Metropolitan Food Systems at the Test of Covid-19: Changes, Reactions, Opportunities Between Food Insecurity and New Needs

Abstract

This paper briefly presents the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic and its related fallout on food metropolitan systems in the context of three main forces: (i) the interconnection among operators along the food chain; (ii) the increasing inequalities among population; (iii) the relations between the metropolitan areas and the near rural ones. The pandemic has made interconnections among the operators along the food chain as well as among territories along the urban-rural linkages vulnerable and has imposed the search of new solutions for building more resilient food systems. It also has increased inequalities in food access that could be alleviated through local government interventions and volunteering food provisioning initiatives at community level.