Agricultural News
New Online Tool Shows How COVID-19 Illness is Risking Agricultural and Food Production
Thu, 28 May 2020 11:29:43 CDT
The Purdue Food and Agricultural Vulnerability Index, created by the Department of Agricultural Economics at Purdue University in collaboration with Microsoft, estimates the share of agricultural production at risk by combining data on the number of COVID cases in each U.S. county with the county's total population, U.S. Department of Agriculture data on the number of farmers and hired farm workers in each county, and data on agricultural production for each county.
"As it turns out, for the handful of agricultural commodities we've entered in our tool thus far, the risk is very low (far less than 1% of total production estimated to be at risk)," explains Jayson L. Lusk, distinguished professor and department head of agricultural economics at Purdue and collaborator on the index. "The reasons are straightforward: production of most major agricultural commodities is distributed over a wide geography, and the percent of the population with COVID in rural/agricultural areas remains low."
"One of the main purposes of the tool is to help people visualize a portion of our food supply chain, to help people better understand where their food comes from, and to help illustrate that, at least at the moment, COVID poses little risk to the aggregate supply of food in the United States."
The online dashboard is free to use and allows the user to drill-down by commodity and estimate the potential risk production and productivity losses due to COVID-19 farmer and farm worker illnesses at the state and county-level.
Visit https://purdue.ag/foodagvulnerabilityindex for more information and to view the dashboard
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