Science by the Slice

Straight From the Source: The Lived Experiences of Producers During the Pandemic

February 22, 2023 UF/IFAS PIE Center Season 3
Science by the Slice
Straight From the Source: The Lived Experiences of Producers During the Pandemic
Show Notes Transcript

We’ve all been there- you’re in need of a particular product or food item and it’s not on your store shelves. While this scenario has always played out for consumers, it’s likely that this happens to you more now than it did before COVID. But alas, we now can reason the cause to be from “supply chain disruptions,” a term more widely used by the public than possibly ever before. Throughout the pandemic, supply chain disruptions became the rationale for so many consumer misfortunes, and to a consumer, supply chain disruptions may look like empty shelves, but what does it look like to a producer or farmer? Workforce safety, lockdown policies, financial assistance, burnout and exhaustion, and emergency food dispersal were just some of the challenges that farmers, wholesalers, and retailers had to manage in a short amount of time. 

In this episode, Michaela Kandzer speaks with Noah Bloedorn, specialist in the areas of urban planning and food systems, about a multi-region, multi-institution project that assessed the impact of COVID-19 on food and agricultural systems to develop strategies for coping with future crises. This research and outreach project was supported by the Agriculture and Food Research Initiative (AFRI) from the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA).

Resources:
Lessons from COVID-19 Toolkit
Reimagining Resilient Agri-food Supply Chains Course Registration
Listen to our previous episodes on food systems during the pandemic:
COVID-19 Food Systems Part 1: Pandemic Purchasing and Problem Solving
COVID-19 Food Systems Part 2: Combatting Interruptions in the Food System

Transcripts available here: https://piecenter.com/media/podcast/#transcript

Are you an educator? The Science by the Slice podcast aims to inform diverse audiences about important issues in agriculture, natural resources and public health. Check out our learning guides that were created as an educational tool to facilitate discussions related to the topics presented in podcast episodes. Download the learning guides here: https://piecenter.com/media/podcast/learn/
 
Music "Headway" by Kai Engel Available at https://freemusicarchive.org/music/Kai_Engel/Sustains/Kai_Engel_-_Sustains_-_04_Headway/ Under CC BY license Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0), https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

The views, information, or opinions expressed by guest speakers on Science by the Slice are solely those of the individuals and do not necessarily represent those of the UF/IFAS Center for Public Issues Education or the University of Florida.

Ricky Telg:

This is Science by the Slice, a podcast from the University of Florida's Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences Center for Public Issues Education. In this podcast, experts discuss the science of issues affecting our daily lives, reveal the motivations behind the decisions people make, and ultimately provide insight to solutions for our lives.

Michaela Kandzer:

Hi listeners, this is Michaela Kandzer, one of the hosts of Science by the Slice and Communication Specialist for the PIE Center. I had the opportunity of speaking with Noah Bloedorn, recent graduate from the University of Wisconsin Madison and contributor to the Lessons from COVID-19 Project. During the interview, you will hear Noah and I refer to the lessons from COVID-19 project as the AFRI Project. This project was a multiregion multi-institution Research and Outreach Project that assessed the impact of COVID-19 on food and agricultural systems to develop strategies for coping with future crises, and was supported by the Agriculture and Food Research Initiative from the USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture. The PIE Center partnered with the Center for Rural Enterprise Engagement, or as we more commonly know it CREE. If you have been listening to Science by the Slice for a while, you may remember an episode that featured Dr. Christa Court and Dr. Hikaru Peterson. We can link this episode in the show notes. That podcast episode focused on the economic analysis portion of the AFRI Project. Today, you will hear a conversation from Noah and I that takes a deeper dive into a different portion of this project that focuses on the lived experiences of producers during COVID-19. Keep listening to learn more. Hi, Noah, thanks for being with us on Science by the Slice. Can you just introduce yourself to our audience?

