Food Revolution. Services and Social Innovation as a Reaction to Lockdown

Abstract

The global coronavirus pandemic is revealing major weaknesses, inequities, and system-wide risks in global food systems, renewing the urgency to foster novel pathways towards a greater sustainability and resilience of supply chains. This emergency not only has affected human beings, but also caused crisis in the entire economic, political, and social spheres. Yet, in these situations the resilience of society as a whole can be measured. The purpose of this paper is to analyse the initiatives adopted in the food sector during the pandemic that have contributed to the creation of new supply chains, new behaviours and good practices leveraging social innovation. The service sector has been a fertile ground to convert and revive different activities and, as designers, we observe and interpret these phenomena to turn the health emergency into a new scenario of virtuous practices.