COVID-19 highlights the need to plan for healthy, equitable and resilient food systems

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ABSTRACT

Rising food insecurity during COVID-19 has revealed deep inequities in food systems. The pandemic has also highlighted the vulnerabilities of global food supply chains and the need for cities to increase the resilience of their food systems. The challenge is to harness the lessons of COVID-19 to promote more resilient urban food systems that are also healthy, equitable and sustainable. Policy solutions should focus on robust social protection mechanisms, strong networks of food system actors that can respond rapidly to shocks, and diverse food supply chains that draw on local as well as global sources of food.

KEYWORDS:

• Food systems
• resilience
• pandemic
• food security
• policy
• governance

Disclosure statement

No potential conflicts of interest were reported by the authors

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by an initiative grant from the Lord Mayor’s Charitable Foundation.

Notes on contributors

Rachel Carey

Rachel Carey is a Lecturer in Food Systems at the University of Melbourne, where her teaching and research focuses on food policy and the governance of sustainable and resilient food systems. Rachel has a particular interest in the resilience and sustainability of city food systems and she leads the Foodprint Melbourne project, which is assessing the resilience of Melbourne’s food system to shocks and stresses. Rachel has worked on the development of food policies for the City of Melbourne and the City of Greater Geelong. She is a member of the Editorial Board of the journal Agriculture and Human Values. 

Maureen Murphy

Maureen Murphy is a Research Fellow at the University of Melbourne investigating the resilience of the food system to shocks and stresses such as fire, flood, drought and pandemic, as part of the Foodprint Melbourne project. In 2018, Maureen completed her PhD on 'Local food environments for a healthy equitable city: evidence to inform urban planning policy and governance in Melbourne, Australia'. Maureen is interested in the application of research in policy settings and has worked for close to twenty years in local and state government.

Leila Alexandra

Leila Alexandra is a Research Assistant on the Foodprint Melbourne project, at the University of Melbourne, which investigates the resilience of Melbourne’s food system to shocks and stresses. Leila’s Honours in Environmental Science from the ANU identified leverage in social-ecological poverty traps, applying system dynamics modelling to an Ethiopian case study. Leila is interested in systems perspectives on food and agricultural systems, and has worked in sustainability education, community food enterprises and farming.