Noah Bloedorn:

Yeah. Hey, everyone, my name is Noah Bloedorn. I'm a project assistant on the AFRI from Lessons from COVID-19 project. I recently graduated from University of Wisconsin Madison, with a master's in urban planning. And I'm sort of interested in this intersection of food systems, planning, and community building.

Michaela Kandzer:

That's awesome. So it sounds like you are a perfect fit for the AFRI Team huh?

Noah Bloedorn:

Yeah. We were sort of talking about this before, we jumped on the on the recording. But like something I really enjoyed about the project team is like, it's a really diverse group of academics and sort of more practitioner focused people. And I certainly identify more on the practitioner and the sort of community community engagement side of things. So being involved in this project, especially diving deeply into qualitative data was something that was really cool for me and like hearing directly from from folks what their experience during COVID was, was incredibly informative, and just really interesting.

Michaela Kandzer:

Yeah, for sure. And so I got to work with Noah on AFRI project a good bit. And we were kind of coming up with, or working on different areas of the project, because Noah can back me up on this, it is a very large project with lots of moving parts, I think we had eight different project teams kind of going on and working together to work towards this bigger picture of the grant. So can you kind of give me a bigger picture or an idea of kind of what was the aim of the project as a whole?

Noah Bloedorn:

Yeah, so my understanding, really, I mean, because it is such a large scope of a project was that we're trying to get a really in depth look from multiple fields at what happened during the pandemic in food systems, how it affected people, what were the responses that were employed, both governmental, like federal, local and state levels, and even at the individual levels, what were individual actors doing to adjust and sort of survive during the pandemic? And then also sort of this forward looking aspect of the project of what are the best practices that came out of that time? And what are the policy recommendations going forward? So yeah, like we're talking about, I mean, it's just a really interesting way of looking at what just happened, looking at different geographic scopes. So the project itself focused in on California, Minnesota, and Wisconsin and Florida, and all different sizes and scales of businesses, to see how how these people interacted during the pandemic.

Michaela Kandzer:

I think it's also kind of cool, because you're kind of representing the Minnesota Wisconsin area, and I'm all the way over here in Florida. And so that's really cool, too, because we were able to see kind of differences in the experiences in these different geographical regions. And so kind of looking back at the project, I guess it's starting to wrap up and we're getting ready to launch our course in the spring, where everyone else can join in and learn from all the things we've learned. But just kind of looking back, we're able to see kind of what the big impacts were. Where maybe the supply chain had some issues or kind of how we can move forward in the future and solve those problems or prevent them from happening again, in the case of another worldwide global pandemic or crisis. So today, you talked a little bit about working through some of the qualitative data that was a part of this project. So today, we're going to really going to be discussing the focus group portion of the project. So tell me a little bit more about what your goals were there kind of what what you guys are up to.

Noah Bloedorn:

Yeah. And just to give people an idea of like the scope of this, I mean, we're working with multiple universities, economists, planners, agroecologists, all these different people working together. And I personally joined in sort of late in the project, starting the fall of 2021. And it was really interesting coming in at that point, looking at this qualitative data, we initially took a survey that was both quantitative and qualitative. So looking at, like, economically, how were businesses impacted, we had all of these numbers associated with sales, and sort of the price of supplies that people were paying for, but also just sort of these really this really raw data. You know, how did the the pandemic affect them? What were things that the what were the major issues that we are facing? And sort of at the tail end of this project, after a lot of that data had started to be compiled and analyzed, the focus groups really allowed us to say, Okay, we've looked at this data, but what are the people saying what are the narratives, especially at that point, so we did the focus groups in the spring of 2022. At that point, we were really sort of at a point where we were feeling that we were coming out of the pandemic, and things were sort of, maybe not at normal, but returning to normal. So we, the focus groups really allowed us to hear from people get a really summative narrative from them about what just happened, and what they would like to see and what what they are seeing as, as the next steps to going forward.

Michaela Kandzer:

So like, Would you say it's fair to say that you got to kind of looked at it, like how it had impacted them, maybe financially or on paper, but then you were able to kind of emotionally see how it impacted them as well, because we all know that there's a lot more to business than just what's on paper, right?

