COVID-19 and the US Lettuce Supply Chain: Implications for Farmworker Health and Safety and a Secure Supply

Loker Ali ()
Additional contact information
Loker Ali: Doctor of Plant Health Student, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, 1875 N 38th St, Lincoln, NE 68503, USA

Journal of Agricultural & Food Industrial Organization, 2020, vol. 18, issue 2, 09

Abstract: The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed multiple vulnerabilities in the U.S. lettuce value chain. Restaurants and other food service operations closed almost overnight, leaving farmers with millions of dollars of excess lettuce. Because of the rigid value chain, farmers were forced to decide whether to harvest their crops for donation, try to find new customers, or plow their crops under. Close working and living conditions increase farmworkers’ risk of contracting COVID-19. Though many operations have implemented safety measures to protect farmworkers from COVID-19 in the short-term, larger structural changes must be made to provide workers with fair wages, access to health insurance and paid time off, and affordable housing. This review outlines the current value chain of lettuce in the U.S. and the disruptions caused by COVID-19, analyzes the impacts on farmworker health and safety, and offers recommendations for a more resilient lettuce value chain.

Keywords: COVID-19; farmworker health; lettuce; resilience; value chain (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1515/jafio-2020-0029 (text/html)
For access to full text, subscription to the journal or payment for the individual article is required.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bpj:bjafio:v:18:y:2020:i:2:p:09:n:10

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.degruyter.com/journal/key/jafio/html

DOI: 10.1515/jafio-2020-0029

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Agricultural & Food Industrial Organization is currently edited by Azzeddine Azzam

More articles in Journal of Agricultural & Food Industrial Organization from De Gruyter
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Peter Golla ().