March 26, 2020 — Food systems are complex networks that connect everyone: the wealthy, the poor, restaurants, grocery stores, fishermen, and farmers.
“Food is a fundamental need that everyone has to have access to,” said Eva Agudelo, founder of Pawtucket, R.I.-based Hope’s Harvest, a service that collects the leftover produce from local farmers’ fields and donates it to food banks. “And in an emergency, like coronavirus, making sure that people have food is essential.”
Cue the empty shelves and the panic-induced food hoarding. Heck, cue my packed freezer.
“I ordered food from a grocery store to be delivered, and I selected one kind of mushroom, and I was brought a different kind,” said Nessa Richman, network director of the Rhode Island Food Policy Council. “I assume this was because the kind I wanted was out of stock. Meanwhile, maybe I could’ve ordered local mushrooms of the exact sort I wanted from Market Mobile and had them delivered to my door.”
The coronavirus pandemic has demonstrated the importance of local food systems that, unlike global and national food-supply chains, are nimbler than their large-scale counterparts, and can adapt quickly to disasters.