During the shock of the COVID-19 pandemic, the disruption to global value chains caused by social policies (such as lockdowns and mobility restrictions) emerged as the most prominent feature of changes in the external environment. The COVID-19 pandemic exposed the vulnerability of interdependent global value chains. Among the value chains of various industry sectors, the global food value chain is more susceptible, due to its high dependence on labor, seasonality of production, and long turnaround time (Ali et al., 2022). First, the restrictions on the movement of essential inputs such as raw materials and agricultural products in the global food value chain are most directly and obviously associated with agricultural activities. Due to the integration of global value chains, if an exporting country imports inputs from a country that is more severely affected by an epidemic, the country will end up exporting fewer products (Hayakawa and Mukunoki, 2021). In agricultural production, this is manifested as a problem in the supply of inputs such as fertilizers and seeds, which are more deeply involved in the global value chain (Deuss et al., 2021; Emmanuel et al., 2021; Farias et al., 2020). In turn, this problem is transmitted to agricultural outputs downstream in the value chain. In addition, the risk of labor shortages in the context of epidemics involved in global food value chains is also relevant to agricultural activities (Hobbs, 2021), especially as the supply chain disruptions caused by illnesses of workers in large and concentrated sectors, such as meat processing, can simultaneously affect upstream and downstream farming and marketing (Hobbs, 2020; Luckstead and Devadoss, 2020). Ultimately, this widens the spreads in the prices of livestock and the retail prices of meat and animals in the short term, thereby disrupting the normal conduct of agricultural activities.

The direct consequence of the value chain disruption was severe global food insecurity (Swinnen and McDermott, 2020). On the one hand, food demands could not be met. Consumers’ (especially in developing countries) sources of income have been disrupted by the epidemic. Their lack of savings, lack of safety nets, marked food price volatility, and reduced purchasing power and food accessibility (Arumugam et al., 2021; Barrett, 2020) mean these consumers have seen a marked reduction in demand and consumption of food. In addition, access to nutritious food is difficult to secure in terms of quantity and quality (Musa and Basir, 2021). On the other hand, there are problems with food supply. The restrictions on mobility brought about by the embargo, transportation obstacles that create agricultural labor shortages, and the transportation of agricultural products are all difficulties (Alabi and Ngwenyama, 2023; Gregorio and Ancog, 2020). In addition, there is a decrease in the availability of agricultural products for sale, as well as a decrease in the demand for food due to a decline in purchasing power. These also affect the ability and willingness of farmers to invest in agricultural production (Workie et al., 2020), thereby exacerbating the uncertainty of the global food supply.

Under the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic shock, changes in the internal livelihood bases of rural households were most notably reflected in shifts in both monetary and human resources. Firstly, measures restricting inter-regional labor migration, such as border closures and travel and immigration controls, led to a reduction in the availability of agricultural labor within households. This negatively affected agricultural activities, both at the household level and across the broader agricultural sector. As a result of transnational labor force reductions, many high-income countries have experienced severe labor shortages in labor-intensive agricultural sectors such as perishable crop (fruit and vegetable) production and food crop production and processing. Thus, agricultural productivity has declined, the supply of agricultural products has been insufficient, and incomes have declined (Arumugam et al., 2021; Cortignani et al., 2020; Papademetriou and Hooper, 2020). Lower middle-income countries have similarly experienced the disruption of agricultural activities caused by sequestration-induced labor depletion. A study by Mbugua et al. (2021) based on smallholder farmers in Uganda reveals that prolonged periods of complete isolation are a significant impediment to smallholder access to an adequate supply of agricultural labor. In addition, this short-term sudden and long-term potential reduction in labor jeopardizes agricultural production. For example, India’s rice supply was significantly delayed in places where labor-intensive activities such as rice paddy transplants have been affected (Kaur and Kaur, 2021; Singh et al., 2020). China’s cereal-producing areas in the southeastern coastal provinces were forced to delay planting due to a lack of skilled grain workers from Hubei, Hunan, and Sichuan (Pu and Zhong, 2020). Also, Thailand’s supply of ginger was unsustainable due to the non-entry of agricultural laborers from Laos (Wannaprasert and Choenkwan, 2021).

