Food Security in the Era of COVID-19: Wild Food Provisioning as Resilience During a Global Pandemic

The severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus (SARS-COV-2) that causes COVID-19 has had a devastating impact on human populations, infrastructure, and economies. The structures and systems that supply people with their basic needs have been stressed by the necessary changes COVID-19 has rendered in everyday life. Here I explore the potential role of wild food provisioning in mitigating the acute impacts of COVID on food supply and its impacts more broadly on modern foodways. Wild food provisioning is a waning practice among human populations in the Global North, but recent research has shown that there are significant amounts of food produced and harvested on the landscape that go unaccounted for in food systems research. Building on this work, I theorize a framework for thinking about food systems that are inclusive of wild food provisioning practices and how said framework might increase the ability of human populations to withstand extreme disturbances such as a global pandemic.