​Impact of COVID-19 Lockdown on Indian Agriculture: A Review

More than 10 million laborer have been displaced from their usual workplaces during the suddenly announced lockdown by the government of India in 2020 in order to prevent and control the spread of one of the deadliest diseases of our times namely; COVID 19, popularly known as Sars Corona Virus in March - June 2020; as per the official figures provided by the GOI. There has not been a single sector that remained unaffected from the devastating impacts of COVID-19, not even agriculture. The impact of lockdown on agriculture is hard to measure as it involves a complex relationship between multiple direct and indirect factors like labour availability, lack of supply of raw materials from the agro-industrial sector etc. The lockdown period created severe economic implications (negative) for farmers (small, marginal and large), landless laborer and all the other agricultural stakeholders who had to face new challenges for earning their livelihood. The direct loss to the agriculture sector was estimated to multi-corers by various government officials while the indirect losses may be many folds of the direct loss. The marginal income of laborers in the agriculture sector was believed to be coming close to zero due to lockdown conditions. In addition to this, smart investments, improved technologies and standardized model frameworks must be designed for the agriculture sector to combat the COVID 19 impact. The current analytical review is focused on all the major factors associated with the agriculture sector that have been highly impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic, ranging from production, storage to procurement and selling. The lockdown has choked off almost all economic activities. In urban areas, COVID-19 forced widespread loss of jobs and incomes for informal workers. Estimated by the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy, unemployment shot up from 8.4% in mid-March to 23% in the first week of April 2020 further soaring to 30.9% by the end of April, 2020. We have also looked into the possible strategies that can be taken into consideration by the government as well as those associated with the agricultural-food sector. This pandemic has emerged several new challenges to the agricultural sector but has given us time to think and strategize things for better management in future. Suggestions have also been made to adopt alternate approaches and work in this newly created world with the ability of better resource handling.

Vaccines against the cold chain

Vaccines require continuous refrigeration to retain their efficacy as most vaccine components are derived from mammalian or microbial origin which are thermally unstable. Continuous refrigeration, known as the vaccine cold chain, comes at a cost that directly correlates to the standard of infrastructure that is available. A break in the cold chain caused by poor infrastructure can result in direct loss of functionality in these lifesaving medicines. Therefore, several approaches have been suggested to mitigate these losses. Not only will these benefit general healthcare via improved shelf-life but also enhanced resistance to thermal fluctuations and, in some cases, improved drug target localisation. In this minireview, we highlight trends in vaccine thermal stabilisation and look to the future for cold chain logistics.

Bruchus pisorum (pea weevil).

The pea weevil is a small insect (up to 5 mm long) with good flight possibilities. The adults may fly up to 5 km in search of pea flowers. The larvae develop within a single pea seed; the pupae and newly emerged adults also remain there, so the pest is easily spread all over the world in seed (grain) trade. This is the reason why the pest can be found everywhere that pea is cultivated. It may be invasive in tropical, subtropical and warmer parts of temperate zones. It only has one generation per year, but is a prevalent pest on pea in many countries, causing considerable damage. Infestation by the pest causes economic losses, partly due to the direct loss of seed contents consumed by the pest and partly due to the fact that weevil-damaged seed has a lower germination rate and fetches a lower unit price.

THE STRUCTURE OF EXCESS MORTALITY DUE TO THE NOVEL CORONAVIRUS INFECTION PANDEMIC IN URBAN AND RURAL RESIDENTS

Significance. The pandemic of the novel coronavirus infection has further exacerbated the demographic problem in the Russian Federation, which was especially acute in rural areas. However, according to official data, only one third of the excess mortality in 2020 is accounted for by COVID-19. Purpose: to compare the structure of mortality growth in urban and rural residents and determine differences in loss associated with the COVID-19 pandemic. Material and methods. Based on the Rosstat preliminary data, the author has analyzed increase in the number of deaths per 100,000 population in 2020 compared to 2019 among males and females residing in urban and rural areas of the Russian Federation. The indicators were compared by major classes of death causes and individual diseases across the following three age groups: 15-49 years, 50-64 years, and 65 years and older. Comparison was carried out by the Chi-square test. Results. Among the urban and rural population the death rate increased by 20.6% and 15.4%, respectively; the COVID-19 mortality equaled to 109.4 and 67.5 per 100,000 population; the share of COVID-19 in the increased total mortality added up to 44.6% and 33.0%, respectively. Among urban residents, the frequency of deaths from COVID-19 in males exceeds the female one 1.8 times in population aged 15-49, 2.0 times in population aged 50-64 and 65 +; among rural residents, these values equal to 1.2, 1.4 and 1.8, respectively. Conclusion. In the structure of excess mortality associated with the spread of the novel coronavirus infection that accounted for almost one fifth of deaths in 2019, the share of direct loss due to COVID-19 is underestimated. The direct loss associated with co-infection with SARS-CoV-2 virus can be traced at the population level, starting from the age of 65 in males and 50 years in females, in case of deaths from diseases of the nervous system, coronary heart disease, chronic diseases of the lower respiratory tract and diseases of the pancreas. With a lower level of excess mortality among rural population, its quarter is accounted for by indirect loss due to the pandemic associated with the decreased access to medical care. In the structure of excess mortality among urban population, indirect loss accounts for about one tenth, and is mainly due to consequences of stress associated with the pandemic and forced isolation. Signs of incomplete examination of the deceased in older age groups to determine the death causes, especially among rural residents, have been identified.

