I want to talk about resilience in food systems. As a reminder, resilience is the ability of a system to prepare for, resist, and recover from adverse situations. The environmental and social and economic factors are inherent to resilience as we'll discuss throughout this section. Some of the key factors that influence resilience as we'll also discuss, include adaptive capacity or the ability to adapt or shift or change. Diversity, the variety of different things that are going on in that system. Duplication is critical, having plan Bs in backup system and communication. There's many other factors and we'll get into that. Food systems are vulnerable. We see that through Covid-19, we see it through climate change. There are many hazards that can hit a food system and either have a minor effect or throw things completely out of whack. There are a lot of vulnerabilities. Vulnerabilities would be things like if there are aspects of the food system that are particularly vulnerable when a hazard hits; whether that's the fact that there are people without easy ways to go and get food or whether that's a part of the food system where the supply chain doesn't have good backup systems. Things like that. Inequities make vulnerabilities worse. Our food systems are also vulnerable because they rely upon and are intertwined with global value chains with our energy system. If something happens to energy, food costs can go way up because we need energy throughout our food production, as well as to transport that food. There's no waste pickup. A lot of parts of the food system shut down because if they can't get rid of their waste, they can't keep going. They can't get rid of their scraps. They can't keep putting out new food. There are a lot of policies that make food systems vulnerable. We need water, economies, it goes on and on. A construct that's been put out by [inaudible] in Baltimore and others have talked about, when we think about what's our critical infrastructure in society, we should be including food in that list. For example, Baltimore City has many places. Have an emergency operations center when there's some disaster or emergency, key people get themselves in one place and they work together to jointly strategize. Up until recently, food was not in that room in Baltimore City and in many other places. Now thanks to some of the planning and work that's been done in Baltimore City, food's in there. When you think about what is that critical infrastructure in food, it's the facilities, it's the supply chain, there's a lot of different pieces. You need preparedness, you need co-ordination, you need communication. Here's an image of a grocery store that was severely damaged in a flood and this is just one example of a way that a food system can be hit. It's important to know part of the vulnerability and part of the resilience of a food system is the number of different groups that all come into play when creating a food system response. This is also from Baltimore City, from the Baltimore Food Policy Initiative. It's an image of all of the different groups within the city that have something to say. It goes through city government, there's community groups, there's many non-profits, emergency food providers. All of these have something to say. When designing a response, there's a lot of different groups to include and you're going to have a much stronger response if you can bring them all in. You also need to be thinking about potential impacts across all of these domains going through that outer sector of this graphic. In case you can't see the visual, this is a graphic, it has emergency food response in the center, and then around the outside, we have city government, community, emergency food, non-profits, academics in state and federal level. Within each sector of the circle, there's anywhere between one and maybe 10 or 15 different pieces for example. City government includes everything from rec and parks, neighborhoods, schools, human services, housing, general services, transportation. Many different groups have something to do with food. We published a report in 2017 that looked at a wide variety of different factors that could hit the Baltimore Food System. It included a lot of data collection, bringing together maps, looking at all the different pieces of the food system that might be vulnerable, and also talking to a lot of different people to understand what they saw as concerns and what they saw as opportunities. This report contributed to a number of changes in terms of preparedness in Baltimore City. I will also say, and this is something that affects all resilience planning, is that often, one of the many things that you had on your list turns out to be the one that when you really blow that one up and make it a major issue, you didn't do enough to really focus on ways that would be distinct. I'll say that this report really doesn't get into Covid-19 very much. If we had it to do again, of course, we would have something very different on infectious threats, but we talked about all kinds of climate-related threats, blood storms, snow storms. We certainly mentioned epidemics and pandemics and a lot of other things, but we didn't focus on that as much. Some of the things that came out of that, that really were highlighted that do have some relevance for what's going on now, for example, I'll just share a few quotes from our interviews. Here's something from a church leader saying, "If the volunteers can't get here, then we can't do the food pantry, and 90 percent of the volunteers are seniors." This is something that we have seen come to play very much during Covid where a lot of the older adults are staying home. There's needed to be in many cases, a whole new supply of volunteers trained and moved in to move food