Recipe for disaster

The snow that walloped the Boston area this winter hit many crucial systems hard, including the city’s network of food distributors and outlets.

The challenges were palpable for Roxbury’s Tropical Foods supermarket.

“We’ve had to close twice in the new location [since February 2015],” said owner Ronn Garry, citing snow troubles as the reason each time. “In the old store, we probably closed twice in 40 years.”

Garry said most of the store’s problems stemmed from the troubles on the MBTA, which made it nearly impossible for many of his employees to come to work.

“Obviously people want access to food, but our employees couldn’t make it in,” he said. He estimated that at least 80 percent of his employees were unable to get there on those two days.

With such problems in mind, last week the city released its first-ever action plan to ensure food system resiliency. The report, titled Resilient Food Systems, Resilient Cities: Recommendations for the City of Boston, is a top-down examination of all the steps in the city’s food system — producers, processors, distributors and retailers — to help facilitate a coordinated response to potential future disruptions caused by natural disasters.

“This winter’s historic snowfall showed how much weather can impact daily operations,” Mayor Walsh said via a statement. “As a city we need to be fully prepared when these storms or other natural disasters occur. With these recommendations, we will be working to prepare our food systems for any disruption.”

The study incorporated lessons from resiliency planning in other cities, such as Toronto, San Francisco and New York.

It identified several key areas for improvement in Boston, including the need for more national chain grocery stores in low-income neighborhoods, greater resiliency plans for smaller grocery stores and corner stores, and more investment in infrastructure that is critical to food transportation such as roads.

Recommendations

In addition to analysis, the report included a host of recommendations: establish a committee of public and private sector food organizations to focus on food system resilience; develop a list of best practices in emergency planning and providing technical assistance to help small corner stores and bodegas plan ahead for disasters; incorporate study insights into the city’s transportation plan, Go Boston 2030; and develop and distribute storm action plan guidelines for food safety net organizations, such as soup kitchens and food pantries.

The report noted that beyond the issue of natural disasters and looming effects of climate change, there are approximately 100,000 Bostonians who are ‘food insecure,’ meaning they do not have adequate access to healthy food. The report said the recommendations would address such day-to-day concerns in addition to potential emergencies like inclement weather.

Catherine D’Amato, President and CEO of the Greater Boston Food Bank, expressed excitement about the study, for which the GBFB was interviewed.

“We are grateful for being included on Boston’s Food Resilience Steering Committee and we are excited about the opportunity of furthering our work with the city to implement the ICIC recommendations in order to insure and improve food access for all of the city’s residents,” she said via a statement.