Disrupted food systems, and how they are slowly bouncing back

A sustainable income for farmers and nutritious, affordable food for everyone: this is what Rikolto works for. During this year, it has become more relevant but also more difficult than ever, as Covid-19 drastically disrupted our food systems, exacerbating their vulnerabilities.

“Rikolto started its Covid response activities at the end of March”, says Charlotte Flechet, who coordinates Rikolto’s Covid response. “Firstly, we focused on the urgent, short-term needs of our partners. Secondly, we started supporting our partners in finding ways to set up innovative initiatives.”

In March, our first priority was to support our partners in tackling the urgent health and economic needs in food systems.

As physical meetings came to a halt, farmer communities lost access to business development services and technical assistance. For our own programmes, this meant organising the necessary capacity building moments for our partners online. It also meant supporting our partner cooperatives to make the most use of mobile technology.

While technical assistance came to a halt, most agricultural activities did not know of quarantine. Local food supply became even more important, yet the availability of inputs, like seed and organic fertiliser, was under pressure. This led Rikolto to support our partner cooperatives to secure the necessary inputs to keep their work going.

For instance, in Vietnam, 118 tonnes of cucumber could be harvested by 40 farmers who initially planned not to plant this season due to risks related to market disruptions. With Rikolto’s input support, they were able to honour their commitment and keep their customers. And in Tanzania, 74 smallholders have planted 75 acres of land to multiply quality-declared seeds of assorted legumes to be distributed to other farmers and ensure access to quality seeds to hundreds more during the pandemic.

As these Food Heroes kept operating from their farms, cooperatives also had to keep their operations running, from the collection of harvests, to the processing and marketing of these harvests. To be able to do so, they had to urgently adopt biosafety protocols, and all workers at the processing and collecting units had to be able to protect themselves.

Rikolto supported our partner cooperatives to continue their work in the safest way possible: at least 8,200 collaborators in our programmes have received personal protective equipment globally and 2,432 have been trained in biosafety protocols, mostly in Peru and Ecuador. They also wanted to make sure consumers knew they were taking care of their food supply in a safe way, or inform consumers about good hygiene measures in urban markets. Through communications campaigns on Covid and food through social media, road shows and radio jingles in Tanzania, Peru, Ecuador, Honduras and Nicaragua, an estimated 4.64 million citizens were reached between March and October.

As restaurants, institutional kitchens and markets were forced to close, and sometimes even the transportation of crops was restricted, farmers suddenly saw demand drop and incomes decline. As such, Covid highlighted the urgent need for farming families to diversify their incomes. In our coffee and cocoa programmes, we have been focusing on dynamic agroforestry systems for a while. These systems involve combining cocoa or coffee with other staple crops, like bananas, cassava, corn, tomatoes, chilies, oranges and other fruits. They are more resilient to environmental shocks, as we’ve seen with diversified cocoa farms in Nicaragua after hurricanes Iota and Eta swept through the country. And they also make farming families more resilient to the crisis we are currently facing, as they diversify their income and nutrition.

Meanwhile, in Peru, we have supported 4,278 cocoa & coffee farmers and their household members to diversify their production through vegetable bio-gardens. But diversification is also key in other sectors: as the demand for fresh vegetables in Nicaragua dropped by 40% between March and August, vegetable farmers have instead rearranged a total of 100 ha to produce red beans, yielding 95 tonnes, and helping producers diversify their income and nutrition.

Relieving these short-term needs of our partner organisations, to guarantee their safety, income and food security amidst a pandemic, is incredibly important. But, it is equally important not to lose sight of the long-term interest and priorities of our partners. How can they adjust their way of working to this “new normal” we keep talking about? How can they learn from this crisis to be more resilient to other shocks and crises in the future, for example climate change? Which innovations are needed to make our food systems bounce back?

To solve market access problems from the farmers’ side and poor access to food from the consumers’ side, we supported our partners to set up new e-commerce platforms connecting farmers with broader markets.

In many countries, restaurants and markets have been closed, on and off, since March. Their closure affects farmers and food processing companies, having to deal with large volumes of surplus vegetables as a result of the crisis. At the same time, due to the sudden economic shock, a growing group of people – worldwide – found themselves without enough means to feed themselves and their families. Looking into innovative ways to avoid food waste while supporting those who need it most, became a top priority for our partners and colleagues.

It’s an obvious truth, but we’re stronger together. To this end, some of our Covid-response activities focused on getting different stakeholders in a certain sector or country around the same, albeit virtual, table, to bring specific needs to everyone’s attention and formulate shared responses.

In many ways, Covid-19 has challenged food systems, disrupted them, and magnified issues that existed all along. Yet, after the initial shock of the crisis, food actors are adapting their way of working, knowing that returning to business as usual is not an option. And with it, food systems are bouncing back, perhaps on the way to become better than before.

Here at Rikolto, we’re using what we’re learning to contribute to shaping future food systems. Putting resilience to shocks and crises centre stage is definitely one of those conclusions, in all of its shapes. Resilience through diversified farms, meaning increasing income, food security and overall environmental sustainability. Resilience through market diversification, reducing farmers’ and cooperatives’ dependency on one or just a few buyers. And resilience of local food systems, if local markets are central in policies, especially for fresh, safe products.