| Popis: |
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. |
