URI_Research_Magazine_Momentum_Fall_2020_Melissa-McCarthy

“We’re beginning to appreciate the smaller and more local food producers that are more resilient.”

- Rebecca Brown

Professor Rebecca Brown, Plant Sciences

“When the U.S. shut down its beef, poultry and pork processing facilities, there was about three weeks of meat in the pipeline, so we were always able to get some meats,” Hales explained. “But there have been fewer choices at the grocery store. You might have been able to get steak and ground beef but not sirloin, for instance.” One factor that helped ease the situation was that the demand for restaurant food decreased dramatically. And although demand for home food increased, Hales said that most people eat about 15 percent less food when they eat at home. “The lesson from all this is that, in spite of what we hear, the food supply chain is safe and secure and did not collapse,” he said. “We had fewer choices, but we kept produce, meat and durable goods in sufficient amounts that people had enough.” FOOD SECURITY: URI’S VEGETABLE PROGRAM Still, many people faced food shortages — though, that had little to do with the food supply chain. Instead, the lack was due largely to job losses and other health and economic factors. So, URI faculty, staff, and students stepped up to provide support. “All the food pantries around the state have been inundated with demand,” said Rebecca Brown, URI professor of plant sciences. “With unemployment

as high as it’s been since the Great Depression, all kinds of people don’t have the money for food. And, at the same time, a lot of the sources that food pantries rely on for donations of fresh produce — like restaurants — dried up because those businesses were closed.” Brown and the students in her vegetable production class typically grow large quantities of produce each spring, and the students eat most of it themselves. But when the students went home midway through the semester due to the pandemic, after having already planted a dozen varieties of vegetables in the greenhouses, that left more

Environmental Sciences and Management major and Coastal and Environmental Fellow Joe Manetta at the URI Gardiner Crops Research Center.

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