Q&A with the experts: Rethinking global food security in a new era

How have food security issues been impacted through this global pandemic?

A lot of my research takes place in countries where food insecurity is a serious issue. I work with small-scale farmers in rural areas of Honduras. I also work in urban slums in the Philippines, where there are limited options for local food production.

Climate change has been making it increasingly challenging over the past few decades for the farmers that I work with. They are facing less rain, longer dry seasons, and more extreme weather events. As the weather changes, their knowledge of farming is being challenged. In the Philippines, they are hit by a typhoon what seems like every few months, and the severity and frequency of these types of events appears to be increasing.

The COVID-19 pandemic is exacerbating existing food security needs and existing inequalities. In the Philippines, many people, particularly those who are day-laborers or farm workers, have lost their jobs and as a result have less income to buy food. With current quarantine measures, there are also fewer places that are open for people to access and buy food. In Honduras, farmers are concerned about access to the markets where they sell their crops and are unsure if they should continue to invest in crop production. On top of the pandemic, climate change is always a concern, and it adds to the stress that people are experiencing in trying to manage their income and livelihood.

What lasting impacts will our collective responses to COVID-19 have on food security, and what do these mean for the most vulnerable populations around the world?

There's a lot of interest in meeting immediate needs right now. This is important but I think it needs to be combined with thinking through the longer-term implications for food security and food systems more broadly. Because things have happened so quickly, we are still trying to get a handle on the scope of the issue and who it affects. The long-term problem-solving will be a longer process.

Something else that our research team has been grappling with is the politicization of therapeutic interventions. If a vaccine is developed, there’s going to be a lot of negotiation around who receives the vaccine and when. Thinking about the inequality in the world, who knows where low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) are going to fit on the priority list for receiving a vaccine, and, within LMICS, where are people experiencing poverty going to fit? I think there is increasing recognition that we need pandemic responses with multiple-year time horizons. Specifically, we need to think about the implications of how the implementation of public health measures, like quarantine and physical distancing, over a long period of time will affect the most vulnerable.

Given your international focus, how have you adjusted the way you conduct your research?

I was supposed to be in the Philippines right now but with the pandemic I’m having to rely on existing relationships with partner organizations in both Honduras and the Philippines to keep our collaborative  work going. I am very thankful for these relationships, and our ability to work together despite the difficult circumstances, and I’m conscious of the shift in workload for partners in lower resourced settings in getting the work done.

The pandemic is also impacting our research directly. Every country has its own level of restrictions that we need to navigate, and the way that those are being interpreted is different, which impacts things like the ability to collect data. We are exploring creative ways to collect data using tools that people already have access to. We have a project funded through a call for COVID-19 research from February 2020 through the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) and the International Development Research Centre (IDRC) to create healthcare guidelines in the Philippines for frontline healthcare workers. Initially, we were going to do interviews with frontline healthcare workers, but things have escalated since we submitted the proposal. To adjust, we have created a protocol to conduct interviews over messaging apps, like Facebook messenger. Recognizing that internet access and literacy may be an issue in some populations, we are continuously working on ways to make sure our research and data collection consider the layers of difficulties that this pandemic is bringing to peoples' lives.