Alaska's food security and Covid-19

By John Creed

From time to time over the years, natural and human-caused disasters have threatened food supply lines coming into Alaska.

For example, legendary weather disruptions during the frigid winter of 1989 hampered operations at the Port of Anchorage, Alaska’s principle entry point for goods sailing north from Seattle. A much smaller supply vein hemorrhaged in 2012 after widespread flooding in the Yukon Territory washed out portions of the Alaska Highway, temporarily blocking truck traffic from entering the state through Canada. Shoppers also flooded grocery stores after a 7.0 earthquake rocked southcentral Alaska on Nov. 30, 2018. And today, just like other places around the world, the novel coronavirus pandemic has triggered some panic buying in Alaska.

“In three or four days, grocery store shelves can get pretty bare,” whenever Alaska’s supply lines sever or even threaten to sever, says Bryce Wrigley, who, with his wife Jan and other family members, have worked a 1,700-acre barley farm outside Delta Junction in interior Alaska since 1983.

Grocery store produce sections can quickly become lonely nests of rusty lettuce and fermenting blueberries when Alaska’s food supplies have hiccupped over the decades, says Wrigley, triggering demand for Alaska-grown products.

For maybe a week.

“But as soon as the shelves in the grocery stores are full again, people go back to imported food,” Wrigley said.

In addition to tending their stately fields of waving barley, a hardy grain well-suited for the Far North’s cold soils and short, intense growing season, the Wrigleys also operate the Alaska Flour Co., a value-added business producing barley flour and a variety of packaged products such as barley couscous and cream of barley cereal.

What could possibly have inspired Wrigley to leap into an entrepreneurial enterprise as risky as opening Alaska’s sole commercial flour mill? And to boot, in a vast, sparsely populated state with a pocket-sized marketplace, expensive transportation infrastructure, and a competitive economy relentlessly overwhelmed by imported goods?

Wrigley describes an epiphany he had while watching a Lower 48 natural disaster unfold in New Orleans 15 years ago, something he describes in a profile on the Why I Farm blog:

“When Hurricane Katrina happened, I remember watching the TV and seeing this aerial shot; they were focusing on these people on top of a building. The guy on the TV said that somebody had killed his neighbor for his food. And I don’t know why, but for some reason, that really struck me. I thought, what would we do in Alaska if something like that happened, another earthquake like ‘64 or some transportation disruption? We don’t really raise very much here, like less than five percent. So that kind of started the wheels turning in my mind.”

Shrinking Food Production

Alaska used to produce most of its own food. In 1955, for example, when Mat-Su Valley agriculture flourished along with other local farms such as the former Creamer’s Dairy in Fairbanks, Alaska-grown food production stood at 55 percent, according to Danny Consenstein, director of the Alaska Farm Service Agency of the United States Department of Agriculture, in an interview with The Redoubt Reporter newspaper in 2012. Local food production, unfortunately, has declined steadily in the decades after World War II.

“In 1955 we were pretty self-sufficient,” Consenstein said. “We have gone from being self-reliant and independent to completely vulnerable, completely dependent on the next plane.”

The falloff ensued as food production costs dropped Outside and transportation became more efficient. Just like in the rest of the nation, as Alaska’s disposable income grew, so did consumers’ appetite for exotic foods imported from across the world, from creamy Irish butter to bananas and mangoes and greens even during January’s darkest days. Convenience. Affordability. Consumer demand.

Today, imported food accounts for some 95 percent of the Alaska market. While a return to when Alaska produced more than half its own food is unlikely, some food producers and others sense danger, even a potential catastrophe, if Alaskans suddenly lose their supply lines for even, say, a month. Nevertheless, today’s Alaska food supply remains secure. In fact, Anchorage Mayor Ethan Berkowitz and shipping officials assembled at the Port of Anchorage on March 22 to assure anxious Alaskans that food supply lines from the Lower 48 are open and resilient.

Alaska Food Security

While profits must drive private business, and despite Alaska’s dauntingly lop-sided data around imported food, Wrigley’s insights from Hurricane Katrina instigated his passion for what is known as “food security,” which the USDA defines as “access by all people at all times to enough food for an active, healthy life.”

Like fellow Alaska farmers, Wrigley has committed to reducing, however modestly, Alaska’s out-sized dependence on imported food because while no one wants this, no one can predict what might disrupt Alaska’s imported food supply that could coerce Alaska society into unraveling.

Wrigley and his wife and family didn’t even know what a flour mill looked like when they started planning to build their own mill in 2005, which required years of research, including visits to Lower 48 flour mill operations before finally launching their venture in 2011.

Much like other Alaska farmers, Wrigley’s product sales have spiked since the novel coronavirus initiated a worldwide pandemic earlier this year. After Alaska’s first case of COVID-19, the disease the coronavirus causes, was identified on March 12, at least one grocery chain in Southcentral Alaska needed to replace its temporary flour shortage. The Alaska Flour Co. was happy to oblige.

