Investing in a Good Food Future
As we look ahead to re-open the country post-COVID, we also have the chance to re-work our public relationship to our food system, and mend its broken aspects in a way that will better meet community needs and values in our “new normal” future. Highlighted during this time is the food insecurity of much of our population, and the fragile aspects of the food supply chain.
The shutdown of food service has left many farmers and food processors dangling with an estimated $689 million decline in sales, imperiling livelihoods. Food products from a hyper-efficient and vertically integrated supply chain are also more vulnerable than before, as shown by the threat to commodity meat supply due to virus outbreaks in the small number of packing plants remaining, a consequence of extreme market consolidation.
We‘ve already seen how local governments have been the command centers of the frontline responses to the public health crisis and its economic fallout. They’ve also been immersed in food distribution through school food and food banks, and are learning how to match unused restaurant capacity with the growing community need for meal support, as with the model of the World Central Kitchen.
Local governments can take the lessons learned from their impressive crisis coordination efforts to address the underlying distortions in the food system revealed in this pandemic. Pre-COVID, there was increasing recognition that long, globalized supply chains (local food is at an average of 10% per region) and the bloated production of commodity crops created paradoxes of poverty in the midst of plenty. The largest agricultural regions had the worst food access problems, and the highest rates of poverty, diet-related disease, air and water pollution.
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