Noah Bloedorn:

Oh, totally. Yeah, that's something that's certainly comes up, obviously, I think, you know, the project is really centered around like the technical side of things like, how do we get food into into people's mouths, but like, obviously, this social aspect is so important. And that's something that really shines in the focus group data. And, of course, something a major thing that we heard about, besides supply chain issues is labor issues and the sort of feeling of burnout. And you know, the struggle of just making things work, as opposed to like, working so hard to have like a thriving business or something like that this was really like people working really hard to just stay alive. And that led to a lot of burnout. And I think it's pretty obvious, like going through this data, and then also seeing in the real world, you know, the sort of labor shortages that we're seeing, and other issues in food systems coming out of a pandemic, that people are feeling really exhausted?

Michaela Kandzer:

Yeah, I can only imagine. So just to back up a little bit. Can you tell me more about the participants in the focus groups and kind of what your sample looked like?

Noah Bloedorn:

Yeah, definitely. So we had 10 focus groups, and each focus group had about anywhere between, I would say, like five to nine participants, what we did with what we decided to do with the focus groups was ensure that each focus group had a diverse group of people. So like we talked about earlier, that means both geographically, so we would have participants, generally from all three of the different regions, California, Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Florida. On a call, we would have people at all different sizes and scales of businesses. And I always say like, from the small CSA, vegetable farmer all the way up to sort of like the International industrial size farmer, and then also different sides of the supply chain. So not only did we have the producers, but we also had wholesalers and retailers as well. And for the most part, they were all sort of combined together on these focus groups and and that assured that we were having this really rich conversation, both, you know, when we're asking questions that are personal to each person's experience, but like, even within the individual focus group, we're discussing large scale food system trends at every point in the food system. Which I though was really informative and it created this really interesting space where people who typcially aren't interacting with each other but work in the same industry are talking and discussing these really large like macro issues and something that was really cool that came out of that was just like this interest in collaboration, people were literally like chatting in the chat room and exchanging emails and trying to get in contact with each other, which I think was, you know, that wasn't the goal of the focus groups but it's a really cool outcome that that came out of it.

Michaela Kandzer:

Yeah, that is really cool. This sounds totally cliche, but people always talk about like, the AG, the Ag system, or the ag industry just being like a happy family. Everyone always trying to lend a helping hand and work together. So I think that's a really great illustration of that. And also probably a really great illustration of how everyone kind of probably experienced similar struggles and like, had been going through a really hard and tough time. And so being able to support one another, and help each other any way that they can. So that's really cool.

Noah Bloedorn:

Definitely.

Michaela Kandzer:

So what was the goal, the focus group? And what were some of the things that you guys were trying to find out?

Noah Bloedorn:

Yeah, so I mean, the goal really was, like we discussed earlier, like, we've done all this analysis, and does the narrative and like the firsthand experiences of these individual actors match that analysis that we're starting to bring out of this project. And it Yeah, I mean, I think it's successful, essentially, you know, there's a lot of trends, and we broke it down into these different categories of supply chain issues, how different sizes and scales reacted to the pandemic, how government policy and relationships affected individual actors, labor issues, and professional networks, how those affected businesses. Those stories came out of the focus groups, as well as the data that we had analyzed before. I think the true success is that not only did the narratives that we're hearing from these individuals match sort of the analysis that we were getting beforehand, but it allowed us to, like personalize those recommendations and give specific examples. And that's where I find that data to be so important, you can actually match recommendations to data points and stuff like that. So in our current stage, we've compiled the data, we've coded it, and now we're looking to write analyses on it and match that to the sort of more quantitative analysis. That's, that's been performed before.

