Symposium on American Food Resilience: Part 1

The resilience of the American food supply—the ability of the food system to withstand shocks or stresses that could lead to disruption or collapse—is a matter of genuine concern. While all seems well with supermarkets stocked to the brim, changes in the food system and our environment during recent decades have created risks that are no longer hypothetical possibilities. They are with us now. The 27 articles in the JESS symposium on American Food Resilience explore the vulnerability and resilience of food production and distribution from a diversity of perspectives. Four central questions provide a framework for the exploration:

• What are the main lines of vulnerability?
• What are leverage points for reducing the risks and improving the capacity to deal with breakdowns if they occur?
• What is already being done by government, civil society, and the private sector to reduce the risks?
• What can scientists, teachers, and other environmental and food-system professionals do through research, education, community action, or other means to make the food system and food supply more resilient?

Some of the articles use case studies that highlight various kinds of disturbances: influenza pandemic, war, nuclear-reactor catastrophe, natural disasters such as floods and earthquakes, and crop failure due to drought or other climatic perturbations. Lessons for improving resilience are drawn from the experiences. Other articles examine the significance of globalization, food-system consolidation, diversity, and food storage; the interplay of efficiency, adaptive capacity, sustainability, and resilience; the potential and limitations of local or regional food systems to compensate for shortcomings in the mainstream food system; organizational learning and networking; integrating local food systems with the mainstream; channeling promising innovations into the mainstream; and success stories and the lessons they offer. The articles afford a wealth of material that can be mined by researchers, teachers, practitioners, and policymakers for application to their own circumstances.

Understanding vulnerabilities in complex and interdependent modern food systems requires a whole-system perspective. This paper demonstrates how one systems approach, system dynamics, can help conceptualize the mechanisms and pathways by which food systems can be affected by disturbances. We describe the process of creating stock-and-flow maps and causal loop diagrams from the graphical representation of a problem and illustrate their use for making links and feedback among the human health, food, and environmental health sectors visible. These mapping tools help structure thinking about where and how particular systems might be affected by different disturbances and how flows of material and information transmit the effects of disturbances throughout the system. The visual representations as well as the process of creating them can serve different purposes for different stakeholders: developing research questions, identifying policy leverage points, or building collaboration among people in different parts of the system. They can serve as a transition between mental models and formal simulation models, but they also stand on their own to support diagrammatic reasoning: clarifying assumptions, structuring a problem space, or identifying unexpected implications of an unplanned disturbance or an intentional policy intervention. The diagrams included here show that vulnerability of a national food system does not only or automatically result from exogenous shocks that might affect a country. Rather, vulnerability can be either intensified or reduced by the interaction of feedback loops in the food system, and buffered or amplified by the structure of stocks and flows.

Rarely have studies focused on the second- and third-order effects of pandemics. Limiting the disruption of critical infrastructures during a pandemic is important for the survival and health of society—electricity, water, and food—as most medical and public health responses to a pandemic depend on these infrastructures. The studies that have looked at this issue have highlighted alarming gaps in preparedness. This study used a system dynamics model to demonstrate the likely effects of a pandemic on the United States’ food system. The model reveals that a severe pandemic with greater than a 25% reduction in labor availability can create significant and widespread food shortages. The Ebola epidemic that began in 2014 has caused severe food shortages in West Africa, which are similar to the effects that this model predicts in the U.S. The likely effects of the reduction in the amount of available food are difficult to specifically predict; however, it is likely to have severe negative consequences on society. The resilience of the food system must be improved against this hazard and others.

The climate change vulnerability of a food system is a function of the exposure of the system to specific climate effects, the sensitivity of the system to those effects and the capacity of the system to adapt to those effects in order to maintain system integrity. A synthesis of recent literature conducted to explore the vulnerability of the United States (U.S.) food system to climate change suggests that the interaction between regional climate change effects and the geographic specialization and concentration of agricultural production in the U.S. increases the vulnerability of the U.S. food system to climate change. Vegetable and fruit production in the Pacific states are particularly sensitive to reduced water supplies, warmer winters and more variable spring weather. Grain production in the Great Plains and the Midwest is sensitive to more variable weather, warmer winters, heatwaves, hot summer nights and flooding caused by more frequent heavy rains. The concentration of beef, pork and poultry production in confined animal feeding operations located in the southern Great Plains and the Southeast is particularly sensitive to increased frequency and intensity of extreme weather and interruptions in feed, water and power supplies associated with interactions between land, water and energy use that amplify climate change effects. There is evidence that climate change is already causing disruptions throughout the U.S. food system. Farmers and ranchers in the U.S. report that increased weather variability and more frequent and intense weather extremes have increased the costs and complexity of food production. Businesses operating in the U.S. agricultural supply, processing, distribution and retailing sectors are actively managing supply networks to reduce disruptions associated with climate change effects. Food systems that rely on external or distant resources and specialized production, supply and marketing chains appear to be particularly vulnerable to global environmental change. These characteristics, widely recognized as critical challenges to the sustainability of the U.S. food system, take on new importance as barriers to climate resilience.

