With the unique mimicry of the sensory experiences of meats, the plant-based meat alternatives (PBMA) appeal to consumers outside the traditional vegetarian demographics. This study analyzes market expenditure data from 2017 to 2020 to evaluate the demand for PBMA in relation to meats. Results show that PBMA is a complement for beef and pork while a substitute for chicken, turkey, and fish. Although the current market demand for PBMA is still incomparable with meats, the growth of PBMA sales is significant. This study sheds light on marketing strategies and policies towards the future of PBMA and the fresh meat sector.

Using administrative records from Missouri, we investigate the characteristics of Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) participants aged 60 and older who experience administrative churn. Among these adults, 1 in 4 experienced administrative churn, and 1 in 5 experienced more than one spell of churn. Risk of churn, frequency, duration of churn spells, and the value of foregone SNAP benefits varied with individual, household, and geographic characteristics, and was more common among non-whites, members of larger households, and those living in urban areas. Our findings suggest that a significant portion of older adults experience gaps in SNAP benefit receipt.

This paper examines the payments made to minority producers, focused on African American producers, from the COVID-19 program, Coronavirus Food Assistance Program (CFAP), of the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) and compares it with one of the other more recent ad hoc program payments, the Market Facilitation Program (MFP). There were two rounds of the CFAP, and combinedly (as of March 2022), the program made direct payments of $31.0 billion ($11.8 billion from CFAP 1 and $19.2 billion from CFAP 2) starting in 2020. The MFP made a total payment of $23.5 billion (in two rounds, MFP 2018 and MFP 2019) to producers affected by the retaliatory tariffs placed on US producers by trade partners across multiple years. CFAP made almost $600 million in direct payments to minority producers, including Black or African American producers. Black or African American only producers received more than $52 million in CFAP payments. CFAP payments were proportional to the value of agricultural commodity sold for most minority producers. The 2017 Census of Agriculture showed that the majority of minority producers, including African American producers but excluding Asian producers, raised livestock. CFAP made the highest payments to livestock minority producers. The CFAP payment distribution pattern shows that payments reached minority producers who often did not receive Government payments. CFAP made more payments and as a share of total program outlays to minority producers compared to MFP. However, for Black or African American only producers, even though the magnitude increased (because CFAP disbursed more funds compared to MFP), the share of payment received did not increase.

The COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 caused unprecedented shocks to agricultural food systems, including increased risk to worker health, labor-related input costs, and production uncertainty. Despite employer precautions, there were numerous worksite outbreaks of COVID-19. This paper examines the relationship between month-to-month variation in historical agricultural employment and changes in the incidence of confirmed COVID-19 cases and deaths within U.S. counties from April to August 2020. The results show that employment of 100 additional workers in fruit, vegetable, and horticultural production was associated with 4.5% more COVID-19 cases within counties or an additional 18.65 COVID-19 cases and 0.34 additional COVID-19 deaths per 100,000 individuals in the county workforce.

This project explores the correlates of state variation in food security using data from the 2008 to 2018 Current Population Survey's Food Security Supplements. The focus is on the relationship between state-level availability and accessibility of congregate and home-delivered meal programs, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), the Senior Farmer's Market Nutrition Program (SFMNP) and the Commodity Supplemental Food Program (CSFP) on food security among lower-income households headed by older adults (ages 60 and up). Results show evidence that a senior-specific state level food security infrastructure plays a role in the food security status of households headed by older adults.

The prevalence of food insufficiency among seniors in any given year is well-documented, but the prevalence of this hardship over a longer time period in later life is unknown. Using panel data from the Health and Retirement Study, I find that about 8% of seniors report food insufficiency over a two-year recall window, while 22% experience it at some point over the two decades of their sixties and seventies. Food insufficiency is not concentrated among a small group of persistently disadvantaged elderly, but is instead a surprisingly common feature of the later life course.

This paper assesses the determinants of temporary non-tariff measures (NTMs) in response to COVID-19 and their implications for the agricultural and food trade. Using a control function approach, we show that economic and pandemic considerations played an essential role in implementing such NTMs. Relying on variation between treated and untreated varieties, we estimate a dynamic post-event trade response of 5.4% for import facilitating and -27.5% for export restricting NTMs. After revoking them, their trade effects fade away, implying that these temporary trade policies were effective in achieving the set policy goals, causing only a limited degree of long-term trade disruptions.

