The COVID-19 outbreak has triggered global crisis. According to the OECD, as a result of this global humanitarian disaster, a decline in output will be equivalent to a decrease in annual GDP growth by 2 % during every month of keeping containment measures [10]. The Economist Intelligence Unit data shows that in 2020 the world economy will shrink by 2.5 % due to a recession in all G20 countries, except China, India and Indonesia [13]. Oxford Economics expects the decline of the global economy by 2.8 % in 2020 because of the pandemic [11]. Due to the high degree of uncertainty, the IMF has already changed its world economic Outlook (WEO) thrice in 2020 [7]. Thus, the June WEO declares a 4,9 % decline in the global economy by the end of the 2020, which is significantly more than during the financial crisis of 2008– 2009 [8].
The most recent report "The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World" elucidates the dependence of the increase in hunger and malnutrition on the slowdown and deterioration of the economy, mainly in middleincome countries [3]. As a result of the global economy collapse caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, 135 million people in urgent need of food security from 55 countries in 2019 will become more than a quarter of a billion by the end of 2020 [15].
Nowadays, more and more countries are dependent on each other and on imports of agricultural raw materials and food. That is why the paralysis of world trade has a disastrous eff ect on the world food system (WFS) — a single chain of production, distribution, exchange, and consumption of food on an international scale made up of national agricultural economies.
The COVID-19 impact on the WFS should be viewed through the prism of economic and social aspects.
None country effectively produces all the goods it needs. It may be the main producer of one product, importing others. As a result, production finds the most effective locations, expanding access to more products at more affordable prices. Therefore, the behavior of exporting countries that have resorted to protectionist trade policies in the form of import tariff s and export bans is a real cause for concern, based on the experience of previous years. During the 2007–2008 food crisis, almost a third of the world’s countries introduced export controls [13]. According to the World Bank, isolating behavior caused a 45 percent increase in world prices for rice and almost 30 percent increase in wheat [8].