Politico reports Tens of millions of pounds of American-grown produce is rotting in fields as food banks across the country scramble to meet a massive surge in demand.
Images of farmers destroying tomatoes, piling up squash, burying onions and dumping milk shocked many Americans who remain fearful of supply shortages. At the same time, people who recently lost their jobs lined up for miles outside some food banks, raising questions about why there has been no coordinated response at the federal level to get the surplus of perishable food to more people in need, even as commodity groups, state leaders and lawmakers repeatedly urged the Agriculture Department to step in.
Tom Vilsack, who served as agriculture secretary during the Obama administration, put it this way: “It’s not a lack of food, it’s that the food is in one place and the demand is somewhere else and they haven’t been able to connect the dots. You’ve got to galvanize people.”
Coronavirus Forces Farmers to Destroy Their Crops
The Wall Street Journal reports Coronavirus Forces Farmers to Destroy Their Crops
As the coronavirus pandemic disrupts supply chains, American farmers are dumping milk, throwing out eggs and plowing under healthy crops. Produce suppliers are especially vulnerable to surpluses because fruits and vegetables are perishable and can’t be stored.
Lettuce producer Mark Borba, in Huron, Calif., said he has had to plow under 230 of 680 acres of recently harvested lettuce since the pandemic swept the country a month ago. He said demand fell off so sharply from restaurants, schools and other large customers that his crews had to unpack 9,000 cartons of lettuce from a warehouse where they had awaited shipment and dump them back in the fields to be plowed under.
“The demand [from the large customers] just went to zero,” said Mr. Borba, who manages 10,000 acres under his Borba Farms. “And not only did we lose restaurants and schools, but people were going to the grocery store buying nonperishable stuff to put in the pantry. They were not buying leafy greens.”
Pork and Beef Shortages
On April 12 Reuters reported Smithfield shutting U.S. pork plant indefinitely, warns of meat shortages during pandemic.
Since then, things have gotten much worse.
On April 23, the Wall Street Journal reported Grocers Hunt for Meat as Coronavirus Hobbles Beef and Pork Plants.
Covid-19 outbreaks among employees have closed about a dozen U.S. meatpacking facilities this month, including three Tyson Foods Inc. plants this week. Other plants have slowed production as workers stay home for various reasons.
Tyson, the biggest U.S. meat company by sales, on Thursday temporarily closed a Washington state beef plant, after closing two Midwestern pork plants on Wednesday that produce millions of pounds of meat, together slaughtering nearly 35,000 hogs daily. Smithfield Foods Inc., Cargill Inc., JBS USA Holdings Inc. and Hormel Foods Corp. have closed plants over the past month, leading to significant declines in overall U.S. meat production.
Meat companies are trucking poultry and livestock to be processed at other plants, and bringing in welders to install shields between processing-line work stations. On farms, some pigs now are being euthanized because slaughterhouses have closed, farmers said.
Meat companies are trucking poultry and livestock to be processed at other plants, and bringing in welders to install shields between processing-line work stations.
Six-Point Synopsis of What Going On
- The USDA normally buys food that can be stored for a long time. It cannot easily deal with Fresh fruits and vegetables and things that do not store easily.
- Grocery stores stores stock 1-2 pound packages. of cheese. A pizzeria might buy 50-pound containers. It is expensive to retool plants to package things differently for what is supposed to be a temporary disruption.
- People eat vegetables more often when eating out than they do at home. There is a collapse in demand for many items.
- With diminishing need for raw milk to produce cheese farmers are dumping it. The same is in play for many fruits and vegetables. Strawberries are rotting in the fields and farmers are plowing under beans.
- At the meat packing plants, the workers work very closely to each other. Covid-19 is spreading rampantly. Plants had to be closed.
- Store shortages are mainly meats, dried foods and canned foods. Price of beef has soared in the past week due to closure of processing plants. At times I have had a hard time finding canned tomato sauce. I see holes where boxes of au gratin potatoes should be. People hoard items that store well.
Demand Shift and Supply Chains
It is easy to blame the USDA or Trump but the problem is quite a bit more complicated due to Covid-related demand shifts and supply chains.
One of my readers, Jdog1, summed up the above 6 points succinctly:
“Farmers who sell to the restaurant industry do not have a direct supply line to the grocery stores, so their perishable goods go bad before they can find new customers and mechanisms to get their goods to market.”
What to Do?
People want government to do something about this. But what?
I see no sensible action and government never solves anything, anyway.
Mike “Mish” Shedlock
I would like to think one easy solution to this problem would be to let those that can, harvest those crops as well as prep for transport to the thinning food banks. That would help farmers not waste and the needy not go hungry and its not a handout because the needy will contribute as they are able. This group in the WH are as clueless as a box of rocks when it comes to running a government, it’s not Socialism to have concern for your fellow man. Only a soulless person can look at other people go hungry and look away with no problem. One lengthy illness can deplete the largest nest egg because money can’t buy health or happiness. This is a wake up call to everyone, if we don’t reel in this mess of policy makers and this loose cannon wanna be effective President we will end up like Russia or worst the Jews during the holocaust and it won’t matter the color of your skin “poor” will determine your fate… don’t be naive; those people in DC, those elected officials do not care about America the Land of the Free, above average or average Americans. They are for the rich and big corporations that have purchased their souls and have attached puppet strings.