around. Here's one from an independent grocery store owner saying, "For you to have a generator that can actually run the refrigeration in this store, costs about a-half-a-million dollars, and then you got to pay $10,000 of your service contract, and on and on". What we found through our interviews is that whereas a lot of the large businesses have these big detailed plans in place and backup support insurance, things like that, generators. A lot of the smaller businesses, small farms, were kind of; we'll deal with the consequences if they come, but we can't afford that level of preparedness. That speaks to the need for programs that really enable and support that preparedness, as particularly for those who don't have the resources to do that. We also heard a lot about existing community assets and preparedness that can be drawn upon in case of a disaster. For example, here is a quote from a community member saying, "In communities of color and in poor communities we're already in states of emergency even before the weather happens. So we figure out ways to be resourceful and to lean on one another to ensure that the community is fed." One thing that's important, I think, when we talk about preparing for disasters there was often a feeling that the crisis right now is so significant, food insecurity is so widespread, it's hard to imagine setting aside resources for something even bigger, and yet there's a need to do both. Often, community resources can pick up part of the slack. At the same time, that's not enough, and that's not acceptable to rely on that government has to end, others have to step in and support. One of the really important things is to support in ways that provide resources to those who are already in those communities, and who are already doing the work, and who are connected to other community members. One of the things we did as part of that report that Baltimore City felt would be helpful to it, was to design what's called a fault tree. That basically looks at all of the different things that can go wrong in a food system. For example, if you put at the very top of this food system failure, which would be low food security and things are not working as they should. So, what are all the different ways that, that could happen? We structured it in the report, food is not accessible, people can't get to it, and that could be either economically or physically accessible. Food is not available. There's no food in that system, whether in the supply chain or also there's some separate chains for donations. Or, food is not acceptable. It's not of high enough quality, it's not culturally appropriate, it's unsafe in some way. Then, what are all the ways that each of those things could happen? For example, food is not economically accessible. Maybe that's because of high food prices. Maybe because there's a significant decrease in net income. Or what are all the ways that a significant decrease in net income could come about, and so on, and so on. This fault tree goes on for about 11 pages of detail beneath each of these boxes, 11 pages of detail total. The point is, there's a lot of things that could go wrong, is one point from it. But another point is that thinking about this provides a useful way to organize how we think about what we need to attend to. That's why Baltimore City valued having this. We then take that organization, and I'm just going to share with you some of the work that's going on related to Covid-19 and how we think about it. Right now, I'm involved personally in three main projects related to food. Food security and COVID-19, and one of them is some national survey work trying to understand consumer experiences at the household level across the US and in Maryland. What we've done with that, we are working with a group called the National Food Access and Coronavirus Research Team. We're using open science approaches where we've designed a survey, and we're now working in over 15 different states with different teams that have said we want to use this same instrument or sharing analysis tools, which in it basically, we're making this available and accessible to anybody who's interested in using these tools. Then also, that'll give us the ability to compare and contrast across different areas, as well as building a network of people that are working on these issues. We're also doing a national survey of food system workers to understand their experiences and how workplaces are changing across the entire food system, everything from food production workers to retail, restaurant, food distribution, and food processing, and those working in food pantries, things like that. We're also collecting indicators of food system resilience. That just gives you a picture of some of what we're working on. As we think about food security during COVID-19, here are a few of the pieces that've been affected. Food availability. There've been a lot of impacts on supply chains. That is probably because of people becoming infected as well as workplaces having to change what they're doing both in response to infections in their workplace and protecting the workers that are in those workplaces, although, as I'll say in a few minutes, that's not always happening to an optimal level. Supply chains are complex, and I want to say right when COVID happened, and there was all these empty shelves, it was all over the media, and a lot of people were flummoxed by, why should this be so hard? Just get the food from here to there, it's much more complex than that, and so just as one example, one of the biggest reasons why food couldn't get from here to there was because they didn't have packaging in the right sizes, and so if you bring food normally to a restaurant in a five-gallon package, suddenly repackaging that to bring it to