Diverse adaptation strategies helped local food producers cope with initial challenges of the Covid-19 pandemic: Lessons from Québec, Canada

Abstract

The Covid-19 pandemic has demonstrated the vulnerability of food systems to disturbances. Advocates have promoted short food supply chains as more resilient and adaptable thanks to their embeddedness in local economic and ecological networks. As part of a broader case study on challenges facing farmers in local food supply chains in Québec, Canada, we asked farmers about the pandemic's impacts on food production and marketing in the province, including how food producers coped with these challenges. We sent an online questionnaire to 1,046 farmers who distribute food through direct marketing in Québec, identified through consumer-facing online platforms. We conducted follow-up interviews with 15 of the 133 farmers that completed the questionnaire to gain a better understanding of their pandemic-related challenges and opportunities, as well as their adaptation needs and strategies. We identified four main types of challenges among farmers: workforce shortages, balancing food demand and supply, changes in sales outlets and marketing channels, and other operational and development issues. In turn, six key adaptation strategies helped farmers reorganize their marketing and sales, which we categorize as: redistribution, streamlining, replacement, collaboration, farm adjustment, and outlet adjustment. Most surveyed local farmers felt well-prepared to adapt to the four major challenges that the Covid-19 pandemic forged or escalated, and our findings suggest that they demonstrated remarkable resilience to additional challenges posed by the pandemic. Our study therefore contributes important insights about how flexibility and redundancy among local farmers stabilized the local food system during the onset of a global pandemic.