COVID-19 has had tremendous ripple effect upon every sector in the system since its beginning in 2019. Not only the effect of the pandemic itself, but the preventive measures of the government also affected the system, especially the agriculture supply chain widely considered to be the most important part of Thailand. The aims of the research chapter were to investigate and analyse the effects of COVID-19 and government measures towards the fruit supply chain in Thailand, together with reviewing on-season longan as a case study. Consequently, the instrument utilised was the supply chain mapping. The result was collected additionally by in-depth interviews, focus-group interviews, and questionnaires from Thai farmers. As a result, COVID-19 pandemic and preventive measures indicated the entire fruit supply-chain system’s impacts on activities and stakeholders from start to finish nationally and internationally. Besides, the labour markets were affected, particularly seasonal foreign harvesting workers. These effects are in accordance with the agricultural overproduction, farm price and export price decreases, and other export volumes. In case of on-season longan, the shortage of fruit harvesting workers from disease preventive measures, including the prohibition of cross-border travel, were highlighted as significant problems. Additionally, the 14-day quarantine measure lessened the number of brokers, traders, and agricultural workers. These problems put pressure on involved people and changed the consumer behaviour. In sum, the noteworthy results lead to the policy recommendations for the new normal of the marketplace, comprising promoting comprehensive learning and training (reskill, upskill, and new skill) courses for agricultural practices and so forth.
