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Across both cities, our results suggest that the continuity of individuals’ participation in growing food at community gardens and home is fragile. Not all characteristics that determined who participated in community gardens before COVID-19 are determining the likelihood to participate during the pandemic. In addition, growing food at home before COVID-19 was practiced by larger households and employed respondents, yet, during the pandemic, we find that home-growing was more likely when children were in the household and households were smaller and younger (Detroit), and younger and more educated (Phoenix). These findings suggest that many urban households’ food-growing practices may not yet be mainstream and that other barriers may exist that inhibit households’ participation.The coronavirus disease-2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has disrupted many activities along agri-food supply chains in developing countries and posed unprecedented challenges in particular to small and medium agri-food enterprises (SMEs). Drawing on a survey of 166 Egyptian agri-food SMEs, this study investigates differences in- and determinants of COVID-19 business risk perception among these enterprises. The empirical results showed that risk perception was highly asymmetric across geographical regions. Enterprises with longer cash flow coverage periods and higher values of total assets perceived significantly lower risk levels, as cash and assets functioned as a buffer against the impact of COVID-19. The findings of the study imply that the “just-in-time” approach and the absence of a proactive and preventative stance to risk management reduced the resilience of agri-food SMEs to the risks presented by the pandemic. Generally, enterprises that operate both in domestic and export markets perceived lower COVID-19 risks. Finally, the main export destination to which the surveyed enterprises export was a significant determinant of their risk perception. These findings could be useful to managers of agri-food businesses in terms of better understanding of risks and promotion of risk management practices. More so, they can help design effective policy interventions to mitigate the impacts of the pandemic on Egyptian agri-food SMEs and build up their resilience to future pandemics and shocks.The WTO Global Trade Model, a quantitative trade model, is employed to project the impact on the global economy of the COVID-19 pandemic. Because of the profound uncertainty about the duration of the pandemic and the containment measures, three scenarios are constructed, V-shaped, U-shaped and L-shaped recovery, corresponding with a duration of the pandemic of 3 months, 6 months and more than a year. The pandemic and containment measures are assumed to lead to a general reduction of labour supply, a rise in trade costs, and reductions in both demand and supply in sectors most affected by the containment measures. GDP and trade are projected to fall by, respectively, 5% and 11% in the V-shaped and L-shaped scenarios and trade by, respectively, 8% and 20%. The response of trade to the reduction in GDP, measured by the trade-to-GDP elasticity, is projected to rise as the crisis lasts longer. The reason is that a longer duration will lead to a larger drop in spending on durables which are highly tradable.Agri-food supply chains in North America have become remarkably efficient, supplying an unprecedented variety of items at the lowest possible cost. However, the initial stages of the COVID-19 pandemic and the near-total temporary loss of the foodservice distribution channel, exposed a vulnerability that many found surprising. Instead of continued shortages, however, the agri-food sector has since moved back to near normal conditions with prices and production levels similar to those typically observed in years prior to the pandemic. Ironically, the specialization in most food supply chains designed for “just-in-time” delivery to specific customers with no reserve capacity, which led to the initial disruptions, may have also been responsible for its rapid rebound. A common theme in assessing the impacts across the six commodities examined is the growing importance of understanding the whole supply chain. Over the longer term, a continuation of the pandemic could push the supply chain toward greater consolidatimal effect on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) through food prices, the ongoing global trends in trade and agribusiness accelerated by the pandemic are relevant for achievement of the SDGs.How can we explain the rise in diffuse political support during the Covid-19 pandemic? Recent research has argued that the lockdown measures generated political support. In contrast, I argue that the intensity of the pandemic rallied people around political institutions. AL3818 Collective angst in the face of exponentially rising Covid-19 cases depresses the usual cognitive evaluations of institutions and leads citizens to rally around existing intuitions as a lifebuoy. Using a representative Dutch household survey conducted over March 2020, I compare the lockdown effect to the dynamic of the pandemic. I find that the lockdown effect is driven by pre-existing time trends. Accounting for non-linearities in time makes the lockdown effect disappear. In contrast, more flexible modelling techniques reveal a robust effect of Covid-19 infections on political trust. In line with an anxiety effect, I find that standard determinants of political trust – such as economic evaluations and social trust – lose explanatory power as the pandemic spreads. This speaks to an emotionally driven rally effect that pushes cognitive evaluations to the background.Disasters, including earthquakes, wildfires, terrorist attacks, and infectious disease outbreaks, are catastrophic events that expose individuals to stress, disrupt community routines and dynamics, undermine infrastructure and businesses, and result in economic losses for a significant period (Bader et al., 2019; Bakić, 2019). The World Health Organization declared the COVID-19 outbreak a pandemic in the early months of 2020 and classed it as a major disaster. This pandemic is unique, one of few catastrophic events in recent history to affect the entire global population, and its severity and long-term consequences will test individuals, organisations, communities, and nations in unprecedented ways.