In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, the food system has seen unprecedented shifts in consumer demand alongside supply chain bottlenecks that resulted in empty store shelves and consumer fear around the resiliency of the conventional food system.  Amidst this unprecedented uncertainty, there has been reinvigorated interest in local and regional foods as a reliable and sustainable alternative to the conventional food system. 

 

This offers a unique opportunity to better understand regional food system actors’ responses to COVID-related challenges in order to gain knowledge about food system resilience that will inform both conventional and regional food systems and enhance social, ecological, and economic sustainability as well as crisis preparedness.

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Viewing regional food systems as comprised of (i.) input suppliers (ii.) food producers iii.) food processors (iv.) distributors (v.) marketers/providers and (vi.) consumers, our study will collect data from a purposeful sample at the core of the system - the producers and processors who live and sell in Iowa.

 

Through focusing on these actors this research seeks to answer the following questions

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1. In what ways are direct-to-consumer producers and small meat processors pivoting to address the challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic? 

2. What are the enabling factors and barriers/bottlenecks both within food system nodes (e.g. operation characteristics, sector-relevant policies) and between nodes (e.g. social networks, food safety or marketing laws) that create variability in responses?

 

To answer these questions, this sequential mixed method project bridges disciplinary approaches from public health, human geography, and anthropology through two rounds of survey data collection alongside in-depth interviews and narrative analysis. This research is ongoing in 2020/21. 

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This research is funded with a University of Iowa Interdisciplinary, Scalable Solutions for a Sustainable Future Seed Grant