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As the first cases of COVID-19 appeared in the United States, the nation scrambled to adapt to a largely unknown virus, hastily mandated lockdowns, and unprecedented levels of isolation. One thing that quickly became evident, however, was the global food supply chain buckling under the weight of the pandemic, as eerie images of desolate grocery stores, toilet paper shortages, and millions of gallons of dairy milk being dumped echoed across the nation.
L: Empty shelves at a Ralphs grocery store in Encinitas, California. Credit: Mike Blake/Reuters.
R: Dairy farmers in Okeechobee, Florida forced to dump excess milk due to disruptions from the pandemic. Credit: Larson Dairy Inc./TCPalm.
For writer and editor Nancy Matsumoto, the devastation of the COVID-19 pandemic on grocery stores and food producers underscored a long-flawed and increasingly fragile global food supply chain. Many North American consumers had become dependent on an industrialized “Big Food” system, where large corporations mobilize overextended supply chains, processed foods, large government subsidies, endless lobbyists, and extractive practices to dominate the economy and agriculture. However, as the decade turned, the unprecedented challenges of the pandemic, alongside global wars and increasing climate change, exposed the shaky relationship between these enormous supply chains and the foods and goods on our table.
“Food, we realized, was a form of national security, and we ignore local food production and resilience at our peril,” Matsumoto wrote.
Matsumoto’s writing often focuses on topics of food, agriculture, and agroecology, profiling pioneering leaders and organizations who explore innovation, sustainability, and culture in those fields. In the face of an increasingly flawed and dominant Big Food system, she conceived a project that examined the flaws in this entrenched system—and the narratives of local leaders pushing for progressive, regenerative change in our food systems.
“I have been writing about agroecology, and food, and food systems for a very long time now,” Matsumoto said. “And really believing that regenerative and sustainable agriculture is very important, but not being sure that what I was writing was making an impact and changing people’s behavior. So, I came up with this idea that people really need to see these individual farms and farmers and producers in a much broader, more system-wide context.”
That idea was realized in Matsumoto’s book, Reaping What She Sows: How Women Are Rebuilding Our Broken Food System, published in October 2025. Matsumoto interviewed over 160 individuals involved in alternative food systems and food production, from local grain producers and bakers transforming bread in New York, to Indigenous women enhancing the genetic and cultural diversity of agave in Mexico. The narratives that emerged showcased how regenerative agriculture, across diverse systems, can return care and community to our nation’s land and food—and how the efforts of women leaders formed the forefront of this work.
The Isolation and Illusion of the Big Food Experience
The striking images of depleted grocery store shelves in the early days of the pandemic emphasized how American consumers had become so conditioned to unfettered, endless excess in grocery stores. The American grocery store landscape is largely dominated by big-box chain stores: Walmarts, Krogers, Targets, and so forth. Approximately two-thirds of the food retail market share is controlled by a handful of large corporations that capitalize on nationwide supply chains of enormous length and as a result, often depend on and produce highly processed foods and poor quality agricultural goods.
Despite the profligate shelves of consumer goods that tower within these big-box grocery stores, Matsumoto maintains that the “image of embarrassing abundance and variety in North American grocery stores is largely an illusion.” Rather, the average consumer in these grocery stores often has no choice but that of a handful of Big Food corporations.
Thousands of items line the shelves at these big box grocery stores, but most brands (including numerous private label or organic brands) are owned by the same handful of corporations. And these corporations, through obsessive tracking of the flow of products and profits, can instantly adjust the supply chain and prices with their “global logistics clout” that makes it impossible for independent retailers to compete with big box stores.
Though this means rock-bottom prices for big box grocery shoppers, this has also created a culture of detachment and disinterest around the average consumer’s grocery shopping habits. In essence, it has become increasingly challenging to connect with the food you are buying, and the people who produce it.
“Communities have been hollowed out by the industrialization of food,” Matsumoto said. For example, a shopper picks up a package of salmon in the supermarket, labeled “wild-caught.” Though the fish may have been caught in the Pacific, it is then shipped to Asia, where labor is cheaper, to be processed and packaged and eventually shipped back to the United States. This results in fish that, through the process of this enormous supply chain and its need for profits, has become depleted in freshness, nutrition, and taste—and disconnected from its local producers and consumers.
