Update to agriculture, transportation, and the COVID-19 crisis

Abstract

One year into the largest economic and health event of the past 70 years, this paper considers how agricultural supply chains and agricultural transportation have been impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. Written as an update to Gray (2020), we are able to show that agricultural transportation systems have proven to be extremely robust and were able to innovate in real-time to address challenges in the agricultural and food supply chains. We are also able confirm that most of the transportation components are well-equipped to deal with the remainder of the pandemic and the recovery phase. Notably, innovation created new services, cost-saving technologies, safety innovations, new institutions, networks, and channels of communication that operated effectively to address the pandemic. These changes are likely to remain in place post pandemic.