Secondly, the impact on health status is an inevitable consequence of the epidemic. Those infected display short- or long-term symptoms such as high fevers, muscle aches, and respiratory problems, which to a certain extent diminish the livelihoods of rural households (Fiorella et al., 2020; Huang et al., 2020). However, another extremely important impact of the epidemic on the health status of rural household members that is often overlooked is the impact on mental or psychological health. Wheeler et al. (2023) suggest that farmers experience multiple dimensions of social, emotional, and cultural isolation as a result of sequestration, and that perceptions of loneliness are often associated with other aspects of mental health. Stress, depression, or anxiety were the main manifestations of farmers’ mental health problems during the epidemic (Rudolphi and Barnes, 2020; Wheeler and Lobley, 2022). In terms of structural sources of stress, agricultural finances, macroeconomic conditions, family dynamics, social activities, and climate change have been associated with stress generation among rural households. Furthermore, there is heterogeneity in demographic and farm-related characteristics (Henning-Smith et al., 2022; Rose et al., 2022), with lone-occupant households and families with children being more likely to experience stress and anxiety during periods of quarantine (Meredith et al., 2020). In addition, some farmers experienced more serious mental health problems, such as suicide, the proportion of which increased under the COVID-19 pandemic (Raghavendra et al., 2022). Intervention studies on the mental health of farmers and families are needed to enrich the scientific understanding of suicide risk factors in rural households (Reed and Claunch, 2020).

Finally, due to the easily-measurable nature of household income, changes in the income of rural households are the most intuitive impacts of COVID-19 at the family scale. For example, studies of vegetable-producing farmers in Burkina Faso (Middendorf et al., 2022), maize, cassava, and palm oil-producing farmers in Indonesia (Irawan et al., 2022; Jaya and Rosmilawati, 2022; Zakaria et al., 2022), and tea-producing farmers in Laos (Keovilignavong et al., 2023) all centered on the reduction of household incomes in the context of the epidemic shock. All of these studies analyze the reduction of household income under the impact of the epidemic, indicating that the reduction of income is universal, regardless of the type of crop and the mode of agricultural operation in which the farmers are engaged in the country or region. Meanwhile, in terms of the types of rural households differentiated by the share of farm income, Wang et al. (2022) pointed out that all types of rural households suffered an average income loss of 13.01% of the total annual household income. Due to the types of purely farm, mixed farm, and non-farm households, there was specific numerical heterogeneity. A higher percentage of households relying on non-farm income reported lost income, while households that were predominantly agricultural experienced a smaller decline in income (Aggarwal et al., 2020; Hammond et al., 2022). One can see that, while the COVID-19 shock had an all-encompassing impact on household incomes, agricultural employment still acted as a buffer in the overall income structure, saving rural households from extreme and drastic changes in their incomes.

In addition, the worsening of income inequality was another important impact of the epidemic on incomes, which was manifested in the widening of the income gap between family-oriented farmers and other market participants. Retailers and traders seized the opportunity of movement restrictions and market closures brought about by the closure measures to create a squeeze on small producers. They bought produce at low prices and sold it at high prices (Chipenda, 2022; McBurney et al., 2021), limiting the profitability of rural households.

Through the external environmental context and the internal livelihoods basis, the COVID-19 shock changed the production behavior of rural households, typically in the form of reductions in various agricultural factor inputs (Zhang et al., 2020). In terms of labor factors, as an inevitable result of the restricted migration of regional labor, there was a huge gap in the supply of skilled agricultural workers and skilled workers needed to operate agricultural machinery. Farmers therefore had to postpone the sowing and harvesting of food crops (Kumar et al., 2021; Pu and Zhong, 2020), and labor-intensive horticultural crops such as fruits and vegetables were not able to be harvested in time. This resulted in a decline in quality and even food being discarded (Joshi et al., 2019; Ridley and Devadoss, 2021). Other production factors besides labor were also in trouble, especially the stagnant supply of pesticides, fertilizers, feeds, and veterinary drugs needed for planting and breeding (Mthembu et al., 2022). Therefore, how to obtain production inputs has been a concern of most farmers (Middendorf et al., 2021).

After experiencing an initial reduction in production inputs, rural households began to make proactive adjustments in different ways. For example, broiler farmers in Myanmar quickly controlled flock size and input costs in accordance with market demand conditions to ensure that they could stop and restart production at short notice (Fang et al., 2021). Farmers in Austria increased the storage capacity of agricultural products and adapted their traditional production methods to organic agricultural production (Meixner et al., 2022). Farmers in African countries tended to reduce the area of land under cultivation, in order to reduce possible investments in agricultural production and to use less labor for more labor-intensive production (Nolte et al., 2022).

Production structure transformation, technology and input change, marketing channel switching, and income sources change are the basic strategies rural households use to cope with the COVID-19 shock. First, the production structure transformation strategy is a shift between different crop cultivation and between crop cultivation and livestock farming. Diversified crop cultivation or a combination of crop-livestock transformation orientations are the most typical forms of this strategy. For example, coffee growers in Indonesia have adopted a hybrid crop-livestock system as a management approach to the COVID-19 shock risk. Farmers shift from single coffee cultivation to the composite production of coffee and livestock. On the one hand, farmed livestock stabilizes household incomes. On the other hand, as organic fertilizers, livestock manure and urine can improve the soil quality of coffee plants while alleviating the shortage in the supply of inorganic fertilizers. This practice reduces costs, enhances resistance to pests and diseases, and increases coffee yield (Wulandari et al., 2022).

