The Pandemic's Effects on the US Industrial Food System

The COVID-19 pandemic is a grim reminder of weaknesses in the US industrial food system (IFS). Without the migrant labor on which industrial fruit and vegetable production relies, producers have had to destroy healthy crops (Cook, Reference Cook2020). Field and, especially, meat processing workers, already vulnerable to injury on the job and crowded housing, are susceptible to the disease, with the risk of passing it on to others in their communities and even downstream in the supply chain (Klemko & Kindy, Reference Klemko and Kindy2020; Schlosser, Reference Schlosser2020; Reiley and Reinhard, Reference Reiley and Reinhard2020). By one count, as of November 2020, 74,000 meatpacking and food processing workers had contracted the virus, most in the American Midwest, and 366 had died (Douglas, Reference Douglas2020). With the closure of major slaughter and processing facilities during the pandemic, livestock and poultry farmers were forced to euthanize animals (Mak, Reference Mak2020), and large-scale dairy farmers, already in crisis from chronically low prices, were forced to dump milk (Huffstutter, Reference Huffstutter2020). Aggregators were not immune. COVID-19 cases closed at least 11 Amazon warehouses in March (Selyukh, Reference Selyukh2020). At the other end of the food system, those relying on industrial agriculture faced similar pressure. At the pandemic's peak, 1-in-5 Wendy's Restaurants had no hamburger (Lucas, Reference Lucas2020). Major grocery chains had few dairy options and had trouble stocking food basics such as yeast and flour (Guynn & Tyko, Reference Guynn and Tyko2020; Hobbs Reference Hobbs2020). Small grocers and neighborhood food outlets were shuttered and niche products (e.g., gluten free or organic) were shed by producers for broadly acceptable staples made with readily available ingredients (Zwillich, Reference Zwillich2020; Walters, Wade, & Suttles, Reference Walters, Wade and Suttles2020). Small food businesses, restaurants included, were especially hard hit (Anderson, Reference Anderson2020). Although some restaurants thrived by increasing take-away, others less adaptable closed (CBS News, 2020). Longer-term, districts historically identified with local food culture may close or change such that regional distinctiveness and talent are diminished (Anderson, Reference Anderson2020). The collapse of consumer-oriented, face-to-face business led to the unemployment of 16.3 million people in the U.S. (Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2020), as well as growing food insecurity (Feeding America, 2020). While some were able to source food outside the dominant food system, those excluded from alternatives, by social-economics or location, faced precarious circumstances (Wilson Reference Wilson2020), suffering shortages, uncertainty, and quantity/quality trade-offs. Even emergency food pantries, the traditional “dumping grounds” of the IFS (Fisher, Reference Fisher2017), failed those in need during acute periods of shortage and quarantining as they had insufficient labor to hand out food donations (Abou-Sabe et al., Reference Abou-Sabe, Romo, McFadden and Longoria2020; Stanger, Reference Stanger2020).

Unsurprisingly, laborers on farms, in warehouses, and in retail organized in larger numbers to demand workplace protections, and did so in solidarity with one another (Mzali, Reference Mzali2020). Over half of COVID-19 related labor movements between March and May inhabited the food sector, and food workers moved to capitalize on their “essential” status and newly high-risk nature of their jobs to demand workplace protections (Mzali, Reference Mzali2020; Payday Report, 2020).

Importantly, the current pandemic has cut unevenly across the US population. First, those who are low income are more likely to be marked as “essential” workers required for in-person work (Jewett, Reference Jewett2020). They are thus more likely to become infected, to die, or to lose their source of income. Second, because of systemic racism in the US, Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) are the most vulnerable to COVID-19 and its long-term implications as they are more likely to be low income and without adequate access to healthy food (Woodward et al., Reference Woodward, Yen and Boak2020; Neel Reference Neel2020). COVID-19 also has particularly ravaged those with diabetes, metabolic disorders, and immune deficiencies (Centers for Disease Control, People, 2020), which disproportionally impact BIPOC due to marginalization, food insecurity, environmental racism, and economic inequality. Unsurprisingly, both infection and death rates are higher among BIPOC (Centers for Disease Control, Health Equity Considerations, 2020).

