Ready for Disaster
The North Coast Emergency Food System Partnership
By Lisa Ludwigsen
Picture this scenario: During an unexpectedly severe snowstorm in your remote community, 100 stranded motorists, including non-English speakers, families with young children, and even someone returning from a hospital stay, need food and shelter. A trailer from the County Office of Emergency Services, filled with cots, blankets, and other supplies, is parked next door, but you don’t have permission or the lock combination from local officials to open it. This was the scene in Laytonville during February of 2023.
By the time the official okay was given two days later (along with the correct lock combination), an intrepid group of volunteers led by Jayma Shields Spence, Director of the Laytonville Healthy Start Family Resource Center, had already pulled together sufficient supplies to keep everyone comfortable until the roads opened. “We proved that a little town with limited resources could host a group of stranded travelers and make a difference, and I think we saved some lives that first night,” Shields Spence shared. “I can’t imagine some of our guests in high-risk health situations being left in the cold. I wasn’t going to be the one to not open my doors to help those in need—I’d be ashamed of myself if I had the power to help a group of people and I didn’t because of a rulebook.”
This relatively brief and small-scale local emergency illustrates just how easily breakdowns can occur during disasters. All the good intentions, resources, and funding can’t help without clear communication. Federal, regional, and county groups can’t be effective if they don’t know what resources are available and how to connect with one another. Rural communities are often left under-served as more densely populated cities and towns get help first.
Snowstorms aren’t the only circumstances with the potential to interrupt the availability of food and other supplies. Pandemics, catastrophic wildfires, earthquakes, and floods all make the list of recent disruptions to local food systems on the north coast.
Would you know who to call or where to go if the food supply chain was suddenly disrupted during an emergency? What if the disruption extended for days, or weeks? For rural communities and at-risk populations such as children, older adults, and people with limited financial resources, the concerns are compounded.
As the North Bay Food Systems Advisor for U.C. Cooperative Extension, Julia Van Soelen Kim’s job includes supporting the development of regional farms, food hubs, and distribution channels. “Because of our region’s susceptibility to climate change-induced disasters, a lot of my work focuses on collaboration to support the resilience of our emergency food system to respond to and recover from disasters,” she shared. When a USDA funding opportunity designed to support partnerships that develop local and regional food systems crossed her desk, Julia and her colleagues and community partners seized the opportunity to bring together stakeholders to create a network of emergency food systems professionals across Northern California.
The North Coast Emergency Food System Partnership is a four-year initiative bringing together food producers, local and tribal governments, food policy councils, the University of California, and community-based organizations that provide emergency food assistance. There are 275 participants from the six counties of Marin, Napa, Sonoma, Mendocino, Humboldt, and Del Norte, representing roughly 1 million people spread over 11,500 square miles. The area encompasses isolated rural areas, densely populated urban places, and everything in between.
I was invited to join the partnership because of my work in natural foods, food policy, and small-scale farming in Mendocino and Sonoma counties. During the quarterly online and in-person meetings, representatives from a variety of agencies and community organizations have shared their experiences developing emergency preparedness strategies, as well as how they have problem-solved in moments of need.
Though I knew of the network of refrigerated nodes installed by the MendoLake Food Hub to provide central locations for farmers to deliver orders of fresh produce and other local food for distribution, I did not know about Del Norte County’s need to helicopter food to isolated residents when flooding washed out roads, or the emergency feeding plan developed by Marin County to get food to those who need it most in disasters, and which is now serving as a model for other counties. I’ve also come to understand how rural communities must be prepared to rely on each other during crises, as Jayma Shields Spence and the Laytonville folks did during the snowstorm. Jayma reports that since the snowstorm, “We have formed the North County Community Organizations Active in Disaster group, NCCOAD for short. The group meets four times a year to share resources and plan better for the next disaster/emergency and how we will handle things on our own if needed.” She adds, “In 2025, I will be pursuing funding to build a storage warehouse that would serve multiple purposes: Laytonville Food Bank storage, emergency food storage, emergency shelter supplies, and a commercial kitchen.”
Now in its second year, the North Coast Emergency Food System Partnership is moving forward toward its three goals:
Working to create additional market opportunities for local producers within emergency food supply chains to mitigate risk and maintain income during disasters
Building collective capacity to improve emergency food systems by creating a strong network of partners, developing emergency feeding plans, and inventorying local emergency food supply chain infrastructure
Identifying barriers to their work and devising recommendations to establish effective local and regional emergency food supply chains
“Even though our regional project is still in its infancy, we’re already seen a lot of new relationships formed, increased awareness about innovative practices, and greater capacity of local food systems stakeholders to address climate change—fueled disasters. We hope to connect the dots across jurisdictional boundaries, local food and farming collaborators, and emergency managers,” said Van Soelen Kim.
Local farms are key to a healthy food system, one that is able to ease the challenges of widespread regional emergencies. Food produced nearby doesn’t need to travel long distances, and a diversified network of farms can be utilized in times of need. Ensuring that local farms remain sustainable becomes vital when considering all the ‘what-ifs’ during an emergency.
We can all contribute to our communities’ readiness for emergencies in a few easy ways. Stocking up on our own supplies and staying in touch with neighbors helps our immediate preparedness. Supporting local producers during the good times will help them be around for the challenges coming our way. Buy locally whenever possible and support the local grocers and markets that demonstrate a commitment to local agriculture.
As we improve our own preparedness, the North Coast Emergency Food System Partnership is connecting the resources that will provide emergency relief during those inevitable challenging times. The collective effort is powerful and reassuring and will help us weather whatever lies ahead.
The North Coast Emergency Food System Partnership can be found online at ucanr.edu/sites/NCEFSP.
Road photo by Torrey Douglass. Shelter photo by Jayma Spence Shields.