Finding our way through the fog: embedding social infrastructure in food system resilience

In this commentary we focus on the significance of social infrastructure for food system resilience by drawing on the insights and experiences from our positions as emergency management practitioners and land-grant university social science food system researchers working with emergency management agencies, food system and food security organizations. During the height of the COVID-19 pandemic and in the years since, as a group we have worked in a shared learning model to research and reflect on the lessons we can take from COVID-19 to create more resilient food systems that are better prepared for future shocks, disruptions, emergencies, and disasters. As applied scholars and practitioners, our first goal in this commentary is to synthesize the emergency management and disaster (EMD) and food system literatures with our research examining the on-the-ground experiences shared by emergency management and food security practitioners in Ohio tasked with responding to the COVID-19-induced food systems crisis. Our second goal is to demonstrate the often overlooked, undervalued, and underinvested core role institutional and group social connections and relationships play in effective responses to acute and chronic emergencies and disasters, and how this social infrastructure is the bedrock on which efforts to strengthen food system resilience depend. Finally, we lay out a path forward and articulate the need to value the role of EMD and social infrastructure in food systems resilience funding and public policy priorities.