Amidst the COVID-19 outbreak the world has experienced many consequences. A major one  is the threat of food shortages worldwide. With a pandemic of this scale, supply lines have become shut down, such as ports and air travel. This affects some areas more than others, but overwhelmingly, poorer areas in the world will be affected to the greatest extent. The UN has urged governments, businesses, and international agencies to take action now before this becomes a globally upsetting issue.

A place of note in all of this is the Pacific Islands. They will be affected the hardest with this because of the distance from their supply chains. With travel being severely limited food has no way of making it to these islands.

Additionally, China, who was affected most significantly by the outbreak, has increased its need for exports from Australia. However, with fights effectively cancelled to and from China, Australia cannot send items to this region. Australian food exporters will begin to look for other avenues rather than the China-Pacific region to sell products. This will affect many regions of China and potentially cause food shortages. However, wealthy areas like Hong Kong and Singapore can buy their way out of this problem.

Ultimately, countries need to be aware that COVID-19 is not going away any time soon. It could go through remission periods with times of resurgence shortly after. Its important to prepare people for potential shortages, weather it is giving its people money to buy more or creating alternate solutions to lapses in the system. Also, some level of international cooperation must occur to prevent places from going hungry. If this isnt able to happen, many places will suffer. These problems are all happening because of measures being taken to prevent spread of the virus which shows a dependence on technology when it comes to distributing food. The infrastructure has fallen incredibly quickly and the world was drastically unprepared for this outbreak.

All info found from this article:

https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/10/asia/coronavirus-food-supply-asia-intl-hnk/index.html