The COVID-19 pandemic initially caused worldwide concerns about food insecurity. Tweets analyzed in real-time may help food assistance providers target food supplies to where they are most urgently needed. In this exploratory study, we use natural language processing to extract sentiments and emotions expressed in food security-related tweets early in the pandemic in U.S. states. The emotion dominated in these tweets nationally, but only , , and were also statistically correlated with contemporaneous food insufficiency rates reported in the Household Pulse Survey; more nuanced and statistically stronger correlations are detected within states, including a negative correlation with joy.

Given coronavirus 2019 (COVID-19), we empirically investigate whether consumers are willing to pay for greater sustainability and safer working conditions in food supply chains. We elicit consumer valuation via two consumer choice survey experiments and revealed preferences using mixed Logit discrete choice models. We find that consumers have a significant positive average valuation towards sustainability, but may require an average compensation to choose products produced under safer working conditions. Policy implications suggest a market-based potential to nudge consumer segments who desire value congruence in their diet, namely, by revealing information through labeling.

The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic's first wave led to declining mental health and life satisfaction outcomes for college students, especially women. While women in undergraduate agricultural programs outperformed men academically prior to and during the pandemic, the achievement may have come at personal cost, especially for those women with fewer personal and environmental resiliency resources. Our research objective was to expand on personal, social, and environmental factors linked with lower mental health and life satisfaction scores for students in agriculture during the pandemic. We measured the influence of such factors across gender-based mental health and life satisfaction outcomes. Our data were collected from 2030 students using an on-line survey across six land-grant university college of agriculture in agriculturally as many distinct regions of the United States. We estimated OLS and Ordered Probit models of their mental health and life satisfaction self-assessments. Our findings reveal students' mental health and life satisfaction were reduced due to a paucity of personal (e.g., less future orientation or graduate school aspirations, food and housing insecurity, and personal health risks) and environmental (e.g., lower quality on-line learning experiences, isolation, family health risk, discrimination experiences) resiliency resources. Our results suggest women were more likely than men to be adversely affected by reduced resiliency resources. These findings suggest university emergency response policies need to address students' needs for housing and food security, on-line course development and delivery, tele health and mental health resources, broad social inclusion and diversity to decrease risk of female attrition and support all students in agricultural degree programs.

The COVID-19 pandemic prompted social distancing, workplace closures, and restrictions on mobility and trade that had cascading effects on economic activity, food prices, and employment in low- and middle-income countries. Using longitudinal data from Bangladesh, Kenya, and Nigeria covering a period from October 2020 to April 2021, the paper assesses whether knowledge of a person infected with COVID-19 is associated with food insecurity, job loss and business closures, and coping strategies to smooth consumption. The likelihood of households to experience food insecurity at the extensive and intensive margins increased among those who knew an infected person in Bangladesh and Kenya.

We assess the economic and health costs of COVID and policy responses to COVID. Based on initial estimates of health and economic costs, social distancing policies were justified, but these estimates now seem too high because of learning by doing. Significant differences in mortality rates across US states and countries can be explained by population density, climate, exposure, and policy. Regions that were able to contain the disease early have seen fewer deaths and lower economic losses. Some developing countries initially imposed drastic, costly measures, perhaps motivated by political economy. We also find that there has been underinvestment in prevention and mitigation that could have reduced the cost of adaptation and suggest that there is a lesson for climate change policies.

Both COVID-19 pandemic-related restrictions and recessionary employment loss severely impacted US food sales during 2020. This article estimates the historical relationship between food expenditures and employment at the county level. Using these estimates, we simulate the impact of the loss of employment on food sales and find that, on average, employment loss increased food-at-home (FAH) sales by 1.3% and decreased food-away-from-home (FAFH) sales by 0.5% in 2020. We argue differences to the actual 4.8% increase in FAH sales and 19.5% decrease in FAFH sales in 2020 likely stem from the more drastic COVID-19 pandemic-related restrictions and behavioral changes.

We examine the impact of pesticide exposure on crop worker health and earnings using 2002 through 2016 data from the US Department of Labor, Employment, and Training Administration's National Agricultural Workers Survey. Our findings show that pesticide exposure is positively related to certain health conditions and that wage patterns are consistent with compensating wage differentials. The offsetting impacts of these equilibrium aspects are limited by how wage premia for assumed health risks depend on worker bargaining power and agency. We document differences for undocumented versus documented workers with implications for compensation and occupational health policies in this labor-intensive, essential sector.

