New Links in the Sea-to-Table Chain: The North Carolina Local Food Council Responds in the Pandemic’s Darkest Hour
In “New Links in the Sea-to-Table Chain,” longtime Coastwatch writer Susan West provides a behind-the-scenes look at how the North Carolina Local Food Council responded when the pandemic shook the commercial fishing industry in the first half of 2020.
Videos of farmers plowing green beans, cabbage, and other fresh produce back into the ground ran side by side with images of empty grocery store shelves and long lines of hungry Americans at food banks when the COVID-19 pandemic swept across the country in 2020.
Food systems struggled to adjust to the sudden loss of markets as stay-at-home orders went into effect and schools, restaurants, and other businesses closed to help protect public health. Food import and export supply chains ruptured. NOAA Fisheries reports that U.S. seafood exports to China fell 45% in February 2020 after ports and seafood processing plants in that country closed — a harbinger of the sort of market turmoil N.C. seafood producers would face.
Barry Nash, North Carolina Sea Grant’s seafood technology and marketing specialist, says that how quickly food producers lost wholesale markets in spring of 2020 was jolting — but, he adds, the North Carolina Local Food Council was prepared to act.
“The Council’s focus immediately transitioned to helping food producers adapt to the loss of food service industry revenue streams and remain viable during the pandemic, and to helping get food to food banks and the people who needed it,” says Nash, who serves as Council chair.
Click here to read more: https://ncseagrant.ncsu.edu/coastwatch/current-issue/fall-2021/new-links-in-the-sea-to-table-chain/
