{"id":54359,"date":"2020-03-18T12:45:10","date_gmt":"2020-03-18T01:45:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/?p=54359"},"modified":"2020-03-18T12:36:24","modified_gmt":"2020-03-18T01:36:24","slug":"coronavirus-and-the-perils-of-our-just-enough-just-in-time-food-system","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/coronavirus-and-the-perils-of-our-just-enough-just-in-time-food-system\/","title":{"rendered":"Coronavirus and the perils of our \u2018just enough, just in time\u2019 food\u00a0system"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/figure>\n

Toilet paper shortages<\/a>,\u00a0profiteering from hand sanitiser<\/a>\u00a0and empty shelves in supermarkets.<\/p>\n

Thanks to Covid-19, governments in most industrialised nations are preparing for shortages of life\u2019s necessities. If they fail,\u00a0riots over food may be inevitable<\/a>. Some wonder if we are responding appropriately to Covid-19, and it\u2019s clear that recent events expose a fundamental flaw in the global systems that bring us our daily bread.<\/p>\n

We live in a wondrous age when global supply chains seamlessly link farmers and consumers using the principles of \u2018just enough, just in time<\/a>\u2019. For years, companies have worked hard to keep inventories low, timing shipments to balance supply and demand using knife-edge accuracy.<\/p>\n

In many ways, this system is a miracle. Low-cost food is one outcome. And if there\u2019s a problem in one part of the supply chain, the global system is good at finding alternatives. (Mangoes from Asia gone bad? Try the mangoes from Central America!)<\/p>\n

But with this abundance\u2014and convenience\u2014comes a hidden cost that Covid-19 has exposed: a loss of resilience. Our global food system depends on the tendrils of international trade to wrap the world in an ever more complex system of buyers, sellers, processors and retailers, all of whom are motivated to keep costs low and operations lean.<\/p>\n

So when the supply-chain system itself is thrown into question\u2014as it is now thanks to Covid-19\u2014then the wheels threaten to come off the proverbial apple cart. Covid-19 shows that we need to wake up and realise that if we really want to be resilient, we need to build more redundancies, buffers and firewalls into the systems we depend on for life.<\/p>\n

In practical terms, this means we should be keeping\u00a0larger inventories and promoting a greater degree of regional self-sufficiency<\/a>.<\/p>\n

These measures will help ensure that our communities don\u2019t panic if the food deliveries stop.<\/p>\n

But while this may sound sensible, high inventories and more regional self-sufficiency are, in fact, antithetical to the \u2018just enough, just in time\u2019 approach that drives most of our economy, even though no one\u2019s suggesting we need to be completely self-sufficient\u00a0all of the time<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Take the systems that produce and distribute the corn, wheat and rice that fuel most of humanity\u2019s calories. The\u00a0latest United Nations report<\/a> on the global grain system contains some bad news. Last year, the world ate more grains than it produced within the year, and our carryover stocks (defined as the amount of food we have, globally, at the end of the year to see us through to the next harvest) are declining.<\/p>\n

The good news is that this decline comes after a run of good years in which farmers delivered one monumental harvest after another. So our carryover stocks started last year in pretty good shape and this means we\u2019ve currently got about four months of food stored. But there\u2019s a downward trend regarding those stockpiles, and this is worrisome.<\/p>\n

But what if Mother Nature doesn\u2019t play nice with us this year?<\/p>\n

Climate change, after all, is making food harder to produce. What if we face a major drought in Europe and Asia like we did in 2010 to 2011? Or another big drought in America\u2019s Midwest similar to the situation in 2012 and 2013? And what if Covid-19 doesn\u2019t go away by summer?<\/p>\n

If any of these things happen, we may not have the buffers to protect ourselves. And it won\u2019t be toilet paper and hand sanitiser we need to worry about. It might be wheat, rice and corn.<\/p>\n

Today, conventional wisdom is that the average city in North America has a three-day supply of fresh food (dried, canned and other preserved food supplies will last a bit longer). This, according to some, means that we are all only ever \u2018nine meals from anarchy<\/a>\u2019. Luckily, North American supermarkets have sophisticated supply chains, so no one is seriously suggesting that the panicked purchasing of the last few days that has emptied shelves will persist. Nevertheless, the systems we depend upon are, in many ways, fragile and inherently vulnerable.<\/p>\n

In all likelihood, Covid-19 will pass and most of us will only suffer economic setbacks from lost wages and disruptions linked with cancelled classes, travel and meetings. But in the aftermath, it\u2019s important to ask whether we\u2014as a society\u2014will treat this as a moment to learn a bit about the fragility of the modern world.<\/p>\n

Will we work collectively to put resilience alongside efficiency as a primary driver for the\u00a0systems we depend on <\/a>each and every day to feed ourselves? \"The<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Toilet paper shortages,\u00a0profiteering from hand sanitiser\u00a0and empty shelves in supermarkets. Thanks to Covid-19, governments in most industrialised nations are preparing for shortages of life\u2019s necessities. If they fail,\u00a0riots over food may be inevitable. Some wonder …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1094,"featured_media":54361,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[2658,281,1580],"class_list":["post-54359","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general","tag-coronavirus","tag-food-security","tag-resilience","dinkus-coronavirus"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nCoronavirus and the perils of our \u2018just enough, just in time\u2019 food\u00a0system | The Strategist<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/coronavirus-and-the-perils-of-our-just-enough-just-in-time-food-system\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Coronavirus and the perils of our \u2018just enough, just in time\u2019 food\u00a0system | The Strategist\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Toilet paper shortages,\u00a0profiteering from hand sanitiser\u00a0and empty shelves in supermarkets. 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