How did local food businesses and orgs respond to COVID and keep feeding their communities?

When COVID hit, local food organizations were faced with both a challenge – institutional and retail sales drying up – and an opportunity – a burgeoning market of consumers looking for new, safe ways to buy food. Almost overnight, food hubs and community based nonprofits across the country pivoted from wholesale to direct to consumer markets in order to serve this growing customer base. Many hubs created box programs to ensure that communities had access to high quality food while also paying farmers and food producers a fair price. To be successful in their new modus operandi, food hubs all over the country leveraged their existing partnerships while forging new relationships to help figure out the supply chain adaptations needed to meet their new customers’ requests. On this call, we’ll hear from Katie Nixon and Alicia Ellingsworth from the Kansas City Food Hub, Nare Park from the Asian Pacific Islander Forward Movement, and Christine Quane from Eastern Market on how they got creative about meeting new types of demand in response to the pandemic.

How are value chain practitioners adapting their practice in response to COVID-19?

How are value chain practitioners adapting their practice in response to COVID-19? Value Chain Coordination is a critical piece of food system infrastructure and food systems development. VCC is a set of activities that supports the development of food systems by helping to ensure strong sets of relationships and communication channels that make the food system able to grow, respond, and adapt. Wallace Center was joined by Hallie Casey from the Sustainable Food Center in Austin, TX, Molly Riordan from the City of Philadelphia’s Public Health Department and A-dae Briones from the First Nations Development Institute who shared how they are adapting and responding to supply chain disruptions in their communities.

How does the small scale meat supply chain respond to a pandemic?

While COVID-19 has disrupted and exposed the vulnerability of large industrial meat processors, it has also highlighted new and longstanding challenges faced by small and mid-sized processors. Within this context, solutions are emerging that address the challenges in the short term and offer a path forward towards lasting change. Jessica Roosa from This Old Farm, Rebecca Thistlethwaite from Niche Meat Processor Assistance Network, and Kelly Nuckolls from National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition explore the impact that COVID-19 is having on small and medium sized meat processors, how they’re adapting to these challenges, and the changes underway to alleviate pressure and ensure lasting change.

With COVID-19 disruptions in supply chains, mapping and analyzing food availability and flows can be powerful tools in guiding emergency food response and future food system planning.

With COVID-19 disruptions in supply chains, mapping and analyzing food availability and flows can be powerful tools in guiding emergency food response and future food system planning. On this call, we looked at the way communities have used mapping to collect and share information on food access. The second part of the discussion gives a systems overview of how segments of food supply chains interact at different scales, for different products, and for different end-users. This includes the patterns food distribution followed before COVID-19 and what the patterns might be after the pandemic. We were joined by: Sara Oberle, RDN, Extension Teacher, UNH Cooperative Extension Brooke Kelleher, Program Assistant, UNH Cooperative Extension Michelle Miller, Associate Director of Programs, UW-Madison Center for Integrated Agricultural Systems