Food Security During the COVID-19 Pandemic

What we’re doing now and in the future to ensure Puerto Rico’s food security and safety

Fusion Farms is an “essential” agricultural operation in Puerto Rico, which means that while most other businesses are forced to close during the COVID-19 pandemic, we are permitted to remain open, providing the public with our harvests of fresh, healthy produce.

The COVID-19 Outbreak

The situation the world faces this year is dire and completely without precedent. The COVID-19 pandemic presents to us a costly learning curve that can only be worth the price if we indeed learn from it and change our ways so as to be protected in the future. Agriculture’s role is unquestionable: access to food is fundamental; we need hyper-local agriculture now more than ever and Fusion Farms is proud to be part of the solution during these challenging times.

Learn more about Fusion Farms’ urban, vertical aquaponic farm in Mayagüez

Medical, health, transport, logistics, and government institutions at the highest level are totally redesigning the protocols they have in place for grappling with such a viral outbreak because, as it has been made clear, the existing protocols haven’t coped, and most of humanity has been caught unawares. But the gravest impact is being felt in the home, where people are coming face-to-face with the grief of losing family members to illness, the ugliness brought on by mass hysteria, and the bare grocery store shelves caused by panic and selfishness.

In such a crisis, Puerto Rico is a sitting duck.

Food insecurity + COVID-19 = a perfect storm

Puerto Rico currently imports upwards of 90% of the food it needs to feed its citizens. Couple this food crisis with the exploding COVID-19 pandemic and the government’s potential shutting down of all logistics and trade, and you’ve got the perfect storm: Puerto Rico is dangerously close to island-wide disaster, the likes of which could leave grocery store shelves barren. Now more than ever, we need to encourage hyper-local food production and industry that eliminates reliance on food imports.

What we’re doing to ensure your safety now, and always

Fusion Farms has been duly certified by the Produce Safety Alliance and is aggressively practicing the food safety guidance we’ve been taught in order to ensure the safety and long-term security of our food supply. During these uncertain times, Puerto Rico is counting on the food industry to continue to provide for its people’s most basic needs, but done with the highest care and concern for the health and well-being of our customers.

In the broader scheme of things, Fusion Farms isn’t only a smart financial model but also an environmentally friendly and humanitarian one. Putting an end to the mass importation of food to Puerto Rico and other remote locations will relieve the planet of millions of food miles every year and will establish a local, reliable source of fresh food produce for the communities that most need it.

We’re committed to protecting the communities we cater for: now and always.

During the COVID-19 lockdown, Fusion Farms is classified as “a company of strategic importance” and is providing curbside pickup and delivery of fresh, organic produce to members of the local community.

Our Online Farm Store offers a rich diversity of fresh, leafy greens, herbs, vegetables, and microgreens, which can be ordered for collection from our vertical urban farm facility in Mayagüez at a pre-arranged time and day.

Visit Fusion Farms’ farm store to order your next load of fresh groceries!

The future of Fusion Farms in Puerto Rico

Fusion Farms’ pilot facility in Mayagüez is just the beginning. It is the goal of Fusion Farms to craft a repeatable, scalable model for aquaponics facilities, which can be built into PRIDCO’s abandoned warehouses across the island. In addition to catering to the fresh food needs of its surrounding community, each farm can provide a dozen or more jobs to Puerto Ricans, particularly disenfranchised farmers.

COVID-19 is causing economic fallout the scale of which this world has never seen, not even during World War 1 or 2. Now more than ever, Puerto Rico needs to be galvanized into action and to invest in its sovereignty, its infrastructure, and its agriculture so that it can feed its own people. Fusion Farms is privileged to be a part of the movement towards this food secure future.

What is food sovereignty and why does Puerto Rico rely so heavily on imported food?

We’d love to hear from you!

If you have any questions with regards to our operations during the global COVID-19 pandemic please contact us at info@fusionfarms.ag or call +1-787-220-4505.