Hunt's Point

This project starts right here in New York City, at Hunts Point Distribution Center: the largest geographic hub in the City for food distribution. Roughly 12% of all food distributed to New York City comes through Hunt’s Points Distribution Center. For categories in which the Hunts Point Food Distribution Center specializes, the market share is even greater: 25% of produce, 35% of meat, and 45% of fish.

The Hunts Point Coop, or The Coop, consists of 52 distribution companies that process and distribute meat and meat products in just under one million square feet. Those companies carry and distribute a myriad of food brands, who each have their own respective manufacturing locations and headquarters. Those food brand then each source their food from a multitude of farms in their respective regions. To recap: farms –> food brands –> distributors.

Fancy Foods Inc., for example, is a full line distributors of all major brands of poultry, boxed beef, pork, veal, lamb, frozen poultry, turkey, offal, provisions, and seafood located at the Coop. Fancy Foods carries food brands including Meyer Nautral Angus, Creekstone Farms, Vermont Salumi, Bilinski’s Sausage amongst many many others. This map visualizes the Fancy Foods ecosystem out of Hunts Point:

Map of SVO Farms

The distributor/brands relationship is only part of the ecosystem. For each of those brands that Fancy Foods distributes, each brand has an ecosystem of farms that actually supply the produce. For example, one brand that Fancy Foods distributes is an (average size) poultry brand called SVO Farms. This map highlights SVO Farms ecosystem of farms. Each yellow circle represents 10 miles in distance:

Farm Workers

To properly understand the makeup of the American meat structure, it's integral to understand its workforce. Farmworkers, deemed essential workers during this pandemic, are 75% foreign born. 50% of all farm workers are undocumented & 10% are on H-2A visas. The H-2A program permits U.S. employers to bring temporary foreign workers into the United States to perform seasonal agricultural work. For many, the program has been a pathway to U.S. citizenship and is generally viewed a positive program by politicians on both sides of the aisle. Over time, the size of the H2-A visa program has increased drastically and has become integral for the 200,000 workers currently on those visas and the farming & agriculture structure of the country.

COVID-19 has created new hurdles though for the visa program; the Department of Homeland Security originally stopped the program as a whole, in attempt to restrict border movement, but eventually on the 15th of April released a final rule “to change certain H-2A requirements to help U.S. agriculture employees avoid disruptions in lawful agricultural-related employment, protect the nation’s food supply chain, and lessen impacts from the coronavirus (COVID-19) public health emergency”. In California, nearly half of the 850,000 farmworkers are undocumented, and labor unions say sometimes they are denied sick leave. Undocumented workers are also excluded from the coronavirus relief package. Border restrictions & federal regulations have made it increasingly difficult for farming & agricultural workers. Farming & Agriculture are often absent from the main stream media political rhetoric but are also arguably the least represented work force in America.

The following two maps show undocumented farm workers by state & farm workers on H2-A visas, in an attempt to visualize the presence of those workers in our communities:

Meat Plant Closures due to Covid-19

In a full-page advertisements in The Washington Post, the New York Times and the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, meat conglomerate chairman of Tyson Foods, John Tyson wrote: “This means one thing — the food supply chain is vulnerable. As pork, beef and chicken plants are being forced to close, even for short periods of time, millions of pounds of meat will disappear from the supply chain.” This is a pretty jarring claim for most Americans, who have for the most part, gone their whole lives not having to really worry about the food supply chain.

The following map shows a concentration of slaughterhouses in the midwest that have recently closed or opened due to response to the COVID-19 pandemic or federal guidelines. Click on the cleavers to learn more about their recent updates:

Considering Climate
Change as a Disruptor

As COVID-19 has become an apparent disruptor in our city’s food supply chain, its worth considering other potential disruptors - notably environmental disruptors as a direct result of climate change. When Superstorm Sandy pummeled New York in the fall of 2012, it revealed the terrifying potential for sudden food shortages. In impacted neighborhoods, retailers were hit harder than expected. The maps that were used to predict where floodwaters would hit, the 1983 Flood Insurance Rate Maps (FIRMs), proved to fall short of much of the Sandy Inundation Zone. Retailers suffered both direct damage from flooding and indirect losses due to power outage.

Distributors, like Hunts Point Distribution Center, were impacted greatly as well. According to the NYCEDC, Hunts Point demonstrates a number of coastal vulnerabilities: “Building-level power outages are a significant and shared threat to residents and businesses,” and “due to considerable elevation change, the low-lying areas face significant threats from coastal flooding while the upland residential area does not.” In response to Hurricane Sandy, the federal government ($20 million) and the city of New York ($25) million financed the Hunts Point Resiliency pilot project that would help provide resilient power for backup generations. However other than Hunts Point, there are also five other primary distribution clusters located within the Five Boroughs: College Point, Long Island City, Maspeth, Greenpoint, and Sunset Park. Given how the inundation predictions for Sandy fell far short, and how many of these distribution clusters are located close to the water, it’s worth considering (and visualizing) their proximity to neighborhoods that were severely damaged by inundation:

Mapping the Meat Paradox

Introduction

Hunt's Point

Map of SVO Farms

Farm Workers

Meat Plant Closures due to Covid-19

Considering Climate
Change as a Disruptor

Conclusion

References

Mapping the Meat Paradox

Introduction

Hunt's Point

Map of SVO Farms

Farm Workers

Meat Plant Closures due to Covid-19

Considering Climate Change as a Disruptor

Conclusion

References

Considering Climate
Change as a Disruptor