随着新颖的冠状病毒在全球范围内造成严重破坏，几乎每个国家都面临着粮食供应的重大问题。而可能是毁灭性的粮食安全危机迫在眉睫, a food loss crisis has already taken hold.

随着供应链的中断，许多农民因关闭而失去了主要市场。来自美国中西部to印度的乡村, farmers are dumping milk, plowing onions into fields, letting ripe fruit rot, killing piglets and more.

The food loss crisis is not a failure of individuals – not the farmers who work hard to ensure their labor goes toward nourishing people and not those on the other end of the supply chain whose livelihoods hang on ensuring that food makes it to people’s plates.

这是系统故障。

人类和经济影响只会因粮食流失和废物原因而加剧了环境影响年度温室气体排放的8％.

现在，我们如何解决这一新兴的粮食损失危机将决定我们是否为下一次全球紧急情况做好了准备。建立一个更具弹性的食品系统，可以在供应链中度过如此突破的供应链中，这将需要政府，食品公司，技术领导者和其他人的创造性思维。

以下是三个变化，如果制定，将有助于创建一个有弹性的全球食品系统：

1. Government Facilitation and Redistribution

政府具有将重要团体聚集在一起以克服国家乃至全球挑战的独特能力。各国政府应在整个食品供应链中进行更大的合作，以确保农民与分销商，食品银行，零售商和其他人合作，以获取最需要的食物。

在某些国家法国，已经存在立法，要求零售商向慈善机构捐赠未售出的食物。在其他情况下，政府介入在独特的情况下促进。

The U.S. government recently announced a plan to spend$300 million per monthon fresh fruit and vegetables, dairy products and meat that would typically go to hospitality businesses and restaurants. These products will instead be distributed to food banks, which face压倒性的需求由于大流行，成千上万的人失业。

In the short term, the U.S. government’s action uses links across the supply chain to get food where it needs to go, and ensures farmers are paid for their goods and food banks can have stocked shelves. It’s not a permanent fix for the American food system, though.

Governments and funders big and small should also invest in schemes that fund organizations specializing in food’s redistribution.

例如，在英国，环境非营利性包裹已宣布£3.25 million(about $4 million) to help “micro operations for whom a few thousand pounds will make an enormous difference and bring extra storage, better transport, equipment and so on.”

2. Technologies that Connect Farmers with In-Need Groups

In Kenya, a company calledtwiga食品使用一个应用程序将13,000名小型农民与7,000个供应商联系起来，从而为农产品创造了易于使用的市场。

在英国，乐购使用了一种称为的技术FareShare FoodCloud当附近的商店中有多余的食物时，可以通过短信提醒当地慈善机构，这些食物可以免费接收。

And across Europe, while most restaurants are closed, many still offer takeout meals.Too Good To Golinks consumers across Europe with restaurants offering discount to-go meals, helping ensure prepared food isn’t wasted.

现在，现在存在这些技术来扩展农民与食品银行，零售商和消费者之间的联系，因此没有食物浪费。需要的是对这些技术的投资，以及对它们在整个行业的潜力和采用的广泛意识。

3.增加风险分享

A budding business movement has already taken off where retailers commit to purchase foods from growers and ranchers, even if retailers can’t accept full delivery or there’s an issue with a harvest. This stabilizes the supply chain and spreads out risk to make it easier for buyers and sellers to tolerate.

农民和牧场主知道，即使存在不可预见的问题，他们也会收到一定比例的预期收入，并且零售商与生产者建立牢固的关系，花费更少的时间和金钱在寻找和管理许多供应商上，并将声誉的收益视为建设的一部分认真的业务。

When there is food that retailers can’t use, they are also able to help connect growers and with fresh and frozen suppliers so no edible food goes to waste. In the case of a crisis like a pandemic that affects entire parts of the supply chain, apps like the ones mentioned above can help connect producers to entirely new markets so less food is left rotting in fields.

风险共享还必须扩展到工人，尤其是发展中国家的非正式工人。那些没有任何安全网的人最容易受到粮食系统中断的影响。非正式工人经历了失去收入的损失，没有任何能够利用政府计划的能力。

Governments can help pay a percentage of workers’ wages in times when farmers and producers don’t have much cash coming in. These kinds of emergency programs have already been implemented economy-wide in Denmark and the UK, ensuring workers have some income and the economy avoids a more severe contraction.

Very little about the future of this coronavirus pandemic is known. What is clear is that if the food system doesn’t change, more people will suffer and we will be unprepared when the next global emergency hits. But if leaders act now, what happens during this coronavirus pandemic can help put countries and theglobal food system在一条弹性的路径上，食物不必要地浪费。