Penn State’s College of Agricultural Sciences was establishing its new Institute for Sustainable Agricultural, Food and Environmental Science even before the coronavirus pandemic emerged.
But the pandemic brought new urgency to mission of the institute: to pull together expertise at the university to attack complex, interconnected food-energy-water-land challenges, such as food security, supply chain disruptions, bioenergy production, biodiversity, changing land uses, environmental degradation and climate volatility.
“We have conducted research on food and agricultural systems, water quantity and quality, environmental systems, and nutrient management in the college for years, and the institute will unify and coordinate these efforts, while increasing collaboration among our researchers,” said Gary Thompson, associate dean for research and graduate education.
“Now that COVID-19 has revealed serious weaknesses in our agricultural systems — such as supply chain disruptions, processing facility closures, interrupted production practices and threats to food security in vulnerable communities — the institute will be critical in our efforts to ramp up the effectiveness of our science to deal with these unexpected and unprecedented challenges.”
While the institute was not envisioned as an organization dedicated to responding to problems caused by a pandemic, that will be job one for a while, Thompson noted. The organization has awarded nine seed grants to researchers to address the impacts of COVID-19 on agricultural, food and environmental systems.
“The institute has assumed the mantle as an organizing force to facilitate the rapid deployment of the College of Agricultural Sciences’ expertise to deal with the current crisis,” Thompson said. “Initially, at least, we will focus on the research that needs to be done to address the complicated, landscape-level, interconnected challenges presented by the pandemic.”
Projects underway as a rapid response to the coronavirus pandemic and its impacts on the interconnected systems of agriculture, food and the environment:
- Pennsylvania Agricultural Resilience Network. The goal of the project is to rapidly scale-up an open source platform that connects producers, suppliers, manufacturers and workers along Pennsylvania's food supply chain to minimize bottlenecks.
- COVID-19 and Resilient Food Supply Chains. The team will create a platform at Penn State for research on food supply chain resiliency, examining not only resiliency on its own terms but also how resiliency interacts with efficiency and sustainability in food supply chains. It will produce a simulation tool to explore and inform food supply chain disruptions associated with COVID-19 and other catastrophic events.
- Twitter/Google Trends Analysis of Food Security Under COVID-19. The pandemic has forced people to isolate, causing dramatic increases in online activity and providing clues about real-time preoccupations of those using social media. Signals from social media offer insights into local conditions related to the food system in different states. The team will examine how these can be used to forecast shortages in real time in different parts of the country, as well as emerging problems.
- Impacts of COVID-19 on Beneficial Reuse Water and Compost Quality. With most people staying home for prolonged periods of time, domestic wastewater treatment plants are experiencing changes in flow patterns. And there is growing evidence that the novel coronavirus is shed through feces and enters the wastewater stream. With virus testing currently lacking in most communities, monitoring for presence of the virus at treatment plants may help to understand how widespread the disease is within a community and to prepare for a resurgence of the disease when stay-at-home orders are relaxed.
- System to Assess the Impact of COVID-19 on Crop Production in Pennsylvania. COVID-19 has significantly impacted food production with labor shortages leading to delays in planting; government- imposed restrictions on labor and goods mobility affecting agrochemical logistic and limiting access to inputs, as well as limiting access to markets. The team will create a nimble system to explore the impact of COVID-19 on commodity production and environmental outcomes that can help policy makers and stakeholders conceive interventions.
- Rapid Reduction of Farm Milk Production in Response to Crisis. Lost dairy sales are expected to range from $5-10 billion this year due to the COVID-19 crisis. The project will develop a decision-making tool to project short- and medium-term milk production, revenue, and cost of production in response to changes implemented to rapidly reduce milk production.
- Impact of COVID-19 on consumers' attitudes towards local food and the environment. Some of the most tangible shifts caused by the pandemic are taking place in the food system: how consumers buy their food, the type they buy and where they buy it. The extent of the impact of the pandemic on people's attitudes towards local farmers and the environment is unknown. Producer interest groups question whether consumers will still support local farmers and their community once restrictions will be lifted. The team will conduct an online survey of 1,000 participants.
- COVID Health Compass. The outbreak of COVID-19 provides a stunning example of how disparities related to race, health and income can manifest in death rates for positive cases, disproportionately impacting food and labor supplies. The team will build a framework to understand how to mitigate the impact of COVID on food systems in communities where the socioeconomic factors, access to nutritious foods through grocery stores and co-morbidity factors are at most risk.
- Impacts of COVID-19 on farmers’ decisions to manage for soil health in Pennsylvania. The extent to which farmers decide to use sustainable soil management practices will be impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic is unknown. The team will conduct a remotely administered Soil Health Farmer Survey in partnership with the Pennsylvania Association for Sustainable Agriculture.
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Contact Marcus Schneck at mschneck@pennlive.com.