5@5: Elevated online grocery use here to stay | Food banks invest in small-scale urban farms

Increased use of online grocery shopping ‘here to stay’

Data has repeatedly shown that, despite a return to pre-pandemic policies in some areas, certain pandemic-related grocery shopping habits—particularly consumers’ reliance on e-commerce—are here to stay. A survey out of Acosta reported on by Supermarket News found that 45% of shoppers said they receive their orders via home delivery, and the same percentage use click-and-collect service. Additionally, more consumers opt for curbside pickup (28%) than in-store pickup (17%). Online memberships had a strong affinity with younger shoppers, namely Gen Z and millennials.

Small-scale urban farms take root at food banks around the country

Paradoxically, the little farms cropping up at food banks nationwide aren't primarily an effort to feed hungry families. They definitely do this to a lesser degree (when compared to the enormous food contributions received from bigger farming operations and other avenues of food donations) but it's mostly an initiative that gives food banks and pantries a powerful way to strengthen their missions, build stronger community ties and create opportunities to broaden their approaches to addressing food insecurity. Learn more at The Counter.

Coffee rust is going to ruin your morning

Coffee rust, once a problem the Americas were by and large protected from thanks to the Atlantic Ocean, has proliferated in crops across coffee-growing regions—and to top it off, the usual fungicides don't appear to be working anymore. Farmers are running out of cash while scientists race to blunt the power of the disease, but this piece from The Atlantic notes that they're up against the disease's more than 150-year history. The article finds paralells between the coffee rust pandemic and the current COVID-19 crisis because there was an unshakeable belief that current tools could manage both threats. Needless to say, we were wrong in both instances.

Meet SquarEat, a startup whose innovation turns food into nutrient cubes

Food tech startup SquarEat, which recently raised $150,000 in an online crowdfunding campaign, offers consumers little single-ingredient blocks of compressed food including the beef square, hazelnut square, sea bass square and quinoa square. Eater writes that the company would have been met with more criticism a few years ago, but now we have brands such as Soylent and Huel that sacrifice texture and flavor in pursuit of efficiency. The company also claims that it can use almost 100% of an ingredient in their development of these squares, which is a definite plus. 

Census data suggests America’s hunger problem may be waning, but food assistance continues to top pre-pandemic levels

Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) enrollment is up by more than 6 million since 2019 and food banks are still seeing more demand than during pre-pandemic times, according to The Washington Post; one glaring reason for this is that the cost of grocery items have been on the rise for more than a year. While the Biden administration has increased food assistance benefits to address ongoing food insecurity and inflation, anti-hunger advocates say the boost won’t be enough to quell food insecurity among Americans experiencing financial hardship in the long term once COVID-19-era federal aid programs expire.