Michaela Kandzer:

Yes, that's really cool. So you're really just providing a bigger fuller picture of exactly what was going on at the time. Very cool. So what would you say or what were some of the questions that you guys asked in these focus

Noah Bloedorn:

Yeah, that's a great question. So how we groups? approach them is we would start by doing sort of an introduction, and this very broad question of like, how, how are you dealing with the pandemic right now? Like, what what's something that you're you're currently dealing with? And then we would dive into each of those categories that we had laid out from our survey questions before that, from those surveys, we identified these different categories. When we talk about size and scale, we would ask, as an individual, how did the size of your business affect your ability to deal with the pandemic? So a great example and something that we heard a lot, and it's funny, everyone sort of has their own perspective and thinks they're, you know, that their position is maybe better suited than other positions. But something we heard a lot is that, you know, small businesses were able to be nimble. And they were able to adapt quickly and make changes to adapt to the new landscape, whereas larger businesses move slowly. But something sort of on the flip side that large businesses talked about was they sort of had better access to maybe like policy resources, right. So they were able to they maybe had teams dedicated to finding the grants, or even lobbying for policy. Or they also had infrastructure to sort of make these big changes, right. So a small business may not have a warehouse to stockpile supplies that weren't needed during the pandemic, but a large business could. So that's yeah, that's an example of size and scale for government, something that people talked a lot about. There were sort of two main things that came out of this was one being policy that affected because individual businesses it was it was more helpful when it was consistent, right. So during the pandemic, there was a lot of uncertainty, especially at the beginning, about what was happening and sort of the timeline of things like shutdowns. And so what we You've heard consistently from our actors. And this is this is another example where region ality really came into play here. I think people in Florida had specifically mentioned that they appreciate it, that sort of lock downs were locked down policy was sort of loose, right. And that allowed them to either stay open or implement their own policy that allowed their business to succeed. Whereas in California, what we were hearing a lot was that individual communities were sort of acting differently than either federal or state policy and that uncertainty, and this sort of ferris wheel or something where it was like you would open up, then you'd be forced to shut down again. And then there would be new regulations, the next time where maybe it's open, but it's limited seating or something like that. And that constant adjustment was really difficult for especially small businesses to adjust. And again, added to that sort of burnout and exhaustion, that many individuals can complain about, and are still dealing with today. And then again, on the government side, the other main factor for that category was sort of talking about access to government policies. So especially when it comes to things like Cares Act funding, or PPP loans, or the smaller grants at state and local levels, how people heard about it, and their ability to fill out the paperwork, and deal with all of that was sort of indicative of how successful they were during the pandemic. So there were some people who felt like they didn't have access to those programs, they didn't have information, whether it's directly from the agency that was putting it out or from community organizations, that we're helping them navigate that landscape. Whereas in other places, or, again, like we talked about, at a scale where businesses had the resources to sort of do the paperwork, and even lobby government, they were able to access those funds much better. So yeah, those were the two main topics in relation to government. For labor, obviously, the biggest discussion is, is how to access labor. In this time, burnout and worker safety were sort of the two main topics discussed, especially a lot of what we talked about dealt with the early pandemic time where, you know, vaccines weren't available, there wasn't clear information about how to properly protect employees. And because we're specifically talking to the employers and owners, sort of business owners and operators, a big discussion was about how do we keep our employees safe during this time, both pandemic wise, and then later to a discussion about mental health and bad exhaustion. And then recognizing that, because of the pandemic, for both of those reasons, a lot of people dropped out of the employment market. And now we're still catching up, even to this day, to like normal levels of, of employment. And basically, what we heard from individuals was two things, one, that they're learning to cope with less employees, whether that sort of automation on larger scales, or on that small scale level. Usually, people are either working with networks more, they're partnering with other organizations, or other businesses in their area to sort of more efficiently deal with these issues, or there was a lot of discussion about leadership taking a bigger role on sort of the day to day, labor, that's done in businesses. And again, that's a way to cope with it, but that's also leading to burnout.

Michaela Kandzer:

So well, and you kind of brought up this topic of mental health. And so, you know, during the time that we were all facing COVID-19 we were facing other national issues and just stressors as well. So did that really come out at all in the data?

