From Faltering to Flourishing: Local Food Supply Chains are Making a Comeback 

Written By: Christian Kanlian, Food Systems Consultant at Agritecture

Many Americans never doubted the continual abundance of modern day grocery stores, until they couldn’t find toilet paper during the start of the pandemic. 

With painful disruptions caused by fluctuating demand, shipping bottlenecks, and labor shortages, supply chains are becoming a new topic of conversation at dinner tables across the country. 

How does a family shop for food in the age of climate and pandemic crises? How does a city ensure that its most vulnerable have consistent access to nutritious, affordable food? 

The answers turn out to be as diverse as the ways people grow, cook, and enjoy food, but it ultimately boils down to one central tradeoff: between efficiency and resiliency.

Historically, efficiency has been the goal. 

Since WWII, our food system has been on a one-way trip towards scale and efficiency. Everything from the number of farms, to the types of crops, to how they get to market, have all become more consolidated in recent decades. 

It started with a post-war boom of generous government subsidies favoring overproduction, which coupled with advances in hybrid crops and synthetic inputs, meant farmers focused on just a select few staple grain crops. This allowed calories to become cheaper and cheaper, but drastically shrank the genetic diversity that farmers rely on, an alarming fragility given the changing climate and its effect on traditional crop performance. 

Of the more than 200,000 edible plant species, people today rely on just 15 for almost all of their regular food intake. Because of the political and scientific focus on staple grain production, just three crops (wheat, rice and maize) make up almost half of global calorie consumption. 

Bigger Farms, Fewer Choices

To this day, the US and EU each spend tens of billions annually on crop subsidies, but these payouts flow to only a handful of commodity crops, and generally to the largest farms and agribusiness companies. 

Often in the form of guaranteed minimum prices, these interventions create artificial demand for commodities like corn, and incentivize farmers to plant “fencerow to fencerow”, even when it might not otherwise be economically or ecologically sensible to do so. 

These pressures drive farm consolidation, as farms benefit from larger and more efficient machinery to keep costs down, while simultaneously requiring fewer and fewer people to work the land, dramatically weakening rural communities. 

Food processing and distribution is becoming increasingly concentrated too. For example, 90% of global wheat shipping is controlled by just four companies, and those ships are flowing through a select few ports. The massive throughput of these trade channels means any disruption, like just a single ship getting stuck in the Suez Canal, can quickly delay $60B worth of cargo from reaching its destination. 

In the US, large-scale agriculture is dominated by a small handful of companies, which are consolidating even further due to recent mega-mergers. The four-firm concentration ratio, a measure of industry consolidation, for several key agricultural industries is: 

• 85% for corn seed

• 76% for soybean processing

• 88% for phosphorus fertilizer

• 85% for cattle processing

This paucity of choices forces farmers to take whatever contract they can get, and leaves consumers few options but to absorb price hikes, even while corporate profits rise.

When systems are built for maximum efficiency and minimal flexibility, any shock can cause massive ripple effects. When people rely on these systems to secure their family’s next meal, the damage is personal. 

Governments are taking notice, and action.

Reacting to moments of tremendous disruption during COVID-19, the federal government has begun leveraging its power to even the playing field for small- and mid-size producers. 

The USDA recently announced over $2 billion in funding to support the transition to a more decentralized, resilient food system. Secretary Vilsack spoke earnestly about the need to increase choices for both farmers and consumers, diversifying the core elements of the food system: production, processing, distribution, and marketing.  

Cities are taking up the mantle too. 

New York City, for example, is investing $140 million to strengthen the Hunts Point Terminal Market, including mitigating the climate-related risks of sea level rise and building a dedicated warehouse for local and regional produce, doubling the number of local and regional farmers who will be able to sell into the lucrative market. 

Cities and states are using their buying power to support more diversified, regional producers, adopting standards like Good Food Purchasing and the Cool Food Pledge. They are expanding and enshrining COVID-era emergency food assistance programs, like Nourish NY, that source surplus food from local growers and distribute it to families in need. 

School Districts are getting in on the game too, utilizing $400m from the USDA to prioritize local buying habits, and expand popular Farm-to-School programs. 

Collectively, these public purchasing contracts represent an enormous potential to drive demand for local and regional foods, but efforts are often stymied because of antiquated legal language favoring the lowest bidder over all else.

Expanding the reach of a more competitive, resilient food system.

While diversifying and strengthening the food supply chain, it’s vital that we simultaneously enable those at the economic margins to participate more fully. 

Adequately funding nutrition assistance programs like SNAP and WIC, and adding bonus incentives to use those dollars locally, could provide another massive source of demand for regional producers. This shift would also provide fresher, more exciting, more nutrient-dense food to those dealing with food insecurity and apartheid, including millions of Americans affected by supermarket redlining and other racist development practices. 

Existing programs like Double Up Bucks are already demonstrating the power of this win-win incentive, and should be scaled up quickly. Studies consistently show an economic multiplier effect of SNAP investments, yielding between 1 and 2:1 in terms of GDP returns, indicating adequate nutrition is an actively limiting factor to human and economic development, even in “developed” countries like the US.  

Making the most of this unique opportunity for change

The recent investments announced by the USDA represent a once-in-a-generation opportunity to fundamentally reshape how food is grown, distributed, and eaten in the US. This chance to systematically level the playing field will do much more for the food system than individuals “voting with your fork”. 

Ensuring these investments are wisely allocated will take vigilance and participation from all of us. Deliberations are already underway on the omnibus 2023 Farm Bill, the 5-year keystone food and agricultural legislation. Key issues like Food Stamps (SNAP and WIC), incentives for carbon sequestration, and powerful agribusiness subsidies will all be on the table, with the backdrop of climate change necessitating swift, bold action. 

If you feel motivated to act, you can support forward-thinking groups like the National Young Farmers Coalition, Common Market, and Soul Fire Farm as they advocate for more equitable and sustainable food and ag policies, or you can contact your representatives directly and tell them what a better food system looks like to you. 

The USDA is calling for nominations to new Urban Agriculture County Committees, as well as inviting feedback at UrbanAgricultureFederalAdvisoryCommittee@usda.gov. 

You can also look for local Food Policy Councils, which are community-led efforts to reshape food systems towards human and environmental health. 

As debates between resilience and efficiency play out on farms, in offices and in city halls, it is long overdue that taxpayer dollars start supporting the side of reliable, nutritious, affordable food, rather than overproduction and corporate profits. 

As Wendell Berry famously said, “Eating is an Agricultural Act”. We are all involved in food systems, and those with the privilege and ability to speak up now have a greater chance to do so than ever before. 

Curious what Agritecture is doing to support a more resilient, diversified food system?
Check out our work on Local Food System Planning, including past projects in Atlanta and Dallas. 

About The Author

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