I suggest use the National Guard to transport food from rural farms to the cities to be sold by Produce stands.
HAHA… government 100% caused this problem, no way in H__l they could figure out to actually make an impact on transporting food. I bet the free market could figure it out if they were not “essential”… which means the government has no clue how to define essential.
State officials and growers say Trump’s Agriculture Department has been woefully slow to respond to farm crisis caused by coronavirus. https://www.politico.com/news/2020/04/26/food-banks-coronavirus-agriculture-usda-207215
Mish….
NEVER!
As in, “Never solves anything “
Sixty years born and raised American.
Solved the cleanest shirt in the dirty laundry pile….
For sixty years.
Mightiest MIC on earth..
How do I know, you ask?
No takers!
How did Google become Google?
United states of America internet prowess.
Microsoft?
United states government grants, loans, technology, research and development designed for our military, fashioned to the consumer want….
Tesla, government subsidies out the wah-zoo, we all want it to end in a ball of Elon flames..
But will it.
Kiss
Privatize profits
Socialize losses
Sweet dreams you pack of naive capitalists
The problem is the socialized losses.
Exactly like in the Great Depression.
“People eat vegetables more often when eating out than they do at home. There is a collapse in demand for many items. “
That must be an American thing. I eat far more salad & vegetables at home than they ever serve in restaurants, let alone fast food.
We have enormous salad bars here in many places
I ordered “mit salad” in Germany once and it was one big leaf of lettuce
Most every meal at a restaurant comes with a vegetable. Whether people eat them or not is another story.
Turkey season begins this week in VT. Unfortunately most hunting occurs in the fall because you want the young a chance to grow. Stop complaining about non-existent laws against hunting. you want to get a turkey – start practicing now – there are a lot in Vt.
The real problem is what government deems essential, if a government could understand the complexities of an economy than communism would be the most successful form of government.
The downstream impact of these actions (right, wrong or in between) will be with the economy for multiple years to come.
This is the result of a terrible overreaction to keep elderly people with comorbidities from doing what is eventual anyway, especially folks who are dumped in nursing homes by families too inconvenienced to care for them.
Being in the over 60 demographic I’d gladly sacrifice my dreamlike life so that young’s could get back to living…..
But then, I have a horny old lady, couldn’t be objective
link to “that post”:
Sorry, I thought the link was automatic when I copied from a webpage.
I would expect the federal government to fill the gap, and it appears there is an attempt to do so. Stats from that post, which are along the same lines:
“Feeding America predicts the country could see a 46% increase in Americans who struggle to get enough healthy food to eat on a daily basis, an additional 17.1 million people. They say they need an additional $1.4 billion in resources to accommodate the 30% increase in their overall operating costs.”
Personally, I had switched to Walmart grocery delivery via a 3rd party prior to the pandemic, and found it to be great. But that system has been broken for a month now. You can stay up until midnight & schedule a one hour delivery window 2 days out, but no one can tell you for days after a no show, when you will actually get your groceries. Once it arrived a couple of days late. Once we waited a couple of days to find out the order was cancelled. The pickup system is under stress, but hanging in there. Ordering online at peak freak was slim pickins & 1/3 of items ordered, were cancelled during the picking process. Back to just a couple now.
Excellent comment by reader Jdog 1. I added his comment to the blog.
Hi Mish,
In the UK we have an app at http://www.farmdrop.com
As the name implies, using your smartphone app one places an order for the farm products required and it arrives at your doorstep within 19 hours.
It cuts out the ‘hoarding and extractive middlemen’, connecting consumers with local farmers, solving a key food supply-chain problem.
It’s difficult times like these the greatest innovations occur.
Keep Smiling.
With all the anti-gun laws, people won’t be able to hunt for food. My grandfather was a cattle rancher in the Ozarks. His neighbors were dirt poor. Instead of begging for some of his cattle, they asked if they could hunt deer. My grandfather told them, “Go ahead, but don’t shoot any of my cattle”. He never asked anything in return for the deer.
The supply of animals would last a couple of months at best. Then we would strip the earth bare.
Seeing a bird would be rare if famine ever took hold. It would be terrible.
Yes – I’m sure that it would suck. And no, it isn’t a long-term solution. Especially for those of you who have never had to hunt for your food in any place other than a supermarket or butcher shop.
However, I wasn’t addressing the long-term viability of hunting for one’s own food and survival.
I was addressing the statement that “most animals are either endangered or extinct” which is demonstrably false.
But nice job moving the goalposts.