The Pandemic as Crisis and Reformulation

To understand how a pandemic created a crisis in the US IFS, we note that the US IFS is primarily a periodic pull-oriented, just-in-time system (Kim, Reference Kim1985) characterized by not just large numbers of producers and consumers, but also highly agglomerated intermediaries engaged in the manufacturing, aggregation and distribution of food (Saitone & Sexton, Reference Saitone and Sexton2017). Capitalist corporations necessarily narrow their responsibilities to maximize profit, with many items involving the public good (employee wellbeing, community investment, environmental resilience, animal welfare, etc.) treated, in the words of Foster and Clark (Reference Foster and Clark2018) as “gifts” to capitalism. The system thus relies on both self-exploitation by small-scale producers seeking competitive advantage and exploitation of nature and laborers. Just-in-time production systems are particularly vulnerable to disruption, more so when they are lengthy and geographically dispersed as in the US IFS (Hobbs, Reference Hobbs2020).

The pandemic has exposed the tenuous underpinnings of the US IFS. Two possibilities emerge from the current crisis. First, the pandemic simply created a hiccup in our current IFS that will quickly dissipate. Or second, we are glimpsing first-hand a transition from one food regime to another with potential for a more secure and sustainable food future. While a regime is an integrated economic and socio-cultural system of accumulation (Aglietta, Reference Aglietta1979), a food regime, by extension, references such an integrated system for food (Friedmann, Reference Friedmann and Shanin1987; Friedmann & McMichael, Reference Friedmann and McMichael1989). Food regimes, like larger capitalist accumulation regimes, end in the sorts of crises we are experiencing today wherein their logic collapses. The current, or third, food regime, which emerged in the 1980s and continues at least up until the current pandemic, is dominated by the global circulation of food by entrenched multinational corporate actors (McMichael, Reference McMichael2009; Holt-Gimenez & Shattuck, Reference Holt Giménez and Shattuck2011) that often exploit geopolitical tensions with agricultural products in order to accumulate wealth.

Dominant regimes, such as that now in crisis, simultaneously exist with others that lie nascent below the surface. Crisis opens at least the possibility that a nascent regime may be catalyzed into the dominant position. Piore and Sabel (Reference Piore and Sabel1984) argue that such a significant change can result from a combination of experimentation, expediency, and potent historical events such as the Great Depression, World War II, or global pandemic (Davidson, Reference Davidson2020). Their theory helps to account for the prospect that smaller-scale agriculture and alternative food production practices, previously relegated to the margins, may at this time present a challenge to industrial production. The pandemic may well set the stage for new urgency in food experimentation and expediency that expands crafting and sourcing into the future, as preliminary research by Burris (Reference Burris2020) suggests. Developments in this emergent food regime are likely to build on early signs of concern for provenance and social and environmental justice (Weston, Reference Weston2020).

We do not, however, expect the current, industrial food regime to quietly succumb. Indeed, President Donald Trump's invocation of the Defense Production Act to protect the country's meat supply mandates that facilities stay open despite risks to the health of employees and their communities. Additionally, his administration sought to support American agriculture by reducing wages for foreign workers (Ordoñez, Reference Ordoñez2020). These examples demonstrate how the ideological state apparatus continues to scaffold things as they are, even in a crisis (Althusser, Reference Althusser2008). The resulting culture war (Mitchell, Reference Mitchell2000) has seen both protesters armed with automatic-weapons defending their right to work during the pandemic (Bogel-Burroughs & Peters, Reference Bogel-Burroughs and Peters2020) and labor strikes for higher wages and better working conditions (Mzali, Reference Mzali2020). Large corporations such as Amazon, Dial soap, and United Airlines have also gone to lengths to convince the public that they have both the safety of their workers and consumers foremost in mind (Day One Staff, 2020; Henkel, 2020; United Airlines, 2020).

