Essential Workers in the US Food System

COVID-19 led to massive disruptions in food systems as food laborers were infected, shutting down plants, disrupting supply chains, and ultimately causing food shortages. In part to avoid such problems, workers involved in food systems were deemed essential and provided incentives and support to maintain their labor. Attempts to support essential laborers depend critically on the content of support and the obstacles faced by laborers in remaining active. Yet little is known about how such support and the experiences of such support have differed according to the individual characteristics of food system laborers, and according to where their labor was applied within the food system. This research bridges theory from the anthropology of work, economic anthropology, and the political economy of food systems to understand how these differences in individual contexts shaped supports and hurdles to maintaining food system labor supplies. In addition to providing support for U.S. doctoral students, the work will be disseminated widely to academic and non-academic audiences.

The work addresses this focus with three specific aims. First, the investigators ask how different kinds of workers are integrated into the labor market. Next, they query how workers' economic and biological risks have been shaped by the pandemic. Finally, they ask how risks are managed with the goal of keeping the food supply chain working. The work focuses on three nodes of the food system, all supported by laborers with different social and economic characteristics: farm work; meatpacking; and grocery retail. Using both survey research and ethnographic research methods, the project investigates what being an essential worker means in each node, and how being essential interacts with varying identity and individual characteristics. The project will inform understanding of economic and social vulnerabilities as they unfolded during the pandemic to create generalizable insights that will fuel theoretical and methodological innovation surrounding the operation of food systems to find ways to improve their stability and supporting safety for food system workers.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.