Noah Bloedorn:

Yeah, I mean, certainly, in the focus groups, I mean, you know, a reason that people were so interested in working together and building community, even within those focus groups. And, and, and calling for it both from a policy and like Best Practices perspective, was because there was this feeling that what was done to make businesses survive during the pandemic isn't sustainable. As someone who like works directly with farmers and chefs and stuff like that. And outside of this role, it's very clear, like people are passionate people who work in food systems are incredibly passionate, they care about their communities, and they care about feeding people. I think there's this feeling there's there's a feeling of responsibility to do this work, and that sort of sustain them through this time. Um, but now, as things are sort of again, returning, returning back to normal people are need to learn how to cope with that exhaustion and find a way to do this work in a way that that doesn't lead to burnout.

Michaela Kandzer:

Yeah no, and I really appreciate that perspective as well. Because, you know, as me being primarily, I'm coming from an agricultural background, but I'm today primarily a consumer. So me and everyone else, we go to the grocery store, and we get our food and we come home and we cook it, and we go to a restaurant and enjoy a meal or whatever. And we don't ever really think about how it gets there. And so I really appreciate this inside perspective of, you know, I can imagine being part of the supply chain and getting food from farm to table is extremely stressful. Normally, but when you add something a big contributing and stressful factor like COVID-19, I can only imagine how much harder and more stressful it became, especially talking about mental health and, and, and burnout during that time.

Noah Bloedorn:

Right. And yeah, I think an important thing to keep in mind is like at a lot of stages in the food system, people are working on really thin margins. And so when you sort of take away that financial certainty that a lot of people are doing, again, as like a passion project or doing it because they really care about their community and want to feed people. It just adds so much more stress. I mean, and again, I because I'm from Wisconsin, and I am aware of what's going on in my community, there's a there's a huge mental health crisis, specifically within the dairy industry in Wisconsin. And that was existing before the pandemic. So we really have to, obviously, our focus group discussion was centered around COVID, and how to move forward. But we also have to realize that it exists within this environment, where there's already stressors, and already trends that are that need addressing. And so I guess, to hopefully, what our analysis and discussions can do is provide feedback directly from these individuals of what what is needed from both from policy and just practice recommendations as well.

Michaela Kandzer:

Awesome. That's really great. And so are there any other findings that you guys kind of pulled from these focus groups?

Noah Bloedorn:

Yeah, these were really rich discussions. And like I said, 10 focus groups, each one lasted an hour and a half. So you can just imagine just how much time and how much data there is. And it's incredibly rich. So I'll plug this one, because it's really what I'm focused on, is this need for professional networks. And then I'll finish with sort of our largest discussion, which is on supply chains. But I'll start with professional networks, because I think it leads into supply chains really well. And so what we were hearing from a lot of people was two things. One was, if businesses were successful, during the pandemic, it was sort of more likely that they were able to rely on networks in their community, right. And a lot of what we're doing lessons from COVID-19 is having a discussion about regional supply chains. And I think what the focus group and specifically having that diversity of size and scale within that, within those focus groups did was really it made us aware that, you know, even though we're calling for regional supply chains, that these you know, national, international supply chains are obviously pivotal as well. And key key to making sure people are fed, especially in times of chaos. And so what I really took away from this was, people were able people who were able to work together across size, and scale, and maybe even geography, were more successful. And these sorts of networks allowed them to adapt. And not only were their businesses more likely to succeed, but they were actually able to feed people in a way or sort of like adjust practices in a way that allowed the community to stay fat as well, which I think is incredibly important. And I'll even sort of highlight work that was done in Minnesota and Wisconsin specifically, there was a lot of work being done around emergency food, in Wisconsin and Minnesota, where governments were funding the purchasing of local food to go to emergency food providers. And so this sort of connection had never really happened before, at least that I'm aware of. Where, you know, emergency food providers were paying local farmers for their produce and getting that nutritious and many and what we saw later on was even culturally relevant food to the emergency food providers. And this this had been a. So I guess, one, you're getting money in the in the pockets of farmers and two your feeding people in the community who are food insecure, which were the main policy goals. But also, it was allowing us to tackle a lot of needs in the community that had been identified before the pandemic. And the two large ones being from the producer side, this large wholesaling of local food, right, we're bringing local food sales up from that direct to consumer level up to wholesaling, which was, frankly a big feat. And I sort of when I talk about this, I always juxtapose the getting this like small scale local food into food boxes, feeding food insecure people with sort of the large scale headlines that we saw of, you know, people dumping milk, and turning crops back into the soil, because it wasn't economically feasible for them to bring them to market. So I thought this was really innovative. It really relied heavily on networks within these local systems to get that food from the small farmer, to the emergency food providers, and on the emergency food provider side, and allow them to tackle sort of long standing goals of how do we get more nutritious food to our clientele? And also how do we get more culturally appropriate food to our clientele? And so yeah, I mean, I always love an opportunity to sort of highlight this innovative policy as a model for for moving forward. And with discussions I've had I know a lot of emergency food providers are, are hoping that this funding continues past the pandemic and, and into the

