Abstract

This research was conducted to study the impacts of covid-19 on major crops production to achieve the objectives; determining impacts of covid-19 on crops yield, evaluating its impacts on Agricultural inputs access, determining its impacts on labor and crop product transport costs and assessing covid-19 impacts on expert advice, training and demonstration. Community-based cross-sectional study design was implemented. Four districts were purposively selected in consultation with Awi zone department of Agriculture based on Covid-19 prevalence and crop production potentials. Similarly, four peasant associations from each of the four districts were selected purposively. Then interviewee household selection was carried out randomly in each peasant association. A structured questionnaire was developed and used to collect primary data from sample respondents. The generated data entered into database and analyzed using SPSS (Version 26) and interpreted by descriptive statistics. The result showed that 63.87% of the respondents had a clear understanding about the pandemic and believed farming is open for covid-19 impacts. Similarly, 77.23% of the respondents had knowledge about the impacts of covid-19 pandemic. The majority (80.1%) of the respondents verified there was a 26-50% reduction in access to improved seeds and fertilizer. Consequently, there was 26-50% annual crops yield reduction as confirmed by 76.44% of the respondents. In addition, 52.09% of the participants validated 51-75% increment on labor cost for agronomic activities. Similarly, all of the respondents confirmed that there was a 26-50% crops product transport cost increment and there was no access to expert advice, training and demonstration in 2020 cropping season fearing the pandemic.

Keywords: Pandemic; Crop production; Effects of covid-19; Awi zone