“You see a packaged piece of salmon, you have no idea the story behind it,” Matsumoto said. “There’s very little transparency in these kinds of long food chains,” she added.
In contrast, Matsumoto highlights how progressive food systems emphasize regenerative agriculture, not only for the benefit of the land, but to also return care and consideration to the consumers of those food products. As Matsumoto explores in her book, regenerative agriculture is a sustainable and restorative process that aims to preserve and strengthen biodiversity, soil health, and climate resilience while reversing land degradation. Though regenerative agriculture depends on a system of farming practices, it is also, at its core, a philosophy. In Reaping What She Sows, key players in these alternative food systems highlight how female leadership resonates with the tenets of regenerative agriculture philosophy.
“There have been times in history where we had matriarchal societies, which tended to be more ‘systems thinkers,’” Matsumoto said. “In other words, not only thinking about, how do we make things profitable? But really, how do we care for a whole community?” Matsumoto highlighted her experience profiling women who were able to capture a natural desire to nurture and care for their products and community by leading progressive systems of food production.
“When I co-wrote [Exploring the World of Japanese Craft Sake: Rice, Water, Earth] several years ago … so many of the [women] brewers talked about how caring for their starter or their fermentation tanks, and all the microbes in it, is like taking care of their children. And I heard similar things from dairy farmers, taking care of lactating animals,” Matsumoto recalled. “I think there is a special energy among women in this field. A willingness to go against the norm, and to really push for a better way of doing things.”
"When women control the finances of a community, they share the wealth. people do not go hungry, children are fed, and everyone gets a fair shake. it's about cooperation not about competition."
— Bu Nygrens, Reaping What She Sows
Leading with Community and Joy
How can the average consumer, who has become entrenched in the Big Food landscape, begin to explore and support progressive food systems? For Matsumoto, the choice to engage in these progressive food systems is ultimately a choice to engage with your community and engage yourself with joy.
“There’s a huge amount of joy and community in these food systems,” Matsumoto said. “My closest friends and I love to meet at the farmer’s market … it’s really a joyful process to support your local food system.”
Through their individual consumption, shoppers can choose farmer’s markets, food co-ops, and community supported agriculture (CSA) boxes, directly engaging with their local food producers and a social hub supporting local retail. Supporting efforts of policy change, through joining a food policy council or advocating to your local legislator, often begets greater understanding of community needs, and the leaders making change in your local food landscape.
Even for urbanites like New Yorkers, opportunities like community gardens can serve the community by both ameliorating food insecurity while uplifting and connecting generations.
“The wonderful thing about these urban community gardens is that the elders or families that have been farming for generations end up becoming mentors for younger people.” Matsumoto said. “And you also get to know people in your neighborhood so that’s a wonderful thing,” she added.
Matsumoto highlighted how two incredible urban garden initiatives were able to speak to the needs of their diverse communities. Bronx-based food activist Karen Washington saw a vacant lot in her neighborhood, and lobbied and turned it into a community garden, eventually producing “a wonderful source of culturally appropriate vegetables for her community” and a community-based farmers market. In Los Angeles, the LA Green Grounds is a volunteer-based organization that converts underutilized front lawns and parkways into edible landscapes, bringing gardens to often underserved neighborhoods in South Los Angeles.
Big Food, meanwhile, depends on isolating the individual consumer, and consequences of that echo across all aspects of an enormous, overextended food system.
“There is a lot at stake here. It’s not just what you’re eating for dinner, but it’s about the climate. It’s about our health. It’s about our environment. It’s about workers’ health, animal health, and all of these things are tied in,” Matsumoto said. Conversely, engaging in progressive food systems is a choice to not only support fresh and accessible food, but a choice to protect the environment and lends, to preserve cultural and generational ties and traditions, and to support community health and happiness.
A Future for Progressive Food Systems
Oftentimes, progressive food systems draw upon the wisdom of traditional and Indigenous regenerative agriculture practices that were lost to the industrialized expansions of Big Food. However, progressive food systems also benefit from advances in science and technology that make local food production more viable.