COVID-19 has led to an unprecedented reduction in demand for energy for transportation and electricity, a crash in prices and employment in the fossil fuel industries and record-breaking reductions in global carbon emissions. This paper discusses whether this "demand destruction" could spell the beginning of the end for fossil fuels or a temporary recession and the imperative to recover from the current crisis by "building back better" and not the same as before. There are encouraging signs for the renewable energy industry that could make COVID-19 a cloud with a silver lining; whether this is the case will depend not only on the technological realities and social response to the crisis but also on political will and foresight.

An outbreak of COVID-19 among farmworkers could have significant impacts on the workers, agricultural producers, and the consumers. Farmers are implementing new labor management practices to slow the spread of the virus among workers. Since immigration is temporarily restricted, farmers may have difficulty securing a sufficient workforce. We test whether changes in the unemployment rate affected H-2A guest worker demand before the pandemic and find a statistically significant negative impact. Nevertheless, we expect that H-2A recruitment will be vital to sustaining agricultural production. We conclude by discussing potential long-term impacts of the pandemic on farm labor supply and demand.

COVID-19 has had unprecedented effects on the US economy, in large part because of its effects on workers. Within food and agriculture, these effects pose the greatest threat to the production of labor-intensive commodities-in particular, fruits and vegetables, the production of which tends to require large numbers of workers for harvesting and packing. We econometrically estimate the effects of COVID-19 on fruit and vegetable production as the US agricultural labor supply is adversely affected by this pandemic. The major crop losses include $16 million in lettuce, $5 million in apples, and $4 million in grapes.

The COVID-19 pandemic has altered life in innumerable ways in many countries across the globe. In this article I review what the virus did to patterns of US and Brazilian exports of major commodities during the first surge of the virus during April and May 2020, and also speculate on what may happen during the beginning of North American winter in late 2020. The analysis highlights how grains versus meats have been vulnerable to trade disruptions due to the coronavirus pandemic. US exports of beef and pork were particularly impacted by a wave of processing facility shutdowns in the wake of COVID-19 outbreaks among workers. Poultry exports saw declines from their highs but remain strong, even though poultry-processing facilities have also faced issues with outbreaks and shutdowns. Trends in 2020 grain and oilseed exports have not been affected by the pandemic.

The digital divide limits opportunities for those without ready access to Internet. Movement online of essential activities during COVID-19 took inadequate Internet service from inconvenient to emergency/crisis for many households. A negative correlation between rurality and Internet speed was found at the county level, highlighting the struggle for rural areas. Schools tackle challenges of providing equitable educational access by attempting to provide access for students, while even households with service available struggle to maintain sufficient speeds and/or can afford it. Essential activities moved online, yet sufficient Internet is an essential public service that remains unattainable for many US households.

The COVID-19 pandemic presented a severe crisis to the agricultural sector and the economy at large. To confront it, the administration and Congress had to mobilize vast resources very quickly and introduce creative emergency measures to mitigate the unprecedented impacts on the economy. This article takes a closer look at the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on the agricultural sector and the policy measures that USDA implemented to help farmers and ranchers weather the immediate crisis.

Although the COVID-19 pandemic resulted in about a 24% decline in India's GDP during the April-June 2020 quarter, the nation's agricultural sector, somewhat surprisingly, seems to have done remarkably well. This paper examines whether the public transfer program (PMGKY), announced immediately after the lockdown, benefited farmers in dealing with the COVID shock. Overall, 95% of the smallholders received support from at least one of PMGKY's four components. Direct cash transfers had significantly more impact than in-kind transfer schemes. The result shows that farmers receiving cash transfers under PM-KISAN, one component of PMGKY, were more likely to invest in buying seeds. In contrast, farmers receiving cash transfers under PM-UY, another piece of PMGKY, were more likely to invest in fertilizer and pesticides. Finally, smallholders who received benefits from all four components of PMGKY were more likely to invest in purchasing seeds, fertilizer, and pesticides. Findings suggest the fungibility of public cash transfers from the recent PMGKY scheme is significant in alleviating credit constraints and increasing future investments in modern inputs.