Global Food Security Challenges in COVID-19 Times

The Chicago Council on Global Affairs held a webinar this afternoon to discuss how COVID-19 will affect our global supply chains. Speakers Sanjeev Krishnan at Seed2Grow Ventures and Sara Menker, founder and CEO of Grow Intelligence, offered some great insights into current global food security topics.

Whether the COVID-19 crisis will tamper with markets in a structural or cyclical way has yet to be deciphered. COVID-19’s impact on our global food supply chain will be disruptive and offer opportunities for innovations that will drive more sustainable technologies and a better future of food.

Here are the main takeaways:

Disruptions:

  • Shipping and labor are seeing the largest disruptions as the byproduct of COVID-19.
  • Logistical bottlenecks in the food supply chain have cause shocks to the entire system.
  • Commodity crops traded globally through shipping networks are seeing inventory draw downs.
  • The effects of the ongoing oil price war and impacted currencies will have serious implications for global trade balance.

Innovations:

  • The food and ag innovation sector will be extremely resilient to these times.
  • The denominator effect is unfolding. When public markets go down, people loose wealth and liquidity becomes more important. Investors are shying away from risky investments and moving towards illiquid assets.
  • Concurrently, the Fed is acting with unprecedented scale and volume to offset the shock on the markets. We will see funds dry up if the current markets continue. If this is a structural problem, it will take a while to rebound, if cyclical, recovery will be relatively quick.
  • Indoor agriculture and decentralized protein sources from cell-based meat and plant based protein will continue to trend upwards as the journey between supply and demand becomes more compressed.

Closed borders and protecting trade:

  • Decentralized production models will emerge from this crisis. Who will bear the burden of cost as the highly efficient globalized supply chain readjusts to the current landscape?
  • Products coming out of hard-hit countries will see slowing velocity. Extra virgin olive oil is an example of how markets have been impacted from the point of view of one of the hardest hit countries, Italy.

Information matters:

  • The ag industry has been built on poor quality data and the way information has been collected is localized and fragmented.
  • This crisis could reveal where the choke points are in our food system, and information will become a catalyst for redesigning our supply chains.

Food insecure places will be hit the hardest:

  • Pain will be felt in regions that are net importers from other countries. We could see hyper inflation driven by food in those areas, which could lead to significant social and political unrest.

In Closing:

In America, more consumers will start to question where their food comes from when they start seeing empty shelves or higher costs in the supermarket. Consumer demand will shift as a result.

Americans should understand that the people on the front lines of the food supply chain are taking risks to make sure we are all fed.

Quarantine Chronicles

What’s consoling us right now?

The wind has been knocked out of us in so many ways.

Alongside the rest of the global communities entangled in this web unfortunate events, we are lost in a forest of unknowns and the coronavirus is a wildfire; it’ll keep consuming as long as there is fuel to burn. It’ll take our economies, social mobilities and freedoms away, if only temporarily.

I’ve navigated my way towards a better mental and emotional place with traditional carbonara as my guide…

Tradition is tastier. Pancetta, bucatini, pecorino, egg, pepper.

I was supposed to be in Italy, if you all remember. If you’ve followed this blog from the beginning, you have read as my path has unfolded throughout mia vita in Italia, weeks in London, and explorations of Korea.

I’ve been on a perpetual journey of seeking to share global philosophies of food rooted across cultures and practices. From Slow Food University in Pollenzo to the Buddhist temples in Bukhansan National Park in Korea, food pathways tell a story, and Il Caffè is here to share them.

COVID has changed it all. Yet, it’s not all at a loss.

Now, it’s time to stay and dig a little deeper.

What The Coronavirus Will Teach Us About Cooking At Home

It’s been a hell of a week

Image result for stock market guy
Meet Peter Turchman: “Wall Street Guy”.

Flights are cancelled, events are postponed, and America has cozied up at home.

The most interesting week of this decade so far has ravaged our supermarkets, sunk our investment accounts, and tested our nation.

These are the times of COVID-19.

FaceTime hangouts have replaced happy hours and trips to the grocery store mimic doomsday prep scenarios. The current state of humor, lined with seriousness, has allowed us all to commiserate with each other about the novel nature of our times.

Personally, I’ve locked myself in my studio apartment for the foreseeable future. With the taste of elderberry zinc tablets lingering on my tongue, I pray that the upper respiratory infection the doc diagnosed me with isn’t more treacherous than a common cold.

For now, self quarantining will allow us all a little extra time at home to ponder our lives, values, and next steps. These next few months will urge us to spawn more ideas and create solutions and innovations that will continue make our way of life even better.

Just look at what Isaac Newton accomplished back in the days of the plague.

In my neck of the woods of Chicago, I’ve decided to take this time to meditate on what the Coronavirus pandemic will teach us here in the United States. The first thing that comes to mind is…..

How to Eat At Home

The way we eat at home during the next few weeks will say a lot about where the American gastronomic situation is.

Aside from the memes and public commentary about toilet paper hoarders, I really wonder how Americans will ration their dollars, time, and goods in the kitchen for the upcoming months ahead.

Since we will all be a little more connected to our kitchens in the coming days, why not use the proximity to get a little more creative? Looks like we’ve all stocked up accordingly…

This morning my friend Yana dropped off three large containers of groceries on my doorstep and indulged in some friendly banter about the state of affairs at the local grocery store. Grim at best.

In order to pay homage to the dear Italians who have suffered before us and touch upon how to make use of a barren pantry, I’ve decided to cook a classic dish…..

Cavatappi Carbonara (with peas). Inauthentic, but who cares?

The “American breakfast” pasta: Eggs + Bacon + Pasta.

How to create:

  1. Boil water, add a generous amount of salt. Add an unspecified amount of whatever pasta (eek, I can hear the Italians swearing from a continent away). In my case, cavatappi from the back of the cupboard.
  2. Take out freshly thawed bacon that’s been sitting in your freezer for two months. Cook in pan, place on side and chop. Leave fat in the pan.
  3. Eat a piece of bacon.
  4. Unwrap the dry Pecorino that has also lingered a tad too long in the fridge. Grate. Place on side.
  5. Stir three yolks, one white in a tiny bowl on the side.
  6. When pasta is almost done, shut off heat. Drain most of the way.
  7. Add some hot water to the egg yolk mixture.
  8. Pour pasta into the pan with the bacon fat.
  9. Add egg yolk and stir.
  10. Add chopped bacon, pecorino, tons of pepper.
  11. Add frozen peas and stir stir stir. (Another“sbagliato”, adding veg to this dish). Peas will melt, I promise.
  12. Pick at it because you’re American and can’t wait until sitting down to indulge.

This inauthentic version of the classic Italian carbonara is comforting, easy to make, and light on the budget. Modify as your pantry necessitates.

The only downside to this dish is that your kitchen will smell like bacon until the end of the next pandemic, 2050.

If you want to make an “authentic” version of carbonara and have access to some specialty ingredients like bucatini and guanciale, click here.

The lesson that I think we will learn: how to be resourceful and thoughtful about what we make with limited resources.

Stay tuned for more quarantine updates and what else we will learn amidst this novel time.

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