Development plans to tackle threats to agricultural sustainability in Bangladesh, Canada, and Trinidad and Tobago following COVID 19

ABSTRACT

COVID-19 has sparked multiple crises and unprecedented shocks to trajectories of agricultural sustainability. Using the lens of agenda-setting theory, this research explores the content of newspaper articles to understand the ongoing challenges in the agricultural sector to frame the necessary policy-agenda for Bangladesh, Canada, and Trinidad Tobago. Qualitative content analysis was applied to analyze systematically selected news articles. The findings indicate several key challenges, such as disruption in supply chain and market, scarcity of farmworkers and their safety issues, dearth of cooperation and collaboration, and wastage of farm produces. The study proposes specific policy agenda for each country and argues that developing the capacity and resilience of the food system requires more cooperation between various actors than pre-COVID-19.

KEYWORDS:

• COVID-19
• Agricultural Sustainability
• Agenda-setting
• Bangladesh
• Canada
• Trinidad
• Tobago

Acknowledgments

The Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) is acknowledged for the research support, which benefitted the authors to complete the draft. In addition, we thank Mr. Jeet Ramjattan from the University of the West Indies and Mr. Md Ali Hossein from the University of Guelph for searching and retrieve newspaper articles. Finally, we acknowledge the anonymous reviewer for their valuable comments.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Khondokar H. Kabir

Khondokar H. Kabir – working as Associate Professor in the Department of Agricultural Extension Education, Bangladesh Agricultural University. He has obtained a doctoral degree in agricultural science (Dr.sc.agr.) from the Institute of Social Sciences in Agriculture (430a), University of Hohenheim, Stuttgart, Germany. He is currently a climate protection fellow at the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation’s International Climate Protection Fellowship. His research interest focuses on capacity and capacity development issues for sustainable development, advisory services in agriculture and forestry context, ICTs in development, and urban agriculture.

Ataharul Chowdhury – Assistant Professor of School of Environmental Design and Rural Development, University of Guelph. His scholarly background is interdisciplinary, focusing on several thematic areas, such as advisory and outreach services, ICT and new media, capacity development for women and youth, participatory action research, the video for development, agri-food systems, and rural and regional development.