Michaela Kandzer:

Yeah, no, that is a super cool story, or not a future. story, but it was super cool account to share, you know, how everything you were talking about in this focus groups kind of came to life, you know, in your local area. And so these small consumers that were able, or these people involved in the supply chain, that were able to have bigger networks or network connections, were they able to feel more supportive, or were they able to perform better during the pandemic?

Noah Bloedorn:

great examples in Minnesota, one was a caterer. And they ended up they completely shut down during the pandemic, right. And we heard this, you know, people weren't having weddings, people weren't having business parties and stuff like that. So caterers lost all of their business overnight, but they have a, they have staff, and they have kitchens to work with. And again, people were becoming food insecure, or there was sort of the traditional markets of getting food to people, we're breaking down. So we have a space that's underutilized. And, and people that need food. And so with an individual in the Minnesota Wisconsin region, they ended up working with a nonprofit organization, to who identified people in the community that needed food, and that caterer was able to both intake food and process it, which is another major need in the supply chain. And sort of, again, looking back at this was this is an issue that's identified before the pandemic, and finding a way to deal with it, and sort of be innovative and nimble within the pandemic, to take in local foods, process it and then give it to people who are need.

Michaela Kandzer:

very cool. That's very cool.

Noah Bloedorn:

And sorry, I'm just to finish the thought. On the flip side, businesses or operations that were sort of more isolated, sort of talk more about their frustrations about not being able to adjust in the pandemic, and either, you know, either they saw their sales go down, or or the feasibility of their business didn't make sense anymore, or they worked much harder, right. And that gets back at that question of burnout and mental health, when you're able to rely on your networks a little more. And that takes some of the burden off of you individually.

Michaela Kandzer:

Awesome. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense to you. And just kind of thinking about the focus groups. Were there any other things that you wanted to share today about the findings that you guys found?

Noah Bloedorn:

Yeah, so I'll spend some time on supply chains, just because that sort of took up a majority of our time. And I think our findings, or or the articles that we put out, will be largely focused on supply chain, both issues and recommendations going forward. So obviously, and we still see this today, but maybe to a lesser extent than the pandemic for sure, was that there were supply chain breakdowns. And so we tried to understand how that affected different people. And one thing one of the major takeaways was that size and scale really affected people in this area, which is probably intuitive. But the larger your business was, and sort of the more money you had to throw around, the more likely you were able to secure the supplies that you needed. And this, I mean, we saw that many different levels, largely plastic ware to-go containers, stuff like that, right. But even protective gear, which was crucial to keeping operate, operations functioning during the pandemic, especially early pandemic, there was a severe lack of protective gear for food workers. And so, I mean, and that even penetrated at that large scale of business. And this is why we saw supply chains break down, specifically in meat processing, right, that was sort of something that hit headlines early on, and we saw reflected in the prices of meat nationally. So I guess we didn't get to this in the focus groups. But I think, you know, something that I've seen is sort of thinking of the food system as a version of healthcare, right? Obviously, food workers were considered essential workers. And that allowed people to keep going, but but a lot of businesses weren't able to provide their employees with the protections and sort of equipment and safety protocols, they were needed to, to adjust to the health issues of the pandemic early on. And so I think there's a couple recommendations going forward. One is prioritizing food workers and their safety, in times of catastrophe to ensure that supply chains are secure, and food prices are stable. And that, you know, we talked a lot about food insecure populations, and and how we reacted to that. But if we're able to sort of get ahead of it, perhaps like, the population of people who need to access emergency food wouldn't be so high, in moments of catastrophe, if we effectively planned for the safety of food workers, right and two is, is that making sure that individual actors have access to resources, and access to sort of education and knowledge about what the best practices are. And especially, you know, as the scale of the business goes down, the less access to those resources, they have and being aware of that. So yeah, I think that was a major issue in terms of safety within the supply chain. But again, I think, looking forward, one of the big takeaways is how do we build food systems that are more resilient, right, that was sort of the focus of this study. And again, a lot of the work has been centered around regionalizing food systems, but something we wanted to make sure came out of this focus group was