Water is a scarce resource in the West, creating intense competition among user groups. The problem is compounded by climate change. During 2014 and 2015, California experienced one of the worst droughts in 160 years of record keeping. The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation announced zero water allocation for Central Valley Project agricultural water service contractors—with a devastating impact on food producers. Many farmers have fallowed their fields because there was not enough water to meet their needs, and thousands of acres of citrus, almond, and other perennial crops have been ripped out. The reduction in irrigation water supply has forced farmers to draw on underground water, which is expensive and unsustainable. Water managers have to decide between supplying water for cities, agriculture, and environmental services such as water flow through the San Francisco Bay-Delta. Farmers perceive the collapse of their water allocation as, in part, a “regulatory drought” brought on by political decisions about who should have the water. The growing demands of other sectors have been met at the expense of agriculture. Uncertainties in the current political process not only undermine the reliability of the agricultural water supply but also diminish the industry’s ability to make long-term adaptive decisions. The implementation of environmental laws and policies has been particularly distressing to farmers because of the large quantity of water designated for environmental use and the apparent weakness of scientific evidence to justify it. The realization of supposed benefits, such as restoration of endangered fish populations, has not been convincing. Moreover, information is lacking on alternative management options that might be more effective. Two recommendations are presented as a means to increase the resilience and reliability of the water supply for all user groups: (1) a mediated settlement generated by all stakeholders involved in water-use sectors that bear upon the comprehensive and long-term management of the San Francisco Bay-Delta and threatened and endangered species that depend upon it; and (2) an increase in water-storage infrastructure to buffer future fluctuations in snowpack runoff.

The Australian food system is often assumed to be largely secure in the face of global environmental challenges such as climate change. In 2010/2011 serious flooding in Queensland left towns isolated, major roads and highways cut, and incurred significant loss of life and property. In terms of food security, large areas of agricultural land were inundated and food supply chains, including both long and short chains, were affected in significant ways. The impacts included increases in food prices, deterioration in food quality, reduced consumer access to food, and disruption to the sourcing, transportation, and distribution of food, grocery and other items. Examining the discourses and policies surrounding food supply during and after the floods, this paper asks, what lessons for building a more resilient food system have emerged from the 2011 floods? To explore this question, we consider policy documents, media reports, interviews and fieldwork with key stakeholders. We find evidence of strong collaboration of state government and long supply chain operators, but to the general exclusion of civil society-based community supported agriculture networks. Long chains provide the vast bulk of food to Queensland consumers, but are vulnerable when roads are cut; community supported agriculture showed resilience, but remained marginal to the food needs of most Queensland consumers. Both resilience and vulnerability were present within both long and short food supply chains. Yet, there is limited evidence that food security issues, beyond productivity enhancement, are being considered in discussions and policies for climate change and natural disasters. We suggest that a broader view of climate change, beyond disasters and food production, has yet to be fully integrated into food security policy—and supply chain governance and practice—in Australia.

Today the high ideals of local food production reverberate as a model of self-sufficiency and food security. In the US and Great Britain during WWI, local food production was envisioned as ammunition to win the war. To what extent have the food policies and slogans of World Wars I and II influenced current ideas of the value of local strategies of food security in maintaining resilience, and what lessons does the history of war offer about food resilience? During World War I, German and British military strategists developed plans to win the war by leveraging actions to destroy their enemy’s civilian food system. This history triangulates the food resilience of a country that imported food (Great Britain) with one that grew its food locally (Germany), and one that exported surplus (the United States) to examine the strengths and limits of local food production. During World War I, Germany suffered over a million fatalities from famine, while the US and Great Britain raised their national nutritional status by the end of the war. The tragic German experience led directly to the rise of WWII, a war initiated with a “Hunger Plan.” Nineteen million civilians died, many of starvation. A long historical time frame is needed to construct lessons about resilient food systems. This brief sketch of the dismantling and reconstruction of food systems in WWI and WWII draws from secondary sources to suggest novel ideas about the interplay between local production, national coordination, and international networks for humanitarian aid. Using the food policies of three countries—Great Britain, the United States and Germany—this history provides an opportunity to consider the characteristics of resilient food systems and to suggest what is required to reconstruct a large-scale food system following a crisis. War, a disrupter of food systems, also provides a model of how food systems can be reconstructed.

This comparison of government disaster management and public communications after the Chernobyl and Fukushima nuclear accidents seeks to create a framework for disaster management that enhances food resilience—the ability of food systems to withstand perturbations that could cause disruption of food supply—and, in the specific case of nuclear disasters, the avoidance of contaminated food and provision of alternative foods. This paper integrates food security, emergency management, and risk communications perspectives. Misinformation and incomplete information can bias decision-making and political actions. When risk communication is inadequate, the public reacts with fear, mistrust, panic and stress. People have difficulty deciding what they can safely eat and what they should not eat. Many choose to reject all food from affected regions, which can compromise food security. Lack of proper information may lead to such extremes in behavior as avoidance of dairy products and consumption of untested foods, which may in fact have high levels of radioactivity. The measures taken by the USSR after the Chernobyl disaster lacked consistency and clarity and were not effective in providing food security for the affected people. The government also demonstrated a lack of attention to social justice in its dealings with people who moved back to the contaminated area, ignoring government policy that they should stay out. Those people still suffer from food insecurity. In Japan, food that met government safety levels was available, but many consumers nonetheless questioned the safety of food supplies and farmers often were confused about production and marketing. In both the Chernobyl and Fukushima cases, the evacuation of affected people was aimed at reducing exposure to radiation and did not sufficiently consider psychological and physical health impacts of resettlement, nor the security and safety of food supplies. Government responses would have been more effective in some regions if a timely distribution program of adequate, safe alternative foods—especially radioprotectors—from non-affected areas had been initiated.

The focus of this article is to articulate the risks of a consolidated, industrialized agrifood system for our planet’s ecology and our ability to guarantee a future food supply, while also considering how the food system might become more resilient. A relatively small number of agribusiness firms, operating globally, have powerfully shaped who produces food, what is produced, how and where it’s produced, and by whom it is eaten. To examine food system resilience one must see that ecological risks of agriculture, such as monoculture, overuse of fertilizer and chemicals, and lack of genetic diversity, are intertwined with its social and economic organization; that relationships between people and between people and their particular places are critical to situate food decisions within ecology; and that issues of scale in a global food system are keenly important and challenging to resolve. Our highly concentrated global food system has resulted from horizontal and vertical integration in food-system sectors and globalization of agricultural and food markets. This system constrains farmers and others in making choices that can fend off likely ecological and social disruptions while limiting their ability to accommodate change. It has eliminated smaller farms and businesses that provided a redundancy of role and function, resulting in few failsafe mechanisms for the food system. A focus on efficiency, standardization and specialization has decreased the diversity of scale, form and organization across the food system. Finally, the dominant food system’s inability to solve food insecurity and hunger within both rich and poor countries, coupled with an industrial diet that uses up a great many natural resources, makes the system precarious. While there is no single approach at any given scale that will accomplish food-system resilience, a combination of actions, strategies and policies at multiple levels that are rooted in ecology, democracy, and economic and social equality is necessary to move forward.

Food is produced, processed, packaged, transported, and sold in a stable, organized system, or food regime. The current food regime is focused on calories empty of substantial nutrition designed primarily for the growth of capital and corporate power, fostered through the lax, often corporate-designed, regulatory environment of neoliberalism. The neoliberal food regime is responsible for systemic malnutrition and erosion of the ecological preconditions for food production, as a regularity of the system itself. Consequently, a main line of food vulnerability is the political system that insulates the current food regime from social forces demanding change. This insecurity is contrary to the public or larger human interest, but this unsustainable system remains in place through a stable arrangement of government prescriptions that follow corporate elite interests. To understand this structural problem, this essay examines the power of the food industry, which requires the manufactured consent of civil society. The paper finds that counterrevolutionary efforts, which are anticipatory and reactive efforts that defend and protect capitalist elites from social change, stabilize the neoliberal food regime through covert tactics meant to undermine public-interest critics and activists. As a result of these elite-led interventions, true civil society has become less powerful to articulate a public interest that might otherwise intercede in the operation and structure of the food regime. Thus, one leverage point in this political problem is the capacity of civil society, once it is independent of corporate interests, to remove consent to an abusive system and to debate and demand a food system that neither systematically starves whole groups of people nor destroys the ecological systems that make food possible. Building food security, then, requires recapturing a semi-autonomous civil society, eliminating domination by the corporate elite, and replacing it with a politics aligned with a public and ecological affinity. Scholars, educators, and the public can reduce food vulnerability by becoming aware of corporate interests and creating strategic alliances to form a new system with more humane and ecological priorities.

Many are worried that the global food system is entering a period of intense volatility driven by a combination of climate change and population growth. One way to address this problem is for governments and the international community to store more food as a buffer against crisis. The purpose of this paper is to explore the role of food storage as a component of a robust food-security strategy in the 21st century. We do this by first drawing on historical evidence and examples from ancient Rome and China, where pre-industrial governments designed extensive systems that ensured adequate food storage to keep food systems stable. Next, we review the links between food storage and price volatility in the last 20 years and demonstrate that the size of food stores, and in particular grain reserves, directly relates to price volatility. Third, we explore three different types of policies designed to promote grain reserves: the U.S.’s “ever-normal granary” policy, the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy, and Strategic Grain Reserve in Africa. In this third section, we show how there has been a decline from state-owned strategic grain reserves in favor of a more market-oriented approach that is dominated by a handful of powerful corporations that maintain sophisticated supply chains. Because data on the amount of food supply these corporations hold in storage are proprietary secrets, it is impossible to assess how resilient or vulnerable this makes our food system. Finally, we conclude that over time food storage has fallen in and out of favor, criticized for being expensive yet often shown to play an important role in protecting poor consumers in times of food crisis. Given the lack of data on current levels of supply-chain and household storage, more research is needed to evaluate the scale at which food-storage systems should be implemented to ensure food-system resilience as well as mechanisms to govern and manage them.

The purpose of this paper is to explore how socioeconomic and technological shifts in Canadian and American food production, processing and distribution have affected resilience in the food system. First, we use the social-ecological systems literature to define food-system resilience as a function of that system’s ability to absorb external shocks while maintaining core functions, such as food production and distribution. We then use the literature to argue that we can infer food-system resilience by exploring three key dimensions: (1) the diversity of the food system’s components, (2) the degree to which the components are connected, and (3) the degree of decision-making autonomy within the food system. Next, we discuss the impacts of industrialization on these three factors within Canada and the US. Specifically, we show how processes of corporate concentration, farm-scale intensification, mechanization, and the “cost-price squeeze” have led to a decrease in ecological and economic diversity, a high degree of spatial and organizational connectivity, and a diminished decision-making capacity for individual farmers. While this analysis is qualitative and heuristic, the evidence reviewed here leads us to postulate that our food system is becoming less resilient to external shocks such as climate change. We conclude by discussing four possible strategies to restore resilience and suggest a more transformational shift in food-system politics and practice. Specifically, we argue that publicly led multifunctional policies may support more diversified production, while programs to promote food-system localization can increase farmer autonomy. However, these shifts will not be possible without social-structural corrections of current power imbalances in the food system. This policy discussion reinforces the value of the social-ecological framework and specifically its capacity to produce an analysis that interweaves ecology, economy, and power.

The purpose of applying social-ecological resilience thinking to food systems is twofold: first, to define those factors that help achieve a state in which food security for all and at all scales is possible and, second, to provide insights into how to maintain the system in this desirable regime. However, the resilience of food systems is distinct from the broader conceptualizations of resilience in social-ecological systems because of the fundamentally normative nature of food systems: humans need food to survive, and thus system stability is typically a primary policy objective for food-system management. However, society also needs food systems that can intensify sustainably—that is, feed everybody equitably, provide livelihoods, and avoid environmental degradation while responding flexibly to shocks and uncertainty. Today’s failure in meeting food-security objectives can be interpreted as the lack of current governance arrangements to consider the full and differential dimensions of food-system functions—economic, ecological, and social—at appropriate scales: in other words, the multifunctionality of food. We focus on functional and response diversity as two key attributes of resilient, multifunctional food systems: respectively, the number of different functional groups and the diversity of types of responses to disturbances within a functional group. Achieving food security will require functional redundancy and enhanced response diversity, creating multiple avenues to fulfill all food-system objectives. We use the 2013–2015 drought in California to unpack the potential differences between managing for a single function—economic profit—and multiple functions. Our analysis emphasizes how the evolution of the Californian food system has reduced functional and response diversity and created vulnerabilities. Managing for the resilience of food systems will require a shift in priorities from profit maximization to the management of all functions that create full food security at multiple scales.