consumers is a completely different thing, and it takes time, it takes relationships. So there are a lot of different factors that affected supply chains, and there was often a lack of redundancy or backup systems. Hoarding also comes into play when fear and anxiety, and that are shaping our responses, and media definitely played into an increased hoarding. Trade factors. Internationally, if a country says, "We're going to protect our supply of X, and we're going to shut down our trade, " that leads other countries to do the same thing, and prices can go skyrocketing as happened in 2008 during the food price crisis. Then you have all these converging environmental and social crises that also can play in, for example, when there's major flooding or disasters in some places. Economic access can be really hit. Income, it goes without saying, when you have vast increases in unemployment that we've seen, income takes a big hit, and that means that people's economic access is hit. You have a lot of people who are newly food insecure and maybe don't have experience navigating systems of support, and also may feel higher levels of stigma in beginning to access some of these safety net supports. There are also challenges to safety nets as those same safety nets may be hit by reduced numbers of volunteers and struggling to keep up with demand. Then, food prices can rise due to some of those supply chain factors as well as high demand. So all these things affect people's economic access to food. There've been a lot of new developments in food safety nets during the COVID-19 pandemic, and there's just so many new programs and projects starting up to address this. It's amazing what people can do when they're really putting their minds to it and recognizing that we need to do this. At the same time, sometimes some of these new initiatives are also navigating some of the same ground that already exists with existing organizations, and so sometimes it might've been more efficient to just bring those resources to those who are already working in that space. In terms of physical access, traditionally, when we talk about access to food, we're really talking about areas of low healthy food access. Those are no less important, but physical access to food now takes on all these new dimensions like people who can't leave home because of various disease risk factors. Maybe they can't travel. There may be limited openings like in food pantries or if school food is being delivered. People can't find out when these openings are happening, and so those kinds of things affect physical access. Anxieties are about being in a place with other humans which is required to get food. Then levels of social distancing can mean that there, for example, is a line outside to get in. There's a lot of different new physical access factors that have come into play during COVID. We're also looking at acceptability, and the going back to that food tree, that's the third category. I put utilization there because in the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization framework they talk about utilization, which is often the ability to get nutritious food. During the pandemic, we're observing shifts in food choices. Some people are eating healthier, some people are also eating more snack food and less healthfully. Challenges in trust of the food system and trust of the food that can be bought through it leads sometimes to more interest in local and more sustainably produced food, as well as producing your own. More people are cooking at home. It seems like from some of the early survey data that's coming in. There's questions about the availability of foods that people may need for special diets. That's some of what we're looking at through our survey as well. Food safety concerns; there's a question, especially in the early parts of the pandemic where it wasn't possible to do some of the food safety inspections that are needed. I mentioned this stigma issues as well that relate to seeking support for food needs. Finally, stability. So in the United Nations Food and Agriculture framework, in addition to these categories of availability, accessibility, and utilization, there's also stability and the ability or sustainability of that system over time. One of the main ways that we're thinking about this is in terms of the workers. Workers during COVID-19 are asked to take high risks for low pay and benefits. Environmental sustainability is affected as consumption and supply chains shift as meat in particular, prices may rise because of some of the challenges that have happened in meatpacking plants and so on. As a result, if there's less meat consumption during a particular period of time, how will that play out? Also, at the same time, I think we need to be thinking longer term. What's this going to look like as everything comes back together, as we are resilient, as we do bounce back and have more stability, come back to our system. If people have been through a period of deprivation, what will that look like? Will we come back and eat more meat than ever before because we suddenly have the resources and ability to do that again? Just to dig a little more, I'm talking about the Food System Workers. Food System Workers, as you're probably hearing in other lectures, these industries have among the highest morbidity, mortality of any industries. They have these high on the job exposures to COVID-19. Many of them, the ones that have to deal with customers, are often dealing with a lot of customer anger. We as a society have dealt with this in some ways by glorifying them and saying they're heroes. But we're not necessarily giving them the resources they need in terms of pay and in terms of protections against COVID-19. A very significant part of our food system