‘Whole New
BUSINESS’: Farmers innovate to get food from field to plate
From Europe to Asia and across the Americas, the global food supply chain is innovating to keep the world fed in the absence of street markets and field laborers. Didier Lenoble has gone online to sell vegetables grown on his farm near Paris, as the usual street stalls he supplies are temporarily shut due to coronavirus. "It's a whole new business," said Lenoble, whose family-run farm has been selling to customers via a new website. Elsewhere, an Indian farming cooperative
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is delivering directly to city dwellers as a lockdown closed its usual distribution channels. The coronavirus pandemic has put a huge strain on the complex chains that usually bring food to people's tables, forcing suppliers to adjust their normal routines to cope with snags to harvesting, transport, and distribution. The crisis has exposed the world's reliance on international trade and on a vast number of seasonal workers who usually travel from farm to farm, often crossing borders, to help gather in produce as it ripens. Parts of the chain are creaking. The closure of processing plants due to coronavirus outbreaks has threatened the U.S. meat
supply. Some farmers have left crops to wither in the fields, as laborers cannot reach them. However, many farms and firms are adapting quickly. Lenoble's website has helped him restore sales volumes to about half their normal level, saving part of his lettuce and radish crop from being destroyed. Rungis wholesale center, south of Paris, Europe's biggest food market, launched an online service that made 250 home deliveries a month ago and now makes 6,500 a week in and around the French capital.
