Food distribution is an integral (and perhaps for most of us, hidden) function in food systems, left largely to the private sector. The Pandemic showed us that these private food networks are less resilient than we would like. Using network analysis, we explored how food distribution may be improved to ensure food security and avoid, mitigate and better adapt to disruptive events, such as climate change. This study advances our thinking on food systems resilience by assessing networks for temperature-controlled food shipments in the United States (US). It provides valuable insights into food network dynamics, geographical concentration and disparities, especially for rural communities.

Perishable foods move through supply chains distinct from shelf stable products, largely via temperature-controlled truck and from one cold storage location to another. Perishables are high value and cost more to distribute due to added refrigeration costs, distance to markets, and food loss along the supply chain. This study highlights the network importance of core counties, states, and regions in food supply networks and suggests areas where interventions may be needed to improve systems resilience, improve regional market access for farmers and improve access to food for underserved communities. As we transform food systems to support health, equity, resilience and sustainability rather than simply provide calories, a better understanding of the cold chain network may be used in  negotiating trade offs within food systems.

The report is the culmination of work accomplished by a team of researchers and practitioners, led by the UW CIAS. Megan Konar at the University of Illinois, Urbana at Champaign led the work to model cold chain food flows for the United States, estimating county-level cold chain food flows based upon data from the 2017 US Census Commodity Flow Survey. Several agricultural economists and practitioners provided domain knowledge to inform model development, and data curation. 

We identified areas that are core to supply networks. These core areas are efficient, sometimes overly so making them prone to disruption because they lack adaptive capacity. Peripheral areas in supply networks lie outside supply networks and suggest that national food distribution resources are scarce and inefficient. This type of analysis is used by supply chain managers to monitor and optimize supply networks for their firms. It provides managers with information they need to reduce and prevent bottlenecks of commodities, infrastructure, capital and information in regions where centrality is high and improve flow to regions with low centrality. We take this approach beyond the individual business level to understand how perishable food networks could be improved to meet public needs.

Michelle Miller at CIAS and Megan Konar at UIUC led the effort. Other members include Hikaru Peterson, Univ of Minnesota; Christa Court, Univ of Florida; Andrew Stevens, Univ of Wisconsin; Sumadhur Shakya, California State University -Monterey Bay; Zhaohui Wu, Oregon State University; Quanyan Zhu, New York University; Phil Gottwals, Agriculture and Community Development Services; Laura Lengnick, Cultivating Resilience; Cullen Naumoff, Food Fare; Lindsey Smith, Metropolitan Washington Council Of Governments.