“It caught us by surprise,” Wrigley said. “It’s nice to have a local supply of food at a time like this. This is why we built our flour company.”

Overall Alaska Flour sales tripled in March and April, Wrigley said, with the mill shipping more barley flour to date than it usually sells all year. With in-state shipping free for all orders over $50, “people living in the Bush can enjoy the same prices for our products” as retail shoppers in Alaska’s larger cities, Wrigley said.

Natural and human-caused food-supply disruptions such as the coronavirus pandemic underscore Alaska’s vulnerabilities around food security and emergency food supplies even as Alaska-grown farm commerce has spiked this year. No one can predict how long Alaska-grown products will enjoy their current popularity or if disruptions in imported supplies could exhaust local food supplies and ultimately lead to food security concerns in Alaska.

Alaska Grown Food Products Spike

Earlier this month, Anchorage’s CBS affiliate KTVA reported that some Mat-Su Valley farmers’ sales also shot up, including for potato farmer Ben VanderWeele, who said he’s never sold so many spuds out of storage this time of year. Dairy farmer Ty Havemeister also could sell much more than the 5,000 gallons of milk his 80 cows produce each week.

“It’s given us a very, very small amount of food security, but it’s something,” Havemeister told KTVA. “If something else were to go down, if the supply chain goes down coming from Seattle to here, the stores, they’re going to be bare in a matter of hours. You know, you’ve seen that now even with barges coming in.”

Governor, Food Security

Despite a growing understanding of food security and exploding demand for Alaska-grown products, since his 2018 election Gov. Mike Dunleavy has been trying to abolish the state’s dairy inspection program, which would shutter the Havemeister family farm, an operation that began in 1935. The governor’s actions also would discourage new dairy farming entrepreneurs who could improve Alaska’s food security.

While Dunleavy’s latest budget would have allowed sales of uninspected “raw, local milk” by way of a “cow-share program,” it still would have killed Alaska’s commercial dairy operations. Without inspections, Alaskans need not worry about a public health risk, according to Dunleavy, because “unregulated milk will not enter the market.” In classic circular logic, eliminating dairy inspections eradicates commercial Alaska dairies and, therefore, no public health risk would incur from non-existent Alaska dairies.

During the past two legislative sessions, state lawmakers have rescued commercial dairy farming from Dunleavy’s budget ax, including in 2020.

“The dairy inspector was put back into the budget by both the House and the Senate” this year, said Diane O’Loughlin, a staffer for Rep. DeLena Johnson (R-Palmer). “It’s a slow-growing industry. The legislature is keeping that window open to more dairies in the future. Personally, I’d like to see more food security in Alaska.”

Move to Recall Dunleavy

Meanwhile, Dunleavy is the subject of a bipartisan recall effort, whose petition lists four reasons for recalling the governor. Dunleavy has argued that the recall, which has received national media coverage, has no legal basis and is politically motivated. Supporters say budget cuts and vetoes and other attacks are not constitutional grounds for a recall. Dunleavy originally vetoed $440 million in state funding in 2019, and another $261 million this year, further destabilizing Alaska’s already volatile economy even as the pandemic threatens to shutter tourism this year as well as hamstring commercial fishing and other commerce statewide.

Amid Dunleavy’s wide-ranging vetoes to the ferry system,pioneer homes, the University of Alaska,low-income health care coverage, and other state services, including relatively modest state outlays on dairy inspections, Dunleavy should curb his own spending and stop wasting public funds on, for example, out-of-state firms to polish his image, or $600-an-hour, out-of-state lawyers “to fuel an anti-union crusade,” writes longtime Fairbanks journalist Dermot Cole. Dunleavy supporters say out-of-control state spending must be reined in.

While Alaska has endured devastating floods, wildfires and earthquakes as well as blinding volcanic eruptions over the past century, not since the two-year-long Spanish flu pandemic of 1918 has the state faced anything like the novel coronavirus, another invisible, malicious scourge that is raging worldwide. A century ago, the Spanish flu devastated rural Alaska communities especially, at times killing half and sometimes almost all the residents of a village, leaving orphaned children and stunned citizens in its wake. For example, in Brevig Mission on the Seward Peninsula in northwestern Alaska 102 years ago, the Spanish flu killed 72 of the village’s 80 residents in five days.

Since the latest pandemic arrived in Alaska, rural communities off the state’s road system have been trying to block or at least contain the coronavirus through travel restrictions, sheltering in place, working from home, and other measures, in hopes to avoid even the slightest repeat of the Spanish flu’s tragic wreckage of 100 years ago. Still, coronavirus infections are growing in rural communities including in Bethel, Prudhoe Bay, Nome and Kodiak. Health officials expect more infections as the disease and testing for it spread.

Subsistence Traditions

Although rural or “Bush” Alaska can boast scant few commercial farming operations (Lisa and Tim Meyers’ vegetable farm in Bethel since 2002, a notable exception), it is food security that defines much of rural Alaska’s way of life. Rural residents have followed a centuries-old, year-round, sacred tradition universally known as subsistence, or the gathering, storing, and preparing of wild foods to include fish, game, and wild edible plants. This is as near a textbook example of food security as exists, particularly in the context of its social, cultural, and spiritual dimensions as well as its physical and mental health attributes.

