Enhancing Supply Chain Resilience by Integrating Human Rights: Post-pandemic Insights from the Agriculture Sector in India

Supply chain resilience is a key concern for companies in the agriculture sector.

Supply chain dynamics can change rapidly, and disruptions are increasingly the norm, not the exception. By analyzing the impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic on India’s coffee and sugar supply chains, we highlight economic factors that indicate and drive human rights risks. Risks include poverty and low living incomes, child labor, and a workforce composition that includes a growing number of contract workers with weak labor rights protection.

We found that while most farmers were able to adapt through the pandemic and absorbed the shocks creatively, some of the factors that drive human rights risks only fully come into effect in the aftermath of a crisis. These risks can undermine supply chain resilience and need to be addressed before they fully emerge. In our report, we provide concrete recommendations to companies on how to strengthen supply chain resilience in agriculture supply chains long-term.

Authors: Berit Knaak & Dorothée Baumann-Pauly
Date: 19 May 2022

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