Pandemic Insights: Brandi Janssen & Carly Nichols on food systems

In this conversation, Carly Nichols and Brandi Janssen talk about the effects of Covid-19 on the food system, both at the commercial level and at the local level.

Carly Nichols (Geography and Global Health) is focused on the complex interplay among processes of human health and wellbeing, ecological change, and everyday social relations, particularly in relation to food and agriculture. In considering human-environment-health relationships, she has a particular interest in using qualitative, ethnographic, and feminist methods to understand how health and social inequities are produced, reproduced, and experienced by different stakeholders. Her focus is on South Asia.

Brandi Janssen (Occupational & Environmental Health) directs Iowa's Center for Agricultural Safety and Health. As a researcher, she examines local food production in Iowa to better understand how to develop food systems that are environmentally sustainable, accessible to consumers, and profitable for farmers. She is the author of the book Making Local Food Work: The Challenges and Opportunities of Today's Small Farmers (2017, University of Iowa Press).