Michaela Kandzer:

Yeah, no, I think that that phrase, you not only, you know, calling just for regional food systems, but said, food systems that are more resilient, I think that that is a great way to really sum up the lessons from COVID-19 project as understanding how regional food systems work within the larger a whole, that really is the goal, right? So I really food system, and how they relate and rely on larger scales that appreciate you sharing all of your perspectives and all the preliminary findings that you guys have from the focus groups, are more efficient and more built for sort of industrial agriculture. it seems like there was a lot of data to dig through. And you

Noah Bloedorn:

Yeah. Something that's really interesting is guys found some good stuff. But just kind of wanted. I think there, there's a sort of like, skepticism from our focus group this is a great transition into my last question for you, which is, what does this mean for the supply chain moving forward? participants. Right. And I think that's well understood, right? That, you know, a lot of people were forced to work on their own or figure out their own solutions to the problems that they were facing. Having these focus groups be in the spring, and really backwards facing I don't know that I can, you know, predict something about supply chains going forward. But I think that point that I touched on, and the last question is really, how are we going to respond both from policies, standpoints, and individual practices that proactively build resilience into our food systems, right? How are we addressing these issues, not in times of crises, but in times of normalcy, so that when we get to a point of catastrophe, that we're not sort of being so reactive, and, you know, I love an opportunity to highlight those innovative programs that came about during the pandemic, ensuring that those those programs and other sort of, or other programs that practically build resilience into food systems, funding those and supporting those during times of normalcy, I think is really key to building that resilience into supply chains in the future.

Michaela Kandzer:

Yes, and being proactive instead of reactive in the future. Right?

Noah Bloedorn:

Right. Yeah, I started. Yeah. So So I hope the goal of these focus groups and the goal of these reports is to talk about what happened previously, so that we can act now before the next catastrophe happens.

Michaela Kandzer:

Yes, I agree. I think I think that is exactly what the goal should be. All right. Well, I think that's all I have for you today. Do you have any other final thoughts you want to share?

Noah Bloedorn:

I don't think so. No, I feel like I've, there's so much information and it feels like you could go on forever. So I'll leave it there. And hopefully, people find that useful.

Michaela Kandzer:

No, I think we've all been there. We've all been so close and so immersed in a project, we could talk about it for days, especially when it's something we're that hits close to home and we're passionate about right.

Noah Bloedorn:

Thanks so much for having me on.

Michaela Kandzer:

Yeah, no, thank you for coming on and sharing your perspective with us. We really appreciate it. Thank you for listening to Science by the Slice. You heard us mention the upcoming AFRI online course during the interview. We would like to invite all of you to join us for this learning opportunity to discover what causes agri food supply chain delays and potential solutions for managing disruptions in the future. This course is offered completely virtually so participants can learn at their own pace. We will also provide a link in the show notes for more information about the course and how you can register. You can also just visit ruralengagement.org for more information.

Ricky Telg:

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