BURLINGTON, Vt. — Over the past 20 years, food systems research has embraced the term “resilience” to describe a system’s ability to respond to major shocks. The capacities that enable resilience are built in times of stasis, but resilience itself can only be tested during a crisis. For nearly three years, the COVID-19 pandemic has created sequential shocks testing the resilience of food systems actors across all scales and all geographies.
In the new JAFSCD article “The experience of Vermont local food businesses during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic,” University of Vermont researchers Claire Whitehouse (corresponding author), Dr. David Conner, Dr. Lisa Chase, and Dr. Travis Reynolds turn the lens of COVID-19 resilience research to local food businesses in Vermont. Through surveys of food service operations that use local ingredients and farms that sell directly to consumers, they explore contributors and challenges to food business resilience during the first year of the pandemic.
KEY FINDINGS
- The only significant factor in business fiscal health one year into the pandemic was how the business was doing before the pandemic.
- Just over one-third of farmers reported that their businesses were viable before COVID-19; most relied on built equity or off-farm income to keep their businesses going.
- Foodservice businesses were doing significantly better than farms before the pandemic but lost their advantage once it hit.
- Businesses that were doing well before the pandemic were more likely to go on to receive COVID-19 emergency funding, and all businesses that self-reported as “thriving” before the pandemic were funded.
- Whether a business received emergency funding had no relationship to its fiscal health one year into the pandemic.
- 10% of respondents reported that their businesses were “vulnerable” one year into the pandemic.
RECOMMENDATIONS FOR POLICY, PRACTICE, AND RESEARCH
- Policies to build resilient food businesses should focus on building viable food businesses during stasis. Businesses that paid all labor (including family labor), covered their costs, and generated a profit before March 2020 were more likely to be doing well in the winter and spring of 2021.
- The relationship between business health and emergency funding merits further investigation. What did funders (federal, state, and private) consider in allocating emergency funds if businesses that were doing well pre-pandemic were more likely to be funded? Why was there no relationship between receiving funds and business health one year into the pandemic?
- Further research is needed on the experience of foodservice businesses during the COVID-19 pandemic, especially immigrant-owned restaurants.
–Claire Whitehouse, David Conner, Lisa Chase, and Travis Reynolds
University of Vermont
JAFSCD