Sitting on your couch with a plate full of fruits while watching your favorite Netflix show/film? Possibilities are they came from a local farm or large farm hundreds of miles away from your home, outskirts of Hyderabad, harvested and loaded by hands by workers, offloaded at your local mandi by laborer migrated from Northwest of Pakistan or south Punjab. What if the next morning you go to a supermarket for grocery and find yourself sinking while staring at the empty shelves and sky-high prices of what is left. The fear factor: consumers fearing the possibility of shortages rush to buy more than they would otherwise, thus causing the shortages they’d feared. The pandemic would exert a symmetric, but an asynchronous shock to the global and national food demand and supply. The effects would be felt throughout the supply chain from farm, processing, logistics and through-out to the retail. On the other hand, the shock would be felt in factor market as well, mainly labor and capital. In low income countries like Pakistan who employee high shares of labor for sowing and harvest season are more exposed to direct shocks to the supply. Despite lockdowns, access to the market should be ensured by the government either by deploying own vehicles like India, or issuing special entry permits to the logistics Food agents across different cities of Punjab are already facing difficulties in procuring fresh harvest, mainly due to two reasons, i) farmers are facing shortage of laborer for harvesting and ii) less logistics facility due to lockdown and restrictive movement. The fruit and vegetable supplies have already been feeling the shocks. One of the vendor at Karachi mandi told us that on the first day of the lockdown, 170 trucks of vegetables left the market for the city, only 90 of them could reach while the rest of vehicles were not able to reach the city due to police barricades and snap check posts, while district administration were not of any help. The absence of enough storage and preservation facilities of fresh vegetable caused significant loses to the sellers. When asked, agents in Lahore mandi said they were facing reduced market demand of agriculture products due to shut down of marriage halls, restaurants, caterers and public canteens, resulting in large amount of unsalable vegetables and fruits backlogged or even unpicked in farms. While consumers have limited savings and they spend a large share of their earnings on food, hence absence of public safety nets makes them more vulnerable. Fruistan, incubated at the NIC Lahore, has lost 40 percent of its revenue mainly due to decreased demand and logistics constraints. Like other agents it has narrow down his commodity range only to potato, tomato, garlic, ginger and dates. Agents have expressed their deep concerns on lack of attention from the local administration. City admin wanted them to halt mandi operations but could not propose any other alternative and the agents want special passes for their delivery vehicles to enter the city. Restriction at provincial borders has caused 30 to 40% wastage which consumer would bearing in form of high prices in the coming days. Historically, consumer base determined the price of a specific commodity, but since there is uncertain supply, while buying pattern is changed to weekly rather daily is fluctuating prices. In Ramazan we are seeing that in the initial few days’ prices went up very quickly, but once the yields kept for Ramazan would reach the market, not finding enough demand, because of the lock down and economic downturn, we would see prices going down in the later half of the holy month. The lockdown accompanied by he reduced market demand is resulting in large amount of unsalable seasonal vegetables particularly fruits backlogged or even unpicked in the farms. Except banana and up to some extent watermelon, most of the fruits are expected to have very low demand. Although prices of these fruits would be high but agents and farmers would suffer a great loss. For example, black currant or mango bought on a future contract in October, last year is possibly a deal bringing loss to the agents and the farmers. In coming days of Ramadan we could possibly see the ECO 101 supply and demand phenomena where over supply would crash the market price and agents wont be able to sell, leaving them two option to bear the loss. Either flood the market and drag the price to the minimum or to minimize the loses, shy away from the contracts and happily forgo the upfront payments. Farmers on the other side would not receive the remaining payments and need to hire labor just to clear the fields for the next harvest. If these feared issues remained unsolved, it would cause difficulty in investment for the following spring plantation and consequently reduce production of the next season. It is a high time that government should intervene in the food security by providing necessary support to the market. A stimulus package should be introduced for the agriculture sector in form of cash handout, delayed payments and new loans without any charge. As there are rumors that government has given bailout to the stockbrokers, agriculture sector is the one dis-serving. A capital injection in the agriculture sector can help small and medium agri-business to continue operations. Despite lockdowns, access to the market should be ensured by the government either by deploying own vehicles like India, or issuing special entry permits to the logistics. We have seen that despite draconian lockdowns China had ensured the supply of the food with the help of existing large scale and deeply penetrated e-commerce. Making storage facilities can solve a great deal of problems. It would take 3-4 weeks to erect prefabricated facilities with decent storage capacity. This will help e-commerce industry to maintain supply and also would help agents and farmers to save their yields from perishing. With import restrictions and lockdown, farmers are finding it very difficult to buy fertilisers and pesticides. Small farmers who are harvesting wheat have complained that they could not do the final spray on the crops resulting in growth of herbs and weaker quality of crops. In order to ensure timely supplies, point to point delivery of inputs should be arranged to farmer’s home minimal physical contact. Since the pandemic is more likely to create burden to developing countries, Pakistan should devise a strategy to ensure food security. We are not very promising when it comes to food price, and now as an aftermath to this pandemic, food security and food price could be a real challenge in coming months. Despite the fact world was unprepared for the pandemic that a person across the globe allegedly ate a bat and you could not go outside to buy vegetables, but there is always a silver lining in the clouds. We should this situation to digitize our businesses, strengthen e-commerce industry and move towards smart storage facilities. The writer is Assistant Professor of Finance and member of isar Aziz Agritech Centre at NAMAL Institute, Mianwali