Impacts of COVID-19 on U.S. seafood availability. (Special Issue: COVID-19 impacts on selected commodities.)

Seafood is the food group with the highest share traded, and the U.S. is the world's largest seafood importer, importing 79% of the seafood consumed. Hence, a study examining the impacts of the measures to contain COVID-19 on U.S. seafood imports will not only show how U.S. seafood availability has been affected, but will also give strong indications of how resiliently the global seafood markets have worked through the pandemic. We find that U.S. imports of seafood actually increased in 2020 and 2021, suggesting supply chains were able to adapt to potential disruptions. Moreover, for the 14 largest product forms imported to the U.S., there are no strong price movements. Given that there is a global market for most species groups, this adaption also suggests that the markets have worked quite well beyond the U.S. Hence, while there have undoubtedly been market shocks associated with the COVID-19 measures such as the reduction in demand from the restaurant sector and the increased sales in the retail sector, opportunities seem to balance out challenges, and the supply chains for seafood to the U.S. have been highly resilient.

Impacts of COVID-19 on U.S. Seafood Availability

Seafood is the food group with the highest share traded, and the U.S. is the world's largest seafood importer, importing 79% of the seafood consumed. Hence, a study examining the impacts of the measures to contain COVID-19 on U.S. seafood imports will not only show how U.S. seafood availability has been affected, but will also give strong indications of how resiliently the global seafood markets have worked through the pandemic. We find that U.S. imports of seafood actually increased in 2020 and 2021, suggesting supply chains were able to adapt to potential disruptions. Moreover, for the 14 largest product forms imported to the U.S., there are no strong price movements. Given that there is a global market for most species groups, this adaption also suggests that the markets have worked quite well beyond the U.S. Hence, while there have undoubtedly been market shocks associated with the COVID-19 measures such as the reduction in demand from the restaurant sector and the increased sales in the retail sector, opportunities seem to balance out challenges, and the supply chains for seafood to the U.S. have been highly resilient. © 2022 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston 2022.

Challenges and opportunities: impacts of COVID-19 on Norwegian seafood exports

A rapidly growing literature shows that COVID-19 and the measures to contain the spread of the virus can have significant market impacts for seafood. These can be interruptions of production, or reductions in demand directly or indirectly due to supply chain challenges. In this paper we investigate the potential impacts of COVID-19 on seafood exports from Norway, the world's second largest seafood exporter, using highly detailed data from 2016 through May 2021. These data allow us to assess upstream impacts in the seafood supply chain close to the producer level in aggregate and by main sector, impacts on the largest products, and the extent to which export firm structure and export markets served have changed. We find very few impacts in aggregate as well as for individual products, suggesting that the markets and supply chains used by Norwegian seafood exports were sufficiently robust and flexible to accommodate the shocks created by COVID-19. Given Norway's size as a seafood exporter, the impact of COVID-19 has likely been moderate upstreams for a number of seafood sectors around the world, especially those in wealthy nations, with opportunities balancing out challenges, and that the supply chains have been highly resilient.