Hello and welcome to the Intelligence on Economist Radio. I'm your host, Jason Palmer.

Every weekday, we provide a fresh perspective on the events shaping your world.

Measuring inflation is absolutely key to gauging a country's economy and planning policy,

but in many places, price changes are tallied the old-fashioned way by visiting stores and restaurants.

What to do then when they're all closed?

And have you ever gone to a gig and felt bad for the opening act?

Everyone talking, no one clapping?

Well, it's worse than that.

A new study finds that being the warm-up act for a big name

doesn't much help a struggling band's fortunes.

First up, though, global cooperation has not always been easy to find during the COVID-19 pandemic.

But if you're sitting in the rich world, think about your lunch.

As lockdowns began to settle in, stockpiling and panic buying caused supermarket shelves to empty out.

But by road, rail, air, and sea, the shipping and logistics industries worked hard to fill them back up.

Millions of firms made on-the-spot decisions to adapt, changing suppliers, refitting storage.

They're all part of an intricate $8 trillion global food supply chain. So on the import side, we are the number one port for imported green coffee for the U.S.

And then on the export side, we're one of the largest ports for export frozen poultry.

Janine Mansour is the commercial director of the port of New Orleans and on the front lines of the supply chain for food into and out of America. So we rely on, you know, the supply chains of our export is an importer. So if there's massive disruption, then of course, our volumes are going to be affected.

The pandemic changed food flows across the world as people tried to shop less and cook more.

Passenger planes that could normally carry food in their holds were grounded.

But fortunately, we really didn't see any huge disruptions.

For the first quarter, our volumes were positive compared to 2019.

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