Skip to footer

The pandemic’s food crisis sparks a green revolution

A report in Britain shows how nimble innovation can help a country rethink food security after a period of log-jams and panic.

|
Reuters
Britain's Prince Charles and Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall, visit a distribution center in Bristol July 9 to thank staff who have kept food supplies moving throughout the coronavirus crisis.
  • By the Monitor's Editorial Board

As global crises go, the pandemic has had its fair share of teachable moments. One was the sudden shortage of food. Starting in March, the pipeline of food delivery from farms to stores broke down, creating shopper panic and hoarding. Lockdowns kept people at home wondering how to feed themselves. To its credit, Britain has begun to use the crisis to rethink its entire food system. According to an official report this week, the new vulnerability in food has opened “an unplanned window of opportunity ... to learn something.”

The report is only the first of several to come, but it explains why a national food strategy is now necessary: “Our food system has just endured its biggest stress test since the Second World War. As COVID-19 swept through the UK, the entire machinery of supply and distribution had to be recalibrated, fast.”

The British food industry was able to innovate solutions around the logjams and lockdowns. Yet, according to the report’s author, Henry Dimbleby, people must think more deeply about the “big, existential risks” to food security beyond the pandemic, such as climate change and Britain’s exit from the European Union.

The report calls for a “new green revolution” to create sustainable agriculture, even to reevaluate humanity’s relationship with nature. That revolution, according to the report, ranges from using robots for picking crops to building high-rise greenhouses powered by solar panels in cities.

Britain’s nimble response helps set a precedent for poorer countries still struggling with COVID-19. The World Food Program predicts more than 135 million people could be in severe hunger this year. And global poverty is expected to rise for the first time in more than 20 years.

Beyond specific solutions, Britain’s greatest contribution may be its spirit of innovation, which is never in short supply. The pandemic has forced many industries such as health and education to improvise solutions. But the crisis can also bring a lasting reinvention of core human activities.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.
editor@csmonitor.com
Subscribe
Mark Sappenfield
Editor

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

Subscribe to insightful journalism

QR Code to The pandemic’s food crisis sparks a green revolution
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/Commentary/the-monitors-view/2020/0731/The-pandemic-s-food-crisis-sparks-a-green-revolution
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe