Impact of COVID‐19 pandemic on agricultural wholesale prices in India: A comparative analysis across the phases of the lockdown

• Published date: 01 November 2020
• Author: Jabir Ali,Waseem Khan
• Date: 01 November 2020
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/pa.2402

ACADEMIC PAPER

Impact of COVID-19 pandemic on agricultural wholesale

prices in India: A comparative analysis across the phases of the

lockdown

Jabir Ali

1

|Waseem Khan

2

1

Economics and Business Environment, Indian

Institute of Management, Jammu, Jammu and

Kashmir, 180016, India

2

Institute of Business Management, GLA

University, Mathura, India

Correspondence

Jabir Ali, Economics and Business

Environment, Indian Institute of Management

Jammu, Jammu and Kashmir, India.

Email: jabirali@live.in

This paper attempts to analyse the impact of COVID-19 lockdown on wholesale

prices of the agricultural commodities particularly fruits and vegetables in the Union

Territory of Jammu and Kashmir, India. This study is based on the daily data collected

from AGMARKNET of all major agricultural markets under the Agricultural Produce

Market Committee (APMC). The difference in weighted wholesale prices has been

analysed before and during COVID-19 and across various phases of the lockdown.

The analysis of the difference in the weighted average wholesale prices across mar-

kets and commodities has shown a mixed response. The most hydrating perishable

fresh fruits and vegetables with high water content have faced a significant decline in

wholesale prices during the lockdown. On the contrary, other perishable fruits and

vegetables have realized a gain in the average wholesale prices. The weighted aver-

age wholesale price has also declined over the phases of the lockdown. This study

provides timely feedback for preparing all the stakeholders of the agricultural market-

ing chain to understand and formulate coping strategies to make the system resilient.

1|INTRODUCTION

The Union Territory of Jammu and Kashmir is one of the emerging

destinations for policy interventions through the Federal government

after the abrogation of Article 370 of the constitution of India. The

Central Government came up with a special development package of

Rs 80,000 crore for implementing more than 50 central schemes to all

the people of Jammu and Kashmir for ensuring equal opportunities,

educational and economic development, employment creation, and

industrial development in the new Union Territory. The economy of

Jammu and Kashmir is agrarian in nature and has been experiencing a

structural change over the years (Wani et al., 2015). The share of agri-

culture in the overall economy of the Union Territory has declined

from 30% in the year 2000–2001 to 16% in the year 2018–2019.

However, the agriculture sector still supports a huge population for

livelihood and employment. The composition of the agriculture sector

indicates that crop husbandry comprises about half of the agriculture

and allied sector followed by animal husbandry and forestry.

The COVID-19 has impacted the global economy significantly

including India. Few of the recent researches have tried to analyze the

implications of COVID-19 pandemics on agricultural productions and

supply chain globally (Pu & Zhong, 2020; Kumar, Padhee, &

Kumar, 2020; Gillespie, 2020; Galanakis, 2020; Singh & Neog, 2020;

Solomon, Pratap, & Swapna, 2020; Weersink, von Massow, &

McDougall, 2020; Sharma, Talan, & Jain, 2020; Zhang et al, 2020). Pu

and Zhong (2020) argued that unreasonable restrictions would block

the outflow channels of agricultural products, hinder necessary pro-

duction inputs, destroy production cycles, and finally undermine pro-

duction capacity and suggested that there is a need to ensure

effective logistics for agricultural products, ensure effective supply of

critical inputs, provide various supports to agricultural production and

farmers and make use of innovative methods to promote sales such

as e-tailing. Kumar et al. (2020) argued that the vulnerabilities in agri-

cultural supply chains and depleted workforces caused by the COVID-

19 crisis have hurt farms of all sizes in India. They emphasized on the

need for agricultural market reforms and implementation of digital

solutions to connect farmers to markets, to create safety nets for

them, and to ensure reasonable working conditions through

decentralized agri-food systems to make them more resilient to the

risk and uncertainty. Hobbs (2020) assessed the implications of the

Received: 28 July 2020Revised: 8 August 2020Accepted: 15 August 2020

DOI: 10.1002/pa.2402

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https://doi.org/10.1002/pa.2402