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Structural chokepoints determine the resilience of agri-food supply chains in the United States

Nature Food volume 4, pages 607–615 (2023)Cite this article

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Abstract

The agricultural and food systems of the United States are critical for ensuring the stability of both domestic and global food systems. Thus, it is essential to understand the structural resilience of the country’s agri-food supply chains to a suite of threats. Here we employ complex network statistics to identify the spatially resolved structural chokepoints in the agri-food supply chains of the United States. We identify seven chokepoints at county scale: Riverside CA, San Bernardino CA, Los Angeles CA, Shelby TN, Maricopa AZ, San Diego CA and Cook IL; as well as seven chokepoints at freight analysis framework scale: Los Angeles–Long Beach CA, Chicago–Naperville IL, New York–New Jersey NJ, New York–New Jersey NY, Remainder of Texas, Remainder of Pennsylvania, and San Jose–San Francisco–Oakland CA. These structural chokepoints are generally consistent through time (2007, 2012, 2017), particularly for processed food commodities. This study improves our understanding of agri-food supply-chain security and may aid policies aimed at enhancing its resilience.

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Fig. 1: Structural chokepoints correspond to the freight transit hubs within the United States in 2017.
Fig. 2: Plots of the links originating from the structural chokepoints.
Fig. 3: Structural chokepoints of FAF-scale food-flow networks by commodity in 2017.
Fig. 4: A sample of how structural chokepoints are concentrated around supply regions for raw food commodities in 2017.
Fig. 5: A sample of how structural chokepoints are concentrated around supply regions for processed food commodities in 2017.
Fig. 6: Stability of structural chokepoints through time for the aggregated agri-food network.

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Data availability

All data sources are listed in Methods and are freely available online. Freight analysis framework (FAF)-scale food-flow data are collected from https://faf.ornl.gov/faf5/Default.aspx. The county-scale food flows data are collected from https://doi.org/10.13012/B2IDB-9585947_V1.

Code availability

Code for identifying the structural chokepoints of US food-flow networks in this study was developed in RStudio version 4.0.2. All code will be made available upon reasonable request from the corresponding author.

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Acknowledgements

This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation grant no. CBET-1844773 (‘CAREER: A National Strategy for a Resilient Food Supply Chain’), DEB-1924309 (‘CNH2-L: Feedbacks between Urban Food Security and Rural Agricultural Systems’), BCS-2032065 (‘RAPID: Spatial Resilience of Food Production, Supply Chains, and Security to COVID-19’) and CBET-2115405 (‘SRS RN: Multiscale RECIPES (Resilient, Equitable, and Circular Innovations with Partnership and Education Synergies) for Sustainable Food Systems’). Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL, USA

    Deniz Berfin Karakoc & Megan Konar

  2. Center for Climate Systems Research, Columbia University, New York, NY, USA

    Michael J. Puma

  3. Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL, USA

    Lav R. Varshney

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Contributions

D.B.K., M.K., M.J.P. and L.R.V. conceptualized the project. D.B.K. and M.K. developed the methodology. D.B.K. curated the data, conducted the formal analysis and investigation, and generated the data visualizations. D.B.K. and M.K. wrote the original draft of the paper. M.J.P. and L.R.V. reviewed and edited the paper. M.K. supervised the project.

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Correspondence to Megan Konar.

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Nature Food thanks Prajal Pradhan and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

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Supplementary Methods, Figs. 1–20, Tables 1–19 and References.

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Karakoc, D.B., Konar, M., Puma, M.J. et al. Structural chokepoints determine the resilience of agri-food supply chains in the United States. Nat Food 4, 607–615 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s43016-023-00793-y

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