“It’s really about taking the things that worked traditionally, being very conscious of trying to build rich soil and organic matter, but also incorporating technology where it’s really going to help the small and regional farmer,” Matsumoto said. She pointed to AI being used for precision agriculture, where farmers can closely calculate the exact amount of water, herbicides, pesticides, and other resources needed for growing the land, reducing waste and the amount of chemicals being applied. Technology can also make operations more feasible for a small farmer, from programs that simplify and improve financial bookkeeping, to smaller and more ergonomic machinery increasing labor efficiency and accessibility, especially for women farmers.
Matsumoto has also seen how farmers and producers across the world are looking to new advances in plant biology to improve the sustainability and resilience of their crops. Matsumoto, who also co-wrote the James Beard-award winning book Exploring the World of Japanese Craft Sake: Rice, Water, Earth, spoke to how extreme weather events and climate change in Japan has shaped the sake and rice production industry.
“There is a lot more awareness of needing to be climate-friendly, everything from creating climate-friendly hybrids of rice that adapt to climate changes, as it gets hotter, and maybe more extreme weather events … many more breweries [are] thinking about their carbon footprint, and how they can reduce energy,” Matsumoto said. “Another big thing that’s happening is in response to a global trend of fewer people drinking alcohol … we’re starting to see sake with lower levels of alcohol … [and] really interesting things going on with sake blending … There are vegan sakes now too,” she added, pointing to how local producers can respond to a community’s priorities for health and sustainability. “It’s a really dynamic, really fun world.”
As federal policies supporting progressive food systems, including bringing local food into schools, have been cut in recent years, it has fallen to state and local governments to support local food efforts on a policy level. On January 27, New York State announced the Food and Fiber Processing Grant Program, which supports projects expanding processing, production, and harvesting of produce and fibers in New York state.
“One of the huge issues for supporting local food in an urban environment is that so much farmland around the urban areas is under huge development pressure,” Matsumoto said. “We need to have those farms in close proximity to our cities to get that local and regional food,” she added. New policies, like the Food and Fiber Processing Grant Program, support efforts to resist overdevelopment of lands and preserve community farmlands and foods, even for urban consumers.
Beyond changes in technology, science, and policy that support a future for food systems that prioritize sustainable, alternative, progressive, and local food and production, Matsumoto believes that a cultural shift—on the level of individual consumer thinking—is steadily making progress.
“I feel that for many, many reasons, the average consumer is much more open to this conversation [on progressive food systems],” Matsumoto said. “A big reason is the pandemic—people understanding what a supply chain is, what a long supply chain looks like, and what happens when that’s disrupted, how it’s not necessarily the best in the way it treats workers … and the control that it has over our lives. The talk about ultra-processed food has given people a look into the motivations and singularly profit-driven ethos of Big Food … and climate change is a huge piece of this whole discussion.”
She pointed to the 2025 EAT-Lancet Commission, which found that though our global food system generates approximately $15 trillion dollars annually, the same food system also generates $12 trillion dollars in costs to our planetary and human health. In fact, it’s estimated that 15 million premature deaths could be prevented by shifting to a more sustainable, healthy diet.
“When you look at that ledger and those figures,” Matsumoto added, “I think people are starting to get it.”
Ultimately, Matsumoto hopes that her book can build on a growing culture of consumers becoming more mindful of their food and the systems, practices, and agriculture that produce their food—and in the process, bring forth joy and community to the experience of choosing and consuming food.
“I think it’s so important to our souls to have something to take care of and nurture, and then it provides us with something beautiful to eat,” Matsumoto said. “It’s a wonderful cycle.”
Find more about Nancy Matsumoto’s work and writing at her website, or join us virtually or in-person on February 24 for Serica Storytellers: Poetry, Memory, and Remembrance to hear her speak about By the Shore of Lake Michigan, the English translation of her grandparents’ Tomiko and Ryokuyō Matsumoto’s collection of Japanese tanka poetry about their experience in internment and resettlement.
More information about Nancy Matsumoto's James Beard Award-winning book, Reaping What She Sows: How Women Are Rebuilding Our Broken Food System, is available on her website, where you can also find her blogs Reaping, by Nancy Matsumoto and Rice, Water, Earth: Notes on Sake.
