Reflecting on COVID-19 for integrated perspectives on local and regional food systems vulnerabilities

The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted multiple vulnerabilities and issues around local and regional food systems, presenting valuable opportunities to reflect on these issues and lessons on how to increase local/regional resilience. Using the Fraser Valley Regional District (FVRD) in Canada as a case study, this research employs integrated planning perspectives, incorporating comprehensive-systems, regional, place-based, and temporal considerations, to (1) reflect upon the challenges and vulnerabilities that COVID-19 has revealed about local and regional food systems, and (2) examine what these reflections and insights illustrate with respect to the needs for and gaps in local/regional resilience against future exogenous shocks. The study used a community-based participatory approach to engage local and regional government, stakeholders, and community members living and working in the FVRD. Methods consisted of a series of online workshops, where participants identified impacts related to the food production, processing, distribution, access, and/or governance response components of the local and regional food systems and whether these impacts were short-term (under 3 months), medium-term (3 to 12 months), or long-term (over 1 year) in nature. Findings from the study revealed that food systems and their vulnerabilities are complex, including changes in food access and preparation behaviours, lack of flexibility in institutional policies for making use of local food supply, cascading effects due to stresses on social and public sector services, and inequities with respect to both food security impacts and strategies/services for addressing these impacts. Outcomes from this research demonstrate how including comprehensive-systems, regional, place-based, and temporal considerations in studies on food systems vulnerabilities can generate useful insights for local and regional resiliency planning.