Researchers illuminate resilience of U.S. meals provide chains

Researchers have recognized plenty of chokepoints in U.S. agricultural and meals provide chains by way of a research that improves our understanding of agri-food provide chain safety and will support insurance policies geared toward enhancing its resilience. The work is offered in a paper printed within the July 20, 2023, challenge of the journal Nature Meals, “Structural chokepoints decide the resilience of agri-food provide chains in the US,” by authors together with CEE Affiliate Professor Megan Konar and CEE Ph.D. scholar Deniz Berfin Karakoc.

The agricultural and meals programs of the US are important for guaranteeing the steadiness of each home and international meals programs, so it’s important to know the structural resilience of the nation’s agri-meals provide chains to threats, researchers write. As a result of the US performs a key position in a extremely built-in international meals system, the resilience and safety of the U.S. meals provide chain has implications for international meals safety. Moreover, agricultural and meals system safety and resilience is more and more acknowledged as a non-traditional protection goal within the nationwide safety neighborhood and is important to the mission of U.S. nationwide protection businesses.

“We have been impressed to carry out this analysis as a result of provide chain disruptions in the course of the pandemic and in response to the Government Order on America’s Provide Chains, which highlights the significance of provide chains for nationwide safety,” Konar says. “We hope this analysis can contribute to extra resilient and safe meals provide chains.”

Chokepoints are places which might be important for distributing agri-food commodities all through the nation. Whereas a lot analysis on agri-food provide chains has been from the angle of commercial corporations with a concentrate on logistics, cost-savings and resilience, the researchers took a nationwide and international safety perspective attributable to rising threats corresponding to pandemics, excessive climate occasions, local weather shocks, and cyber and terrorist assaults. The researchers employed a posh community strategy to find out the chokepoints inside the agri-meals provide chains within the continental U.S. for the years 2007, 2012 and 2017. They discovered that chokepoints have been typically constant over time.

Co-authors additionally embrace Michael J. Puma of the Middle for Local weather Techniques Analysis at Columbia College and Lav R. Varshney of the Division of Electrical and Pc Engineering on the College of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.