sustainability Article Effects of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Food Security and Agriculture in Iran: A Survey Abdullah Kaviani Rad 1 , Redmond R. Shamshiri 2, * , Hassan Azarm 3 , Siva K. Balasundram 4 and Muhammad Sultan 5   Citation: Rad, A.K.; Shamshiri, R.R.; Azarm, H.; Balasundram, S.K.; Sultan, M. Effects of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Food Security and Agriculture in Iran: A Survey. Sustainability 2021, 13, 10103. https://doi.org/10.3390/ su131810103 Academic Editor: Riccardo Testa Received: 8 August 2021 Accepted: 7 September 2021 Published: 9 September 2021 Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affil- iations. Copyright: © 2021 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by/ 4.0/). 1 Department of Soil Science, School of Agriculture, Shiraz University, Shiraz 71946-85111, Iran; arad@adaptiveagrotech.com 2 Leibniz Institute for Agricultural Engineering and Bioeconomy, 14469 Potsdam-Bornim, Germany 3 Department of Agricultural Economics, School of Agriculture, Shiraz University, Shiraz 71946-85111, Iran; hazarm@shirazu.ac.ir 4 Department of Agriculture Technology, Faculty of Agriculture, University Putra Malaysia, Serdang 43400, Selangor, Malaysia; siva@upm.edu.my 5 Department of Agricultural Engineering, Bahauddin Zakariya University, Bosan Road, Multan 60800, Pakistan; muhammadsultan@bzu.edu.pk * Correspondence: rshamshiri@atb-potsdam.de; Tel.: +49-(0)331-569-9410 Abstract: The consequences of COVID-19 on the economy and agriculture have raised many concerns about global food security, especially in developing countries. Given that food security is a critical component that is affected by global crises, beside the limited studies carried out on the macro- impacts of COVID-19 on food security in Iran, this paper is an attempt to address the dynamic impacts of COVID-19 on food security along with economic and environmental challenges in Iran. For this purpose, a survey was conducted with the hypothesis that COVID-19 has not affected food security in Iran. To address this fundamental hypothesis, we applied the systematic review method to obtain the evidence. Various evidences, including indices and statistics, were collected from national databases, scientific reports, field observations, and interviews. Preliminary results revealed that COVID-19 exerts its effects on the economy, agriculture, and food security of Iran through six major mechanisms, corresponding to a 30% decrease in the purchasing power parity in 2020 beside a significant increase in food prices compared to 2019. On the other hand, the expanding environmental constraints in Iran reduce the capacity of the agricultural sector to play a crucial role in the economy and ensure food security, and in this regard, COVID-19 forces the national programs and budget to combat rising ecological limitations. Accordingly, our study rejects the hypothesis that COVID-19 has not affected food security in Iran. Keywords: COVID-19; Iran; food security; economic crisis; agriculture; food supply chain 1. Introduction Global economic growth was projected to reach 3.2% in 2019 and 3.5% in 2020, and emerging economies were expected to grow by 4.1% and 4.7%, as well as 6.5% growth for developing Asia in 2019–2020 [1]. However, the outbreak of a novel SARS-CoV-2 from Wuhan province (China) known as “COVID-19” [2] quickly changed all the predictions about the future of the global and regional economy. Although the global lockdowns assisted to control the disease outbreak, this pandemic damaged many economic sectors such as industries [3], tourism [4], trade and business activities [5], and agriculture [6]. Thus, investors have removed $83 billion from emerging markets since the beginning of the crisis, and the most significant capital outflow ever recorded [7]. While there is no system to determine the actual economic damage from the pandemic [8], it is expected to impose the most influential threat to the future of trade [9], and global economic growth was forecasted to reach -3.2%, and the most extensive global recession was created during the COVID-19 Sustainability 2021, 13, 10103. https://doi.org/10.3390/su131810103 https://www.mdpi.com/journal/sustainability