Evidence for a New Food System: The Case of the U.S. Midwest

Known for its industrial agricultural production of maize and soybeans that are shipped to other parts of the country and the world, the Midwestern US features a mixture of sparsely settled rural areas, small towns, regional hubs, and major urban areas along with the attendant disparities of infrastructure and income. Less encumbered by rigid or lengthy supply protocols the Sustainable Food System (SFS) in the Midwest largely adapted to the new reality quickly and creatively, using technological innovations and community alliances to rapidly shift to online ordering, reduced-contact delivery (Cagle, Reference Cagle2020), new venues, and new supply systems.

In response to gaps in the IFS during the pandemic, we have seen the rearrangement and expansion of SFS actors (those involved in the alternatively organized, biodiverse, smaller scale agro-food system) of the region, as evidence below indicates. Consumers that were financially, geographically and technically able turned to alternative suppliers specializing in pastured meat and regionally available fruits and vegetables (Proeber, Reference Proeber2020; WRTV, 2020). As restaurants closed across the Midwest, the balance of prepared versus home-made shifted dramatically. Shortages in the IFS meant that staples (breads, milk, meats, etc.) were sourced online, outside the usual channels (Bowman, Reference Bowman2020; McCrimmon, Reference McCrimmon2020). Interest in food crafts such as backyard chickens, sourdough baking, and home gardening revived (Burris, Reference Burris2020). Despite issues in the IFS, locally and regionally raised and slaughtered grass-fed meats remained readily accessible (Linnekin, Reference Linnekin2020). Artisanal milk, cheeses, yogurt, and eggs of different varieties remained available. Locally grown mushrooms, greens, and vegetables continued making their way to farmers’ market pick up sites and local food delivery services (Ballard, Reference Ballard2020). Indeed, some direct-to-consumer operators saw sales grow during the pandemic (Bowman, Reference Bowman2020; McCrimmon, Reference McCrimmon2020).

To connect producers and consumers, new channels of aggregation and distribution emerged, and existing alternative channels rapidly enlarged (Grace, Reference Grace2020; McAfee, Reference McAfee2020). For example, many small-scale, locally-distributing farmers and artisanal food producers established an online presence, gaining new information about customers’ preferences along with possibilities for cooperation with other producers (for example, see Sill, Reference Sill2020; Elejalde-Ruiz, Reference Elejalde-Ruiz2020; Coulter, Reference Coulter2020; Waxman, Reference Waxman2020; Peyton, Reference Peyton2020, Splitter, Reference Splitter2020; Severson, Reference Severson2020; Thilmany, et al., Reference Thilmany, Jablonski, Low, Tropp and Angelo2020). The pandemic saw small producers gathering in new, sometimes marginally legal, configurations to circumvent the closure of farmers’ markets, restaurants, and CSA drop points (Sill, Reference Sill2020; Coulter, Reference Coulter2020; Robinson, Reference Robinson2020). In addition, providers who aggregatedand distributed food in new ways and places—including cooperative farm stops, neighborhood drop points and walk up sales at production points, such as bakeries and creameries—expanded their customer base to new alternative food customers (Elms, Reference Elms2020; Held, Reference Held2020; Forum News Service, 2020; Muddy Fork Bakery, 2020; Robinson & Farmer, Reference Robinson and Farmer2017). Additionally, emergency food services expanded their reach through increased food donations from campus gardens, gleaning, and “sponsor a neighbor” programs as well as through coordation with underutilized food production facilities and distribution programs (University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, 2020; WIBW, 2020; Feeding America, Summer Food Service, 2020; Johannesen, Reference Johannesen2020; Slootmaker, Reference Slootmaker2020; Babb & Betz, Reference Babb and Betz2020; Neighborhood Planting Project, 2020).

A New Food Regime: Problems and Recommendations

While the cracks in the IFS have positioned small-scale alternatives to innovate and expand, significant challenges, both legacy and new, remain. These include limits to scale, tension between farm and food justice, and the uneven reach and undesirable effects of technology based on socio-economic disparities.