Nevertheless, even in Alaska’s most remote communities, today’s modern rural society has come to rely heavily on commercial groceries transported on summer barges or flown in from Alaska’s urban hubs to stock rural grocery stores (or goods mailed directly to consumers). Just as Alaskans feel “pinch me!” lucky to live in one of the world’s most stunning natural environments, many rural and urban Alaskans also share something else in common: proudly consuming and sharing wild food, gathered and prepared by their own hands.

“Alaska has a profound ability to feed itself,” write co-authors Ken Meter and Megan Phillips Goldenberg in a 2018 study prepared for the Alaska Food Policy Council. “The main source of local food in the state of Alaska today is subsistence and personal-use gathering, which account for a total food value of about $400 to $900 million per year. Most Alaskans catch some of the fish they eat or give it away; and hunt or barter for wild meats.”

While Alaska’s fabled personal-use and subsistence culture shows no sign of waning, Alaska’s vulnerable commercial agriculture sector could be teetering on an unprecedented precipice as farmers search for new markets to replace ones the pandemic has, temporarily or not, decimated.

Farmers Markets

Farmers markets, farm stands, community share agriculture (or “CSAs,” which directly supply private households with fresh food) and other venues must step up to backfill the loss of significant Alaska markets that the COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted, says Homer resident Robbi Mixon, executive director of the Alaska Food Policy Council and local foods director of the Alaska Farmers Market Assoc. Markets on life support include Alaska’s farm-to-school program, dine-in restaurants, tourist venues such as hotels, lodges and Airbnb’s as well as other venues that traditionally showcase Alaska Grown food.

On April 3 state officials confirmed that Alaska’s farmers markets, like grocery stores, are “essential businesses” and can open for business this year. Over the past 15 years, the number of Alaska’s farmers markets has exploded, according to the Alaska Division of Agriculture. In 2005, the division counted just 13 farmers markets statewide, then 37 in 2014, swelling to at least 41 by 2017.

Despite the growing presence of farmers markets throughout Alaska, their ability to remain open will depend on their compliance with health mandates, including similar protocols as grocery stores such as social distancing, the wearing of masks in public, and other measures, said Homer’s Mixon. Farmers markets will play a crucial role in ensuring that farmers can stay in business if the public rallies to support Alaska agriculture safely, Mixon said.

Safety First

“It will be a matter of crowd control, and folks will definitely need to cultivate their patience,” Mixon said. “We’re promoting all the ways to support our farmers, as we try to lift our farmers through this time.”

“We’ll have signage and more volunteers at entrances to farmers markets,” Mixon said, adding that in Homer, all venders will space booths ten feet apart, with six feet between all patrons, along with other safety measures. Safety rules will apply in farmers markets in Homer and elsewhere, she said, with consumers already accustomed to shopping more safely in traditional grocery stores since the pandemic hit Alaska in early March.

“Each farmers market in Alaska must decide how to operate so that people will want to go and feel safe there,” said Lorinda Lhotka, environmental program manager for Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation.

Alaska Grown Promotions

Meanwhile, Alaska chain grocery stores have increasingly been featuring and promoting Alaska-grown food in recent years.

The Alaska Department of Agriculture inaugurated its Golden Carrot award in 2017 to recognize grocery stores that emphasize foods grown in Alaska. All three awards have gone to retail grocery chains operating in the Mat-Su Valley north of Anchorage. Carrs-Safeway in Palmer captured the first award in 2017, followed by Walmart of Wasilla in 2018. The award returned to Palmer in 2019, snagged by Fred Meyer. Three Bears and Alaska Commercial Co. are among other grocery retailers that feature Alaska Grown products with in-store promotions and displays.

The Golden Carrot award also features the Alaska Grown $5 Challenge retail campaign, designed to encourage shoppers to spend at least $5 a week on Alaska Grown meats, dairy products, grains, and vegetables during Alaska’s five-month growing season and beyond, as a way to support farmers, the state economy, and food security.

“I am happy to share that we are planning to increase our focus on Alaska Grown and expand the presence in our stores (this year),” said Jeffery Temple, director of corporate affairs for Portland-based Fred Meyer Stores, Inc.

“This will be a tough year for our farmers,” said Kyra Wagner, who writes a seasonal column focusing on farmers markets for the Homer News. She is also the district manager for the Homer Soil and Water Conservation District.

The key to farmers markets is that customers support farmers directly so that more earnings can be re-invested in local farming, according to Wagner. That invigorates the local economy while increasing farm production by keeping more consumer spending in the community, she said.

“We must safely provide the service at farmers markets and throughout Alaska by supporting locally grown food to keep food security growing,” Wagner said.

John Creed is a freelance journalist and University of Alaska professor emeritus who taught English and journalism in Kotzebue for 30 years.