Small farm to food insecure: matching needs with surplus.
In the late winter of 2020 when the COVID-19 pandemic threw the United States into a state of chaos an acute dual and contradictory crisis caught our attention. Due to the closing of institutions and restaurants, farmers across the country tilled under crops and poured milk down the drain, unable to sell their goods. Simultaneously, the percentage of the food insecure rose dramatically.
Prior to the COVID-19 crisis, it was estimated that 1 in 11 Massachusetts families or 9% faced food insecurity. Due to COVID-19, that number increased to 38% according to Project Bread President Erin McAleer. Aware that food surplus and food insecurity was already existent, we were still stunned by the magnitude during this crisis. How was it possible that food was thrown away while so many did not have enough to feed themselves?
As designers, we believe our skills can serve the challenges faced by small local farmers and the food insecure in New England, exacerbated by COVID-19, climate change, and other crises yet unknown. However, we know our answers must come from those already engaged in this work otherwise assumptions made are not only arrogant but irrelevant and inapplicable. Thus, we interviewed small farmers, institutional food producers, distributors, Food Bank employees, gleaning organizations, food skills educators, food shelf volunteers to discover from those doing the work of growing, distributing and consuming the food where successes and challenges lie, to amplify the work already in action, and discover where change is best made to collectively create solutions.
Through these interviews we found that the COVID-19 crisis amplified broader, long-standing issues within our food system such as the stranglehold of large food distribution companies, the challenges of storage and timely transportation, the difficulty in providing nutrient-rich fresh food to the food insecure, the insufficient crop yield and time of harvest data for small farms, and the undervaluing of fresh local food, the small farm, and skilled food work.
We spoke to passionate individuals working across different sectors creating multiple solutions, yet, due to overworked individuals confronted with too many challenges and not enough time or money we found inconsistent synthesis or sharing of knowledge and resources. Design and designers could help in a myriad of ways.
On this site we present 25 challenges compiled from our participatory action research and provide a series of resources including community share agriculture for students at Harvard and an annotated bibliography of articles and webinars.
This website is the product of the Participatory Budgeting and Summer Research grants delivered through the Harvard University Graduate School of Design in Spring 2020 to Kira Clingen, Tessa Crespo, and Amy Brooks Thornton.
