Originally published by Michael Pollan

“Only when the tide goes out,” Warren Buffett observed, “do you discover who’s been swimming naked.” For our society, the Covid-19 pandemic represents an ebb tide of historic proportions, one that is laying bare vulnerabilities and inequities that in normal times have gone undiscovered. Nowhere is this more evident than in the American food system. A series of shocks has exposed weak links in our food chain that threaten to leave grocery shelves as patchy and unpredictable as those in the former Soviet bloc.

Before the current pandemic, few Americans put much thought into our food system. The more privileged among us could find anything we wanted at the grocery store and could comfortably afford to feed our families. Some of us ate out multiple times each week and could choose among many different cuisines and eateries. We didn’t need to think about what went into growing our food, how the supply chains that delivered our meats and vegetables functioned, or the economic and safety realities of those who harvested, delivered, and prepared our meals.