June 25, 2021 — By now, last year’s food supply chain chaos has been widely reported. We’ve also learned about all the chain’s desperate fixes and ingenious workarounds: Fruit, veg, meat, seafood, eggs, and dairy produced for Covid-shuttered restaurants, cafeterias, and other institutions were diverted to grocery co-ops, local CSA programs, the frozen/canned/preserved market, and even reef restoration projects.
Some fresh food also made its way into the emergency food system. It was a welcome counterpoint to shelf-stable goods like peanut butter and beans, at food banks and pantries that struggled to feed up to 70 percent more hungry Americans than in 2019. “We had a lot of people in the industry reaching out to us, saying, ‘We’ve got pork! How can we move this food that’s just sitting on farms?’” said Joe Weeden, who sources protein for the food bank network Feeding America.
Weeden was also approached last November by a Massachusetts-based fishermen’s association, looking to forge a partnership between Feeding America food pantries and small-boat fishermen who needed a new market for their catch. The resulting program—one of 21 funded by a nonprofit called Catch Together—was so well-received that Weeden and other organizers want to continue and maybe expand it, even as the pandemic winds down and the usual purchasers of high-quality fish re-open for business. There’s also hope among some fishermen that this may provide a way to reconnect with local communities that their business models have left behind, and to provide themselves with a layer of stability in an unpredictable sector.
In the charitable food sector, seafood is considered a nutritious “food to encourage.” But the good stuff can be hard to come by, because it’s expensive—$7 per pound or more, compared to less than $1 per pound for bulk chicken. Small-boat fishermen contend with quotas and fluctuating prices; they garner the most stable profit by sending most of their catch abroad or into food service. When Covid-19 upended these supply chains, Catch Together saw an opportunity to feed ever-more hungry local people while keeping fishermen and processors financially afloat.
Catch Together normally exists to offer low-interest loans to buy fishing quotas that are then leased affordably to community-based fishermen. But in early 2020, “We saw a total collapse that caused fishermen to tie up because the pricing wouldn’t support a harvest. It was a really scary time,” said Paul Parker, Catch Together’s president. Some state and local governments had begun loosening regulations to help, like allowing fishermen to sell “over the wharf” (straight off the boat to customers). Nevertheless, many fisheries still faced abysmal market prices that didn’t justify their opening.