workforce is immigrants, and a lot of the protections that are available to others are not available for immigrant workers. There's been a lot of media coverage, and there have been some walkouts and strikes but there's a need for the Occupational Safety and Health Administration also to step forward and provide an emergency standard and enforcement and protections. Pulling all this together, we've got some successes and failures in the COVID response. First of all, it's clear that the vastness of our food supply is a complex undertaking, and COVID-19 has brought that home to people across the population in a way that maybe was not as clear to us before, and so really recognizing all that goes into bringing us our food. Maybe changes our population's food literacy and evaluation of the food and what goes into it. There is food even when people see empty shelves. I think its become clear that there is food and that we have enough food is a matter of distribution. The rapid pivot that has been made in terms of responding and providing interventions to provide food and to provide resources to people is pretty phenomenal. The number and extent of programs that have been developed, and at the same time, the shortages, the limitations, the food insecurity expose longtime problems, and all this has much deeper roots far beyond this current crisis. There's food insecurity at really striking levels, and there's a lot of surveys out there in the field trying to quantify it. Some surveys or putting it around 40 percent of the population as compared to say, 11 percent being a more recent figure. There's these pros and cons of some of these novel interventions in that they are often reinventing wheels, but on the other hand, they have really resulted to the task and are meeting the need or are helping to meet the need or making a dent in the need, how about that? The extent of food insecurity exposes longtime problems and has much deeper roots that go throughout our food system. Covid-19 also reminds us of some really important lessons related to food system resilience. We highlighted this in our report about Baltimore, which I believe will be one of the supplemental readings available to you. It's more clear now than ever, we cannot fully engineer food system resilience from within the food system because there's so many different pieces going on, and if unemployment rates go through the roof, there's no food system change that you can make that's going to enable the population to not experience food insecurity. You have to go back to those root causes and look at the unemployment rates, so the broader issues. Looking at the vulnerability of our entire economy and not only look at the food system, and yet there's a lot that can be done within the food system. As we think about this, we can think about the pre-event, the strength of functioning of the community and of the food system. We can think about resilience coming from what's the hazard that's facing us? What's the level of exposure? Where are our vulnerabilities and how much do we prepare and how effectively do we prepare? We need to anticipate and plan for further threats, and we need advanced work to design and prepare responses to plan engagement structures, because, I didn't talk as much about this here but, one of the things that's really critical is that in order to have a good strong response, you've got to have good strong engagement from the entire population. In some ways, most of all those who are going to be most affected by it. If you don't have engagement and you don't have communication with them, the response will not meet needs effectively and can lead to worsening outcomes as opposed to improving them. So you need opportunities for people to contribute as you're designing the planning, policies and materials that will be protective, we need assessment tools. One of the things that happened as the pandemic hit is a lot of researchers jumped into gear to design assessment tools. We found that some of the tools that we have had all along don't necessarily apply. For example, if you are measuring something related to food insecurity, What if your instruments are picking up more about anxiety than about actual level of having food available to you? We need to make sure that our instruments are disaster oriented. Then there are a lot of administrative barriers to the kinds of things that need to happen, and so we need to figure out in advance how to address them so that we can act quickly and jump into gear when something goes wrong. In terms of broader research and action needs, overall, the food system resilience field is small. There's been very little work going on up until pre-Covid, but I'd say the vast majority of what's going on has been in the agricultural side, and so we need to go beyond agricultural resilience to look at the entire resilience of the food system. We need to understand these processes and determinants. We also need to focus on the fact that some of the adaptive responses that we could have have long-term consequences, some of which may be unintended and undesired. We need to really be aware of those, both looking for them right from the start, but also as those are identified as potential concerns addressed them right away. We need to build on existing strengths and support those strengths and highlight interventions and need to look at what specifically helps non-governmental organizations farms, smaller and low-margin actors. In sum, there are many threats that threatened the functioning of our food systems, and there's so much that can be done to promote resilience. Now more than ever, we need to be anticipating, planning for and putting pieces into place right now for the wide range of threats that could affect our food systems in the future.
