Planning for food commons in the post-COVID world

Abstract

Food security is quickly becoming a major crisis within the COVID-19 crisis While food insecurity mounts, reports from across the world have detailed the destruction of food by producers en masse: animals euthanized, liters of milk poured down the drain, crops left to rot in the field As some countries move to protectionist measures to secure their own food supply, many are warned that any impediments to global food trade could mean further catastrophe for millions of people In many ways the crisis may feel like a sledgehammer, yet the pandemic has merely laid bare the flaws of a system built on foundational vulnerabilities It has always been contradictory to construct food security on distant just-in-time supply chains, controlled centrally by just a handful of multinational corporations, and heavily influenced by the whims of financial commodity markets Already before the pandemic struck, the food systems were hanging on by a thread A look around would reveal food insecurity in the midst of food waste, obesity in the midst of hunger, heavy dependence on fossil fuels in the face of climate change and peak oil, and a growing disconnection from nature in the face of soil degradation and ecosystem destruction