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Cow鈥檚 milk is because it contains key vitamins and calcium. But milk consumption has during the COVID-19 pandemic, along with other foods, including , , , and . Economic shutdowns have severely disrupted supply chains that move food from farm to fork.

Milk provides a compelling case study. Before the pandemic, the U.S. dairy industry was already struggling with , rising debt, the , , and limited rural access to . More farmers are calling it quits and, in uncommon but growing cases, committing .

As specializing in and the , we鈥檙e studying how milk鈥攁n 鈥攈as been affected by COVID-19. We have documented one solution to the milk distribution crisis: innovative small farmers of New Jersey who are surviving these hard times by working in cooperatives and selling directly to customers.

Dealing with changes in milk demand

Changes in the milk distribution networks that connect farmers, processors, retailers, and consumers can be hard to see during a socially distanced trip to the grocery store. But they exist and are getting worse.

Dairy producers are dumping thousands of gallons of milk every day. In Wisconsin, 50% of the state鈥檚 dairy products while typical buyers such as schools and restaurants remain shut down and unable to purchase milk and cheese.

In Pennsylvania, where schools buy up to 40% of dairy sales by volume, the pandemic has that lost 470 farms in 2019. Some large dairies have started rather than dumping it, but this has taken months to happen with the help of nonprofit intermediaries. Such arrangements are patches, not systemic fixes for gaps in a brittle supply chain.

Supermarkets can鈥檛 sell all the milk

Milk is at grocery stores and supermarkets, but the share that would normally go to closed schools and restaurants has no buyers. Dairy farmers in response, though, because cows continue to produce milk during the pandemic.

Grocery stores and supermarkets aren鈥檛 equipped to manage the volume of available milk. Their packaging requirements are different enough from schools and restaurants that relabeling and repackaging aren鈥檛 feasible. Milk not originally destined for retail outlets has nowhere to go but down the drain.

Milk waste and donations are signs that supply chains lack resilience鈥攖he ability to bounce back from stresses, the way a rubber band returns to its normal shape after being stretched. Milk dumping is more a reflection of broken supply chains than of trends in supply or demand. The fact that the U.S. has too much milk for some places and too little for others highlights weaknesses of conventional food supply chains amid shocks such as COVID-19.

One farm, one economy

Restoring demand for milk that is now being dumped could take months, at significant losses to producers. Yet mainstream agriculture鈥攚here the largest 4% of U.S. farms by value鈥攄oesn鈥檛 typically operate with a large supply buffer or . How can this system be rewired to make it more adaptable?

Here in New Jersey, farms are the in the United States, averaging 76 acres. The Garden State鈥檚 dairy sector is particularly small, making up only 50 farms and ranking 44th of 50 states in . But despite their small operations, we see New Jersey鈥檚 as models of a game-changing strategy.

Rather than selling their milk to large dairy processing companies, these raise cows, process milk and other foods, and sell them directly to consumers at farm-operated markets and restaurants. Unsold items return to farms as feed or fertilizer.

This system is highly efficient, even during the current pandemic, because farmers and their customers represent the entire supply chain. Customer demand for locally produced food is and the .

These farmers don鈥檛 operate alone. They band together in cooperatives, sharing resources for the benefit of all. Farmers with dairies and slaughterhouses bottle milk and process animals from other local producers. Those that own markets, cafes, and restaurants act as hubs stocking and selling milk, meat, and produce from neighboring farms, generating profits for all parties.

A resilient food future

In our view, New Jersey鈥檚 local farms are able to bounce back from disturbances such as a pandemic because they add a collaborative, 鈥渉orizontal鈥� element to vertically structured farms. As networks of farmers and consumers grow, they become more connected and are able to flexibly pivot and adapt to meet demand, thus creating increasingly resilient regional mosaics of farms and customers.

We see Garden State farms鈥� current success as evidence that resilient food systems make agriculture smaller, not larger. As food networks rewire in the wake of COVID-19, we believe one priority should be fostering food systems that are flexible and diverse, such as New Jersey鈥檚 farmer-consumer networks.

For instance, agricultural policies could be designed to accentuate the efficiency of small farmers and their capacity to nimbly respond to disturbances when larger-scale agriculture cannot. Nurturing such flexibility is critical for creating resilient food systems in an uncertain future.

This article was originally published by . It has been published here with permission.