July 2020, Pacific
Food and Water Security in the Age of Pandemics
Papali‘i Dr. Failautusi Avegalio Jr. 

On March 18, 2020, President Donald Trump invoked the Defense Production Act (DPA) in response to the COVID-19 outbreak putting the administration on a war time status alert.

With the underpinning of the DPA to address the corona virus global pandemic, food and water security will be the most challenging needs following medical health treatment and mitigation priorities.

In particular, the high rate of COVID-19 casualties among our elders linked to underlying health, i.e., diabetes, heart disease, renal disease, all diet related.

With the inevitable degeneration of manufacturing, supply chains, distribution centers, international and local transportation systems taxed by the pressures of the corona pandemic, the on-the-ground measure for food security in the Nation’s impacted areas will be how well stocked or empty the shelves for food & accessory food items will be; and for how long.

For scale and context, the field of urban planning has a term for populated areas called conurbations.

Conurbations are created by continuously expanding cities, suburbs and towns that merge into a mass sprawl with little or no rural land in between for hundreds of square miles with populations in the millions.