section 3, the procedures and results of the fuzzy Decision-making Trial and Evaluation Laboratory (DEMATEL) and the Analytic Network Process (ANP) are analyzed comprehensively. Section 4 introduces the key findings and managerial implications. Section 5 presents the conclusion of this article.

Figure 1.

Decline in sales of agricultural products in China during the COVID-19 outbreak. Notes: Data from National Data Service Platform of Agricultural and Rural Response to COVID-19, http://snsj.agri.cn/market-operation.

Methodology

This study is divided into three stages to evaluate the resilience criteria and sub-criteria of AFSC in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. In the first stage, the critical resilience criteria and sub-criteria of AFSC were determined through literature review and expert opinions. In the second stage, the fuzzy DEMATEL method was used to evaluate the interrelations between eighteen sub-criteria, and the Influence Relationship Matrix (IRM) was obtained according to their interrelations. The IRM was used as a network relation map for the ANP process. In the final phase, the ANP method was adapted to evaluate the weights of resilience criteria and sub-criteria.