The impact of COVID-19 on grain sector in Estonia

The onset of COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 raised new concerns about the resilience of agri-food supply chains. The increase of uncertainty in global food supply chains and unclear long-term socio-economic effects of the pandemic have renewed national governments’ interest towards food security and self-sufficiency. Estonian trade balance for food stuff and agricultural products has been negative with the exception of milk and grains. Grain production has been increasing rapidly, facilitated in part by several crises in animal production in the last decade.
The aim of the paper was to study the COVID-19 impacts on the Estonian grain sector in 2020 and 2021. The data was collected with qualitative focus group and semi-structured interviews with grain supply chain stakeholders and was combined with quantitative analysis of production data. In 2020 Estonia reported record high grain yields and highest export volumes in decades with self-sufficiency ratio 386% for wheat and over 200% for barely and rye. The interviews with grain sector supply chain stakeholders demonstrated that the preliminary effect of COVID19 was limited. The restrictions did not significantly impact grain farmers’ access to farm inputs and labor. The initial restrictions had small impacts on the downstream processing industry and retail chains that were affected by short term panic buying and had to reorganize work. The supply chain stakeholders reported the ongoing increase in the price of inputs and shipping times. For the grain exporters, the rapid soaring of maritime shipping costs has been one of the biggest concerns.