Fish is a major source of food and nutritional security for subsistence communities in developing countries, it also has linkages with the economic and supply-chain dimensions of these countries. Burgeoning literature has revealed the adverse impacts of COVID-19 on the fisheries and aquaculture sector, which serves as the major source of income and employment for numerous people globally. This study has employed a systematic literature review of the overall impacts of COVID-19 on the fisheries and aquaculture sector in developing countries using the PRISMA approach. This study reveals that COVID-19 has posed numerous challenges to fish supply chain actors, including a shortage of inputs, a lack of technical assistance, an inability to sell the product, a lack of transportation for the fish supply, export restrictions on fish and fisheries products, and a low fish price. These challenges lead to inadequate production, unanticipated stock retention, and a loss in returns. COVID-19 has also resulted in food insecurity for many small-scale fish growers. Fish farmers are becoming less motivated to raise fish and related products as a result of these cumulative consequences. Because of COVID-19’s different restriction measures, the demand and supply sides of the fish food chain have been disrupted, resulting in reduced livelihoods and economic vulnerability. In order to assist stakeholders to cope with, adapt to, and build resilience to pandemics and other shocks, this study offers policy recommendations to address the COVID-19-induced crisis in the fisheries and aquaculture sector.

We examine the depth and breadth of ongoing demographic transformation in Asia and draw ramifications on future rice farming using long-run time-series data from 17 major rice-growing countries in Asia. We found that Asia is undergoing declining trends in women fertility, child mortality, family size, population growth, the proportion of the agricultural population, and involvement of youth in agriculture. On the other hand, rural out-migration, aging of the farming population, and urbanization show increasing trends. These emerging trends will have far-reaching impacts on future rice farming mediated through labor market, rice market, rice demand, and rice supply. Policymakers and scientists must anticipate more rapid demographic transformation in the future and implement necessary technological, institutional, policy, and strategic solutions to manage or cope with future demographic transformation.

Rapid expansion of groundwater use for irrigation for dry season rice production in Bangladesh has led to overuse, deterioration of groundwater quality, increased cost of irrigation, and higher greenhouse gas emissions. The divergence between marginal private and social cost of irrigation due to market failures in the presence of these externalities, has resulted in excessive use of groundwater. A combination of policy reforms and improvements in irrigation practices are hence needed to reduce irrigation water use. The paper analyses why an improved irrigation practice, known as “alternate wetting and drying (AWD)” that can potentially reduce irrigation water use substantially, has failed to scale despite widespread testing and promotion in Bangladesh for over a decade. The main reason for this failure to scale is the lack of economic incentives to save water as pricing is based on per unit area irrigated, not on the amount of water used. This paper highlights the dynamics of the water market and pricing in Bangladesh, along with biophysical and social constraints to farmer adoption of AWD. It also proposes changes in policy incentives, new directions for crop and water management research, and institutional reforms for wider adoption of AWD and other water-saving practices.

Enhancing profit efficiency in vegetable farming is important to increase income, livelihoods, and nutrition security, and to reduce poverty of smallholder farmers, particularly in developing countries. This study examined the profit efficiency and its determinants in smallholder vegetable farms in Nepal using the stochastic translog profit function with cross-section data collected in 2013. The results revealed a high level of inefficiency in vegetable farms because of the combined effects of technical, allocative, and scale inefficiencies. The profitability differential in vegetable farms is significantly explained by input variables, namely, labor, land, seeds, fertilizer, pesticides, and capital. The determinants of profit inefficiency in vegetable farming were the types of crop varieties, access to information and extension services, access to agricultural credit, distance of farms to markets, and sex of farm manager. The profit efficiency in vegetable farming can be enhanced by adopting improved seed varieties, improving effective information and extension programs, increasing accessibility of credit facilities to the farmers, developing market infrastructure, and empowering women farmers in vegetable farming that leads to improve household income and nutrition security.