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      Farm resilience during the COVID-19 pandemic: The case of California direct market farmers

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          Abstract

          CONTEXT

          The COVID-19 pandemic caused substantial shocks to U.S. food systems at multiple scales. While disturbances to long-distance supply chains received substantial attention in national media, local supply chains experienced mixed impacts. As broad closures of schools, restaurants, and other businesses sourcing from local farmers removed key marketing channels for many direct market farmers, consumer interest in Community Supported Agriculture (CSA), farmers markets, and on-farm and online direct farm sales increased.

          OBJECTIVE

          In this paper, we examine the resilience and vulnerability of farmers during the March 2020 through December 2020 period of the COVID-19 pandemic. We focus on California farmers and ranchers engaged in direct market sales.

          METHODS

          Through a widely disseminated survey, we collected responses from 364 farmers and used these data to answer the following questions about direct market farmers in California: 1) What were direct market farmers' experiences of the pandemic from March 2020 through December 2020? 2) Which factors (e.g., relationships, institutions, market channels) did farmers report enhanced their resilience during the pandemic? 3) Which individual and operational factors were significantly associated with resilience during the pandemic? And finally, 4) how do the farmer-reported factors compare to the statistically significant factors associated with resilience? We created three dependent variables—ability to respond to the pandemic, concern about pandemic impacts, and change in profitability—to operationalize several aspects of resilience and examine their association with farmer and operational characteristics through a series of ordered logistic regression models.

          RESULTS AND CONCLUSIONS

          Across both the quantitative models and the farmer reported factors, we found that farmers who increased their use of online sales and marketing during the first year of the pandemic, had larger-scale farms, and had more on-farm crop and livestock diversity were more resilient to the shocks of the pandemic, and that greater use of non-direct-to-consumer market channels was associated with less resilience. The characteristics of the farming operations played a relatively larger role in predicting resilience compared to the individual characteristics of the farmers surveyed.

          SIGNIFICANCE

          This study gives a detailed picture of how California direct market farmers fared during the pandemic and the characteristics associated with greater resilience. As short and long-term disruptions become increasingly common in agriculture, policies and programs can leverage support to direct market farmers, particularly direct-to-consumer farmers, as a strategy to grow farmer resilience.

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          Embeddedness and local food systems: notes on two types of direct agricultural market

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            Linkages between vulnerability, resilience, and adaptive capacity

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              The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on marginalized populations in the United States: A research agenda

              International and national crises often highlight inequalities in the labor market that disproportionately affect individuals from marginalized backgrounds. The COVID-19 pandemic, and the resulting changes in society due to social distancing measures, has showcased inequities in access to decent work and experiences of discrimination resulting in many of the vulnerable populations in the United States experiencing a much harsher impact on economic and work-related factors. The purpose of this essay is to describe how the COVID-19 pandemic may differentially affect workers of color, individuals from low-income backgrounds, and women in complex ways. First, this essay will discuss disproportionate representation of workers from low-income and racial/ethnic minority backgrounds in sectors most affected by COVID-19. Second, it will discuss the lack of decent work for low-income workers who perform “essential” tasks. Third, this essay will highlight economic and work-related implications of increased discrimination Asian Americans are experiencing in society. Finally, role conflict and stress for women who are managing additional unpaid work, including caretaking responsibilities, while needing to continue to engage in paid work will be examined. A research agenda will be set forth throughout the essay, calling for vocational psychologists to engage in research that fully examines how the COVID-19 pandemic is affecting vulnerable communities.
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                Author and article information

                Journal
                Agric Syst
                Agric Syst
                Agricultural Systems
                Published by Elsevier Ltd.
                0308-521X
                0308-521X
                11 October 2022
                11 October 2022
                : 103532
                Affiliations
                [a ]Department of Human Ecology, University of California, Davis, One Shields Avenue, Davis, CA 95616, USA
                [b ]Institute of Ecology and Evolution, 272 Onyx Bridge, 5289, University of Oregon, Eugene, OR 97403-5289, USA
                [c ]Geography Graduate Group, University of California, 129 Hunt Hall, One Shields Avenue, Davis, CA 95616, USA
                [d ]Agricultural Sustainability Institute, University of California, 143 Robbins Hall, One Shields Avenue, Davis, CA 95616, USA
                Author notes
                [* ]Corresponding author at: Department of Human Ecology, University of California, Davis, One Shields Avenue, Davis, CA 95616, USA.
                Article
                S0308-521X(22)00168-8 103532
                10.1016/j.agsy.2022.103532
                9550669
                36249876
                bc9dfede-1eb0-4d35-bc32-cf2fafa256d9
                © 2022 Published by Elsevier Ltd.

                Since January 2020 Elsevier has created a COVID-19 resource centre with free information in English and Mandarin on the novel coronavirus COVID-19. The COVID-19 resource centre is hosted on Elsevier Connect, the company's public news and information website. Elsevier hereby grants permission to make all its COVID-19-related research that is available on the COVID-19 resource centre - including this research content - immediately available in PubMed Central and other publicly funded repositories, such as the WHO COVID database with rights for unrestricted research re-use and analyses in any form or by any means with acknowledgement of the original source. These permissions are granted for free by Elsevier for as long as the COVID-19 resource centre remains active.

                History
                : 24 May 2022
                : 22 September 2022
                : 6 October 2022
                Categories
                Article

                covid-19,direct-to-consumer farmers,direct market,food systems,california,resilience

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