Journal of Agriculture, Food Systems, and Community Development (Apr 2021)

A systems approach to navigating food security during COVID-19

  • Alesandros Glaros,
  • Chloe Alexander,
  • Jodi Koberinski,
  • Steffanie Scott,
  • Stephen Quilley,
  • Zhenzhong Si

DOI
https://doi.org/10.5304/jafscd.2021.102.051
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 10, no. 2

Abstract

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The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted a series of concatenating problems in the global production and distribution of food. Trade barriers, seasonal labor shortages, food loss and waste, and food safety concerns combine to engender vulnerabili­ties in food systems. A variety of actors—from academics to policy-makers, community organizers, farmers, and homesteaders—are considering the undertaking of creating more resilient food sys­tems. Conventional approaches include fine-tuning existing value chains, consolidating national food distribution systems and bolstering inventory and storage. This paper highlights three alternative strategies for securing a more resilient food system, namely: (i.) leveraging underutilized, often urban, spaces for food production; (ii.) rethinking food waste as a resource; and (iii.) constructing produc­tion-distribution-waste networks, as opposed to chains. Various food systems actors have pursued these strategies for decades. Yet, we argue that the COVID-19 pandemic forces us to urgently con­sider such novel assemblages of actors, institutions, and technologies as key levers in achieving longer term food system resilience. These strategies are often centered around princi­ples of redistribution and reciprocity, and focus on smaller scales, from individual households to com­munities. We high­light examples that have emerged in the spring-summer of 2020 of household and community efforts to reconstruct a more resilient food system. We also undertake a policy analysis to sketch how government supports can facilitate the emergence of these efforts and mobilization beyond the immediate confines of the pandemic.

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