Since the fisheries industry relies heavily on international trade, regulations and restrictions on movement and distribution taken as a countermeasure against the pandemic of the new coronavirus infectious disease (COVID-19) have caused a sharp chill in the seafood market. The seafood value chain is at risk due to declining consumer demand. Due to lack of supplies, it is still difficult to secure an appropriate working environment to prevent COVID-19 infection. Under such circumstances, the movement of the fisheries industry is beginning to take place in anticipation of the post-pandemic, including the construction of a new direct sales system.

On May 18, 2020, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) published the report “Addressing the impacts of COVID-19 in food crises April–December 2020”, urging the need for emergency assistance by the international community, and emphasizing that prevention of the food crisis could not wait for the resolution of the health crisis, and instead, precautionary measures to protect lives and improve access to food would be necessary.

The spread of COVID-19 is creating a shortage of imported fruits in Japan. Normally, 40% of international cargo including fresh foods such as fruits and vegetables and high value-added agricultural products are transported in an efficient global supply chain utilizing the airline networks spread all over the world. Logistics experts say that the increase in freight costs accompanying the reduction in passenger flights makes international transportation of fruits and vegetables expensive, and producers in emerging countries could be hit when the global rationalization of choice occurs in the "new normal" in the post-COVID-19 era.

The 2020 Global Nutrition Report was released on May 12, 2020 during the time COVID-19 continues to spread around the world. The subtitle of this year's report highlights the impact of inequity in ending all forms of malnutrition, noting that currently, 1 in 9 people are undernourished and 1 in 3 people are overweight. The report was written before the COVID-19 crisis but the pandemic was also mentioned in the foreword in the context that good nutrition is a very important element of defense against COVID-19, thereby calling on governments, businesses and civil society to step up efforts to address all forms of malnutrition.

Madagascar is known for its rich ecosystem and rare flora and fauna, but it is less known that agriculture in this country is based on rice cultivation and rice consumption is more than twice as much rice as Japan. Meanwhile, rice productivity remains stagnant and has hindered poverty reduction in rural areas, making Madagascar one of the poorest countries in the world. Factors that impede rice productivity include the lack of money for fertilizer purchases due to poor farmers, and the poor nutrient environment resulting from weathered soil peculiar to Africa. Therefore, JIRCAS is conducting projects with local research institutes with the aim of developing technology that can improve rice productivity in a stable manner even under conditions where the nutrient supply from fertilizer and soil is small. As a recent research highlight, we developed a localized fertilizer management technique, phosphorus dipping that can efficiently increase rice yields under the typical rice-growing environment of the country.

Although farms are, by their nature, local, much of the rest of the food industry is global. Today people around the world rely more or less on imported food. COVID-19 crisis provides an opportunity to discuss the localization of food systems in an effort to bring food supply and demand closer together. A paper published in Nature Food in April 2020 estimated potential minimum distances between food production and consumption for six crop groups and also examined scenarios of yield improvement and food loss reduction. According to the analysis, less than one-third of the world's population can meet the demand within a radius of 100 km, and for many people the supply-demand distance exceeds 1,000 km, and the food supply must depend on trade. Increasing yields and reducing food loss will favor more local food systems in Africa and Asia, but a global supply chain is still necessary for a stable food supply. The authors hope that this study will not provide policy recommendations, but rather provide an overall picture on which to base discussions about local food systems versus international trade.

As the need for large-scale economic measures against the global economic crisis associated with COVID-19 is being discussed, the calls for "green recoveries" are also gathering momentum. Top U.S. and British economists, including a Nobel laureate and a prominent climate expert, examined economic stimulus policies and surveyed 231 experts from 53 countries. As a result, five policies with high potential on both economic multiplier and climate impact metrics were identified, namely, clean physical infrastructure, building efficiency retrofits, investment in education and training, natural capital investment, and clean R&D. In low- and middle-income countries, it was suggested that rural support spending associated with sustainable agriculture, ecosystem regeneration, or accelerating clean energy installations was more important than the policy on clean R&D.

The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) has published a report, "Comparing Crises: Great Lockdown vs. Great Recession”. The Great Recession of the late 2000s and early 2010s has been described as the worst recession since the Second World War. The economic crisis of the Great Lockdown associated with COVID-19 is expected to exceed the shock of the Great Recession, as it is certain to affect not only high-income countries but also low-income countries. According to the report, the Small Island Developing States (SIDS) will suffer the most from the crisis due to their dependence on food imports, tourism revenues and remittances.

A paper entitled "Future of the human climate niche" was published in the multidisciplinary scientific journal, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), on May 4, 2020. The paper demonstrates that, depending on scenarios of population growth and global warming, a niche suitable for human habitation will shift to higher latitudes on an unprecedented scale in the next 50 years, while population growth will occur in lower latitude regions. As a result, it is expected that a wide range of population distribution and climate mismatches will be amplified, and in the worst case scenario, one-third of the world's population or about 3.5 billion people will be exposed to mean annual temperature of 29 degrees or more. The regions most affected are the poorest regions in the world with low capacity to adapt to climate change, and climate change mitigation measures as well as improving human development should be a top priority.