Increasing resiliency of integrated food-energy-water systems to viral pandemics: lessons from COVID-19

COVID-19 disrupted labor and capital inputs to interdependent food, energy, and water (FEW) systems. We demonstrate how graphical modeling of phenomena realized during COVID-19 can reveal dynamics of FEW systems during viral pandemics. For example, physical distancing slowed COVID-19 spread but led to economic disruption and may have increased COVID-19 susceptibility by exacerbating FEW insecurities among individuals with many comorbidities. We review predictions of pandemic impacts on FEW systems and identify the mechanisms that explain divergences with respect to observed outcomes during the COVID-19 pandemic. For example, supply-side breakdowns were averted, likely due to low morbidity and mortality among working-age people and net declines in overall energy demand. Modern food systems promote viral emergence, and future pandemics are likely to differ from COVID-19 with respect to one or more key variables such as age-specific mortality or viral infectivity. We use the case study of the poultry supply chain to highlight challenges in understanding how future viral pandemics may jeopardize food security. For example, a lack of publicly available data on staffing levels, working conditions, and product throughputs limits the possibility to simulate supply chain breakdowns as a function of outbreaks in meatpacking plants. Workers provide labor inputs to the food system, while the food system exposes them to risks of illness and death; simultaneously, workers face economic pressures to work while sick and face demand-side FEW insecurities that affect viral susceptibility. Labor inputs to industrial food supply chains hinge on such system dynamics for which there is virtually no quantitative modeling capacity. COVID-19 however provides an opportunity to parameterize and evaluate new models for FEW resiliency. We propose near-term data collection priorities that span classic FEW research, such as characterization of materials throughputs, and include social science methods and perspectives, such as accounting for workers’ behavioral responses to competing health and economic pressures.