Association between Fur Animal Necrotizing Pyoderma in breeding farm mink (Neovison vison) and reduced fertility

Background The disease Fur Animal Necrotizing Pyoderma (FNP) has since 2000 been reported in many fur producing countries including Canada, Finland and Denmark. Development of FNP is characterised by rapidly forming treatment-resistant wounds on paws and in the head region. Economic losses related to FNP have been associated with mortality and decreased fur quality as well as increased veterinary costs. Also it has been suggested that FNP may be associated with reduced production results for breeding mink. The aim of this study was to evaluate if there is an association between FNP lesions in breeding animals and reduced production results based on a retrospective cohort study. Results 1465 breeding animals (244 males and 1221 females) were followed during the breeding season 2019 on five Danish mink farms. Two farms were removed from the analysis since no occurrence of FNP appeared in the observation group. After exclusion, 846 breeding animals (148 males and 698 females) remained in the analysis and were divided into two groups: exposed (EXP) or non-exposed (N-EXP) depending on the disease history of the males during mating. Females exposed to FNP positive males during breeding in average produce 14% fewer kits (P = 0.032) and these females were also more than double as likely to produce small litters (N ≥ 3) than N-EXP females. Female’s from the EXP group were introduced more times to males than females in the N-EXP group (P = 0.0001, 2.5 more times in average). Females in the EXP group did not have a statistically higher risk of becoming barren (P = 0.138) though the relative risk of becoming barren was 77% higher after encountering a FNP male. Conclusions This study shows that FNP has more economic losses for the farms than direct loss of animals. Females in contact with males with FNP lesion during breeding have a higher risk of becoming barren, and produce significantly fewer kits compared to females whom haven’t been in contact with a FNP positive male.

Residential Flood Loss Assessment and Risk Mapping from High-Resolution Simulation

Since the patterns of residential buildings in the urban area are small-sized and dispersed, this study proposes a high-resolution flood loss and risk assessment model to analyze the direct loss and risk impacts caused by floods. The flood inundation simulation with a fine digital elevation model (DEM) provides detailed estimations of flood-inundated areas and their corresponding inundation depths during the 2016 Typhoon Megi and 2017 Typhoon Haitang. The flood loss assessment identifies the impacts of both events on residential areas. The depth-damage table from surveys in the impacted area was applied. Results indicated that the flood simulation with the depth-damage table is an effective way to assess the direct loss of a flood disaster. The study also showed the effects of spatial resolution on the residential loss. The results indicated that the low-resolution model easily caused the estimated error of loss in dispersed residential areas when compared with the high-resolution model. The analytic hierarchy process (AHP), as a multi-criteria decision-making method, was used to identify the weight factor for each vulnerability factor. The flood-vulnerable area was mapped using natural and social vulnerability factors, such as high-resolution DEM, distance to river, distance to fire station, and population density. Eventually, the flood risk map was derived from the vulnerability and flood hazard maps to present the risk level of the flood disaster in the residential areas.

Response to Discussion by Muneta Yokomatsu on Kuniyoshi Takeuchi and Shigenobu Tanaka: Recovery from Catastrophe and Building Back Better, JDR Vol.11 No.6, pp. 1190-1201, Dec. 2016

Mr. Yokomatsu provided valuable comments on the paper JDR Vol.11 No.6, pp. 1190-1201 by Takeuchi and Tanaka. The discusser claims that if “direct loss” is defined as a “loss of assets (capital stock)” and “indirect loss” as a “loss of postdisaster production decline,” then the sum of the two as the “total loss” of a disaster contains a double count of disaster loss, because the “value of assets (capital stock)” for “direct loss” is the present value of an output to be produced in the future by the assets, which is nothing but “indirect loss.” This is a misunderstanding caused by an ambiguous definition of the term “loss of assets.” In order to avoid such misunderstanding, the authors clarify the definition by elaborating the content of “total loss” = “direct loss” + “indirect loss” as the “total loss of assets” = “loss of the physical acquisition cost of assets” + “loss of the potential production profit of assets.”