Pandemic lockdowns and their impacts on urban-based agrarian livelihoods and food security in a Provincial City in the Philippines

Abstract

The COVID-19 crisis in the Philippines significantly impacted the rural and urban poor, who were most dependent on daily livelihood activities for food. This paper examines the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on the food security of urban-based agrarians residing in Roxas City in the province of Capiz, the Philippines. It illustrates how the pandemic disrupted the mobilities and flows of people and materials within cities and across city borders, leaving most urban-based agrarians to rely more heavily on subsistence food sources to assuage shortfalls in food security. Findings, however, do not reify subsistence production as a safeguard or solution to pandemic food insecurity. This paper argues that while the urban-based agrarians' acute hunger was partly alleviated due to their continued access to subsistence food sources, they still needed to depend on credit, consequently accumulating more debt. As they struggle to recover from the pandemic, they are also at risk of encountering even more intense precarity associated with the lasting impacts of high inflation, declining fish stock, extreme weather events and threats of eviction. These findings provide more nuanced insights into the relationship among food insecurity, subsistence food sources, precarity and crises such as the pandemic, especially in the context of urban-based agrarians living in provincial cities.