COVID-19’s impact on food environment in the Indian states of Telangana, Maharashtra, West Bengal, Tamil Nadu and Punjab: a descriptive qualitative study to build further research in India’s food environment resilience building

Globally, COVID-19 has had a profound impact on food and nutrition security. This paper aims to gather the perspective from Transforming India’s Green Revolution by Research and Empowerment for Sustainable food Supplies (TIGR2ESS) Flagship Project 6 (FP-6) team on the impact of COVID-19 on the food systems in India. The responses collected will be used for further research projects after TIGR2ESS ends in March 2022. Members of the TIGR2ESS FP-6 team in India were invited to complete an online open-ended questionnaire with 21 questions exploring the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on food systems and environments in India. The questionnaire and data analysis were guided by the food environment framework developed by Turner et al and the adaptations proposed by the United Nations System Standing Committee on Nutrition. Discussions and organisation of codes under the respective themes and subthemes were held online using the virtual platform Miro. 35 individual codes and 65 subcodes were agreed on. Responses were collated and analysed using the template with support from NVivo software and synthesised the relevant themes under Turner et al’s framework. The organisation representatives from TIGR2ESS FP-6 (n=16) captured the perceived impact of the COVID-19 on food systems and the environment from the Indian states of Maharashtra, Punjab, Tamil Nadu, Telangana and West Bengal. Negative disruptions were caused by the COVID-19 restrictions across all the themes affecting food actors and consumers. Myths and misconception on dietary intake were reported across the state affecting especially the consumption of poultry. Positive aspects such as home cooking and awareness around healthy food emerged. Potential research areas were identified and involve the effects of supply chain resilience building, farmers selling their produce directly to consumer and the revival of local and traditional food’s impact on diets, understanding the harm for consumers by implementing restrictions, how indigenous and local food may impact peoples’ diets, how to build on the encouragement of healthy home cooking during the pandemic, investigate the negative and positive effects of digital environments during the pandemic and dispelling myths and misconception while advocating for healthy diets.