Schipanski et al. (2016) defines food system resiliency as...
“The capacity of people to produce and access nutritious and culturally acceptable food over time and space in the face of disturbance and change."
Today, food system resiliency is threatened by bottlenecks in our food supply chain, particularly with respect to harvest, processing and transportation. Recent fluctuations in commodity prices and production inefficiencies have had a particularly strong impact on Pennsylvania’s (PA) small producers, dairies, and farm workers, which lack the cash flow to withstand these disturbances.
Indeed, the risks of deleterious effects on agricultural from COVID-19 are quite real, and numerous countries are adapting by addressing farm worker availability, providing aid packages, and/or supporting non-traditional grow operations. While these are important steps to take, they will be inadequate to the challenge at hand without effective coordination tools.
The goal of PARN is to rapidly scale-up an open source platform that connects producers, suppliers, manufacturers, and workers along PA’s food supply chain, thus minimizing bottlenecks. Our platform can reach a diverse group of stakeholders to provide urgently needed support now, while also building infrastructure for a more resilient regional food economy over the long term.
PARN was initially funded in April 2020 by the Penn State, College of Agricultural Sciences Institute for Sustainable Agricultural, Food, and Environmental Science.