The technology and input change strategy involve the adoption of new technologies or changes in the proportion of production factors inputs, such as land, labor, and capital, thereby altering the original production mode of rural households. Martey et al.’s (2022) sample study of Ghanaian farmers is a good example of this livelihood strategy. Due to the decline in the prices of agricultural outputs and the increase in the prices of inputs, many farmers in all regions of Ghana chose to shift to sustainable agricultural practices for production. They used no-tillage, soil organic matter (SOM) mulching, mixed cropping, organic fertilizers, and other agricultural technologies and production input practices. In fact, farmers have used a mix of these sustainable agricultural practices to improve soil structure, conserve soil moisture, increase soil fertility, reduce pests, and increase crop yields while simultaneously reducing production costs.

The marketing channel switching strategy reflects households’ response to the obstacles to selling traditional agricultural products. With the widespread closure of service industry venues, such as farmers’ markets, hotels, and restaurants, due to crowd congregation and mobility constraints, farmers are in desperate need of outlets for their produce. For example, Austrian farmers have increased direct sales to consumers by opening farm stores, offering produce ordering and delivery services and opening online shopping channels. Surplus produce is sold directly to food manufacturing companies to reduce their dependence on intermediary purchasing farmers (Meixner et al., 2022). India has formed producer organizations to provide guidance to member farmers on digital and direct marketing and is working to establish farm-to-market linkages to collect vegetables and fruits from member farmers for sale to the final consumers (Kumar et al., 2020).

Finally, rural households who adopt the income sources change strategy tend to reflect a shift in household income source channels from non-agricultural to agricultural income. For example, households in the mountainous regions of Nepal reduced non-agricultural employment outside the country during the epidemic, and a large number of migrant laborers chose to return to their hometowns. The returning migrants increased the supply of laborers for agriculture- and forestry-related jobs, and the household income structure shifted from a dependence on remittances from labor outside the home to dependence on agricultural income (Bista et al., 2022).

Conservative maintenance strategies include four types: subsidy dependence, expenditure control, borrowing and selling, and maintenance and enhancement of the original strategy. First, subsidy dependence strategy refers to the top-down formal subsidy system that farmers use as one of the means of sustaining their livelihoods. Schotte and Zizzamia (2023) found in their study of smallholder farmers in South Africa that during epidemic shocks the disruption of the informal sector undermined the original livelihood strategies, rendering social networks and informal insurance mechanisms ineffective. In addition, social grants issued by the government and government grants of other nomenclature were described as an important and stable source of income.

The expenditure control strategy, on the other hand, focuses on “cost-cutting” to sustain livelihoods by reducing consumption in daily life. For example, fishermen in coastal areas of Ghana frequently fasted to reduce food consumption at the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic and chose to use reusable textile masks rather than disposable medical masks to reduce spending on protective gear (Amoah et al., 2023). Gopal and Malliasamy's (2022) study of farmers in India similarly noted that rural households cut back on habitual consumption of everyday things, and expenditures on food and housing were kept at the lowest possible level.

Rural households that utilize the borrowing and selling strategy finance themselves by borrowing money and refusing to meet their repayment obligations, or they sell their existing assets to meet their basic subsistence needs. This is typical of some vegetable farmers in Sri Lanka, where most of the farmers interviewed stated that they had to mortgage their family jewels or obtain loans from neighbors, relatives, friends, banking institutions, etc. to maintain production. At the same time, their low incomes made it impossible for them to pay back the loans, so they chose to delay the repayment dates in the form of “avoidance” (Rathnayake et al., 2022). Some farmers in the lowlands of Nepal have adopted a similar approach by selling large quantities of family livestock as an alternative source of income, in addition to borrowing from neighbors, banks, and landowners (Maraseni et al., 2022).

Finally, the maintenance and enhancement of the original strategy aims to maintain the livelihood approach prior to the epidemic shock but with an increase in the intensity of implementation, an approach well exemplified by Kuuwill et al.’s (2022) study of forest farmers in Ghana. Due to the lack of alternative non-forest livelihoods for the people living in forest communities, they had to continue to opt for the exploitation of forest resources as a safety net in the face of epidemic shock. Exploiting forest resources as a safety net, fuelwood harvesting, medicinal plant picking, fruit gathering, beekeeping, and other activities have become more intensive, and the use of forest resources has become more intense and varied.