Countries around the world continue to grapple with the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on food systems and nutrition security. HarvestPlus and its partners innovated to ensure that smallholder farming households and low-income consumers can continue to receive nutrition, health, and livelihood benefits of biofortified crops.    

We have adapted and innovated our support and facilitation practices so that our beneficiaries remain able to plant, cultivate, and harvest their crops, and sell surplus crop as needed. We are also actively engaging public and private partners to enact supportive measures. 

See the many ways HarvestPlus and its partners innovated in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

One key takeaway from the pandemic is the advantage of localized food systems, which are less prone to supply and transportation disruptions that put farmers at risk; this validates our delivery model of catalyzing biofortified food systems that are in proximity to smallholder farmers and meet their farming and marketing needs. 

The impact of COVID-19 also has forced more vulnerable households to rely on relativley lower-cost but less nutritious staples for the bulk of thier diets. Biofortification is a way to deliver nutrition and health through staples at no additional cost to farming families or governments. 

Govt. of Canada Supports COVID-19 Response by HarvestPlus To Reach Vulnerable Rural Households with Biofortified Crops

The COVID-19 pandemic underscores the urgency of ensuring that vulnerable households in low- and middle-income countries have reliable, affordable access to nutritious foods—even during crises. A new project in Africa and Asia, supported by the Government of Canada and implemented by HarvestPlus, will help address this humanitarian challenge.  The project—An Integrated Food Systems Approach to […]

Responding to COVID-19 in the Democratic Republic of Congo

After being heavily impacted by the negative effects of the COVID-19 pandemic and efforts to contain it, farming households in the east-southern provinces of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) are fighting back and resuming their normal activities. HarvestPlus DRC, in collaboration with partners, is striving to reach vulnerable communities with naturally nutritious biofortified crops […]

Zinc Rice Donations, Subsidy Support Bangladeshis Affected by COVID-19

Due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, many regions in Bangladesh are severely impacted, with citizens impoverished and struggling to make ends meet as sources of income have dried up.  To address this situation and provide some relief to the people living in these areas, in coalition with other rice sector actors, HarvestPlus advocated for the […]