A food nonprofit's response to COVID-19: The Common Market leans on its mission to serve

The Common Market is a nonprofit regional food distributor with a mission to connect communities with good food from sustainable family farms. Outputs of their work include improved food security, farm viability, and community and ecological health. The nonprofit services communities in its three active regions—the Mid-Atlantic, the Southeast, and Houston, Texas—by delivering healthy farm food to the institutions that serve them: schools, hospitals, eldercare facilities, early childhood education centers, etc. As the COVID-19 pandemic struck the nation, it shut down some of the nonprofit’s con­ventional wholesale outlets and exposed and intensified the issue of food insecurity throughout the country. The food hub prepared to lean on its mission intensely and creatively under these unprece­dented circumstances. Poised to test the limits of a regional food system, The Common Market unveiled the resilient spirits of its team, its partners, and the family farms that make up its network. This essay highlights partnerships that ignited meaningful impact for their farmer partners and helped meet the needs of vulnerable populations amidst the pandemic. . . .

Impact of COVID-19 on Pennsylvania farm revenue: Looking back at the 2020 season

Initial forecasts predicted severe financial losses for small and midsized farmers as the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted usual market channels nationwide. Early reports both confirmed and challenged these fears, as some farmers could not find new markets while others established or expanded their direct-to-consumer sales to replace their lost outlets. To understand the impact of the pandemic on Pennsylvania farmers across the entire 2020 growing season, Chatham University and Pasa Sustainable Agriculture[1] surveyed farmers and performed interviews with a subset of these farmers. The anonymous survey was distributed by Pennsylvania-based farm organizations to their constituents, predominantly through email. Just under half the farmers (42%) reported a loss of revenue, while over half (58%) reported either no change or an increase in revenue in 2020. The scale of these changes varied greatly. We also found that vegetable farmers fared slightly better than livestock/eggs/dairy farmers; those with a higher pre-COVID revenue did better than those with a lower pre-COVID revenue; and farms that were able to increase direct-to-consumer sales maintained or increased their total revenues. Participation in state and federal relief programs varied and appeared to have no significant effect on farmers’ final 2020 revenue. Farmers’ responses to the open-ended survey questions demonstrated that the weather, a lack of infrastructure to support small and midsized producers, and consumers’ lack of support for a regional food system were major challenges before COVID. Without meaningful policy changes, these challenges will persist beyond the pandemic’s resolution.

THE IMPACT OF T HE STATE ON CREATING CONDITIONS TO ENSURE FOOD SECURIT Y IN THE NATIONAL AND REGIONAL DIMENSION

The aim of the study was to identify the key directions of state influence which guarantee food security of the country and its regions, i.e. ensure physical availability of food, physical and economic access to food, its security and stability of the food system. The empirical study was based on the results of the workshops, which were organized in 2017 in the Rzeszów subregion, and whose participants were broadly understood stakeholders of the regional food system. The research results indicate that food security is a multidimensional concept referring to economic, political, demographic, social, cultural and technical issues. It requires to take various types of actions at the same time, carried out at various levels of state authorities, implemented in different areas.

Local or global: A biophysical analysis of a regional food system

Growing concern regarding environmental, social, economic and food quality outcomes of the modern global industrial food system as well as the implications of climate change on food security and food system sustainability have fomented interest in, and action to advance localized food systems. Environmental stewardship is an oft-touted benefit of food system localization. However, few studies have comparatively examined actual environmental benefits of local versus global supply systems and most focus on only one aspect (e.g., GHG emissions). The study reported here comparatively analyzes land, water, carbon and ecological footprints of a localized food supply and contemporary global food supply for the South-West British Columbia (Canada), bioregion (SWBC). The footprint family approach utilized allows measuring overall biophysical loads for the studied region. We quantified regional rates of reliance on imported biophysical services; measured the performances of specific food products grown locally in comparison with their imported counterparts; and identified those commodities that have better and worse local biophysical performances. For the SWBC bioregion, only 35% of the food consumed in the region is locally produced. Supplying the region's food demands requires 2 million hectares of land and 3 billion m3 of water, generating approximately 2.8 million tons of CO2e, with an eco-footprint of 2.5 million gha. Examining a large number of commodities grown and consumed in the bioregion revealed that only some commodities grown locally have absolute or significant biophysical advantages, while the rest have very little to no local advantage. Our analysis challenges the notion that local food systems are necessarily more environmentally sustainable from a biophysical resource use perspective and therefore may not represent the most compelling argument(s) for food system localization. We call for better and more comprehensive comparative analysis of existing and desired food systems as a mean to advance sustainability.

City of Farms

Chapter six reveals the ways in which civic and public actors working outside the boundaries of PlaNYC iteratively embedded urban agriculture and food policy into municipal planning efforts. A local/regional food system framework offered one way to bridge divisions within the movement and work towards comprehensive change to food production, processing, distribution, consumption, and post-consumption. Within the void created by city hall’s lack of engagement, other figures in the municipal government seized the opportunity to advance food policy agendas for New York City. At the same time, the complete absence of food, agriculture, and community gardens from PlaNYC was contested by civic groups and residents. As a result, the 2011 update to PlaNYC included a brief crosscutting section on food, although it lacked capital funding to fuel the achievement of its stated goals. Incorporation of food issues into PlaNYC was nonetheless seen by advocates as a symbolic and political achievement.

Using Network Analysis to Identify Key Actors in Collaborative Governance Processes

Collaborative governance is an increasingly popular form of governance. In theory, collaborative governance processes should be inclusive and value the perspectives of multiple stakeholders, including nonprofit organizations. In practice, this may not be the case. Recent work on representation in collaborative governance has found asymmetry in the way actor groups are descriptively and substantively represented in the collaborative governance process. We extend this line of work by employing network methods to create a diagnostic tool to identify which individual actors are substantively represented in collaborative governance processes over time. This tool is designed to systematically evaluate whether individual actors are under or overrepresented in collaborative governance. It provides a starting point for groups to discuss whether they are functionally inclusive and to understand whether non-inclusion is random or systematic. We apply the tool to collaborative governance in a regional food system and find variance in substantive representation by actor, indicating the collaborative governance process diverges from its inclusive design in practice. In particular, nonprofit organizations who are formally part of the collaborative governance process are not substantively represented in formal meetings to the same degree as city and county agencies.

A capacity assessment of New England's large animal slaughter facilities as relative to meat production for the regional food system

Demand for locally and regionally produced meat has stimulated increased interest in livestock production among New England farmers. The region's livestock producers lament lack of access to slaughter and processing infrastructure. However, there is very little research on New England's slaughter industry to document this perceived problem. For this reason, we tested the hypothesis that a shortage of slaughter and processing infrastructure constrains the production of livestock for meat in New England. The region's large animal slaughter facility owners and managers were surveyed to determine current slaughter and processing capacity and identify challenges facilities face in meeting increased producer demand. The estimates of current capacity were then compared to USDA data on livestock slaughter and large animal marketings. The region's existing abattoirs could slaughter 63–84% of all animals marketed, but could process only 29–43%. New England's infrastructure for slaughter operated at only 38% of total physical capacity in 2009, while on-site processing infrastructure operated at 66% of total physical capacity (78% if only on-site inspected capacity is considered). Moreover, surveys with facility operators showed that the primary constraints faced by existing slaughterhouses are a shortage of skilled labor and the seasonality of the livestock industry, with periods of very high demand for slaughter in the fall and very low demand in the spring and early summer. Additional infrastructure, particularly for processing, would be needed were regional livestock production to increase. However, simply increasing physical capacity will not address the issues of labor availability and demand seasonality expressed by slaughter facility owners.