We live in a world dominated by the neo-liberal idea that consumption-driven growth of economies, accessing globalised trade, is the best way to drive global development. Global competition drives down prices, allowing countries with comparative advantage to create goods for consumption elsewhere. Efficiency, in the name of cheaper goods, means redundancy is removed. The food system is a crucial exemplar of this: in the UK food comes into the country at more-or-less the speed it is sold in supermarkets. The downside from supplying an abundance of cheap goods is that the globalised system is also fragile. If it breaks, then goods we rely on disappear off shelves and prices rocket. In 2007/2008 and again in 2010/2011 climate shocks, coupled with low transparency of international stocks, led to the perception that food would be rare, countries instituted export bans, markets panicked, international food prices spiked, and food riots broke out around the world (Homer-Dixon et al. 2015; Puma et al. 2015). Amongst other things, the food price riots sparked the Arab Spring (Natalini et al. 2017), contributing to a long-lasting geo-political reconfiguration of the Middle East. The last decade’s food price spikes created a focus on the potential for climate-change driven disruptions on food systems (Challinor et al. 2018). Climate change is not only about new extremes of weather that may disrupt on our food systems, but is also likely to create new challenges through new pests and diseases of crops and livestock, that disrupt agriculture: as climate changes, pests and diseases move, and there are opportunities for them to escape from natural ecological mechanisms that keep them under control (Bebber et al. 2013). These same issues also affect the diseases that infect wildlife, and, potentially humans: like most emerging diseases, COVID-19 comes from wildlife. As we change ecology, through habitat loss, degradation and climate change we change the way animals, reservoirs, vectors and pathogens mix, paving the way for pathogens to leap into new hosts. Couple this with increasing urbanisation, wildlife encroaching on cities and people and animals interacting in new ways, emerging diseases may, likely climate change itself, be seen as a symptom of environmental degradation (Brooks et al. 2019). In other words, extreme as it is, perhaps COVID is not a one-off, but more an exemplar of the short of disruptive shocks we need to adapt to in the Anthropocene. As countries have locked-down to reduce COVID-19 spread, it has exposed the strengths and weaknesses of our food systems. Shoppers “stocking up”, in response to rational needs, have led to empty shelves that just-in-time supply chains have struggled to cope with. Vulnerable people have been exposed by their inability to get to shops as home-delivery systems have been swamped by demand. Food prices are rising locally and globally. The amount of food available has not caused any problems to date: its distribution has. Looking ahead, however, there is a potential problem in supply. In the Northern Hemisphere, planting is largely over, but harvesting is soon to come. What happens if the labour is not available? Harvests in the early-maturing fresh produce areas in southern Europe has been problematic due to “social distancing” and labour shortages. In the southern hemisphere, harvesting is underway, just as lock-downs roll out. For large scale mechanised farms, harvesting will continue, but for smaller farming systems, manual labour is key. Will supply become an issue, as well as distribution? Some countries clearly think so, as they start to introduce export bans to keep food within their borders— exactly the policies that drove the last food price spikes. Once harvests are done, farmers then have to decide what to plant. They therefore have to bet on what foods there will be demand for in the following months. With so much change in demand driven by changing markets, supply This article is part of the Topical Collection: Agriculture, Food & Covid-19.

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COVID-19 和对粮食系统的破坏

我们生活在一个由新自由主义观念主导的世界，即消费驱动的经济增长、参与全球化贸易是推动全球发展的最佳方式。全球竞争压低价格，使具有比较优势的国家能够创造商品供其他地方消费。效率，以更便宜的商品为名，意味着消除了冗余。食品系统就是一个重要的例子：在英国，食品进入该国的速度或多或少与超市出售的速度相同。提供大量廉价商品的不利之处在于，全球化体系也很脆弱。如果它坏了，那么我们依赖的商品就会从货架上消失，价格就会飙升。在 2007/2008 年和 2010/2011 年再次发生气候冲击，加上国际库存透明度低，导致人们认为食物将是稀缺的，国家实施出口禁令，市场恐慌，国际食品价格飙升，世界各地爆发食品暴动（Homer-Dixon et al. 2015; Puma et al. 2015）。除其他外，食品价格暴动引发了阿拉伯之春（Natalini 等人，2017 年），促成了中东长期的地缘政治重组。过去十年的粮食价格飙升引起了人们对气候变化导致粮食系统破坏的可能性的关注（Challinor 等人，2018 年）。气候变化不仅涉及可能破坏我们的粮食系统的新的极端天气，而且还可能通过破坏农业的作物和牲畜的新病虫害带来新的挑战：随着气候变化，病虫害的移动，他们有机会摆脱使他们受到控制的自然生态机制（Bebber et al. 2013）。同样的问题也会影响感染野生动物的疾病，甚至可能感染人类：像大多数新出现的疾病一样，COVID-19 来自野生动物。随着我们改变生态，通过栖息地丧失、退化和气候变化，我们改变了动物、水库、媒介和病原体混合的方式，为病原体进入新宿主铺平了道路。再加上城市化进程的加快、野生动物侵入城市以及人和动物以新的方式相互作用，新出现的疾病（可能是气候变化本身）可能被视为环境退化的症状（Brooks 等人，2019 年）。换句话说，尽管它很极端，但也许 COVID 不是一次性的，但更多的是我们需要在人类世适应的破坏性冲击不足的一个例子。随着各国采取封锁措施以减少 COVID-19 的传播，它暴露了我们粮食系统的优势和劣势。购物者为了满足理性需求而“囤货”，导致货架空置，而准时制供应链一直难以应对。由于送货上门系统已被需求淹没，弱势群体因无法前往商店而暴露无遗。食品价格在当地和全球范围内都在上涨。迄今为止，可用食物的数量没有引起任何问题：它的分配有。然而，展望未来，供应方面存在潜在问题。在北半球，播种工作已基本结束，但收获即将到来。如果劳动力不可用怎么办？由于“社会疏远”和劳动力短缺，南欧早熟新鲜农产品地区的收成一直存在问题。在南半球，收获正在进行中，正如封锁措施的推出一样。对于大型机械化农场，收获将继续，但对于较小的农业系统，体力劳动是关键。供应和分销会成为问题吗？一些国家显然是这么认为的，因为它们开始引入出口禁令以将食品保持在其境内——正是这些政策推动了上一次食品价格飙升。一旦收获完成，农民就必须决定种植什么。因此，他们必须押注在接下来的几个月里会有什么食物需求。由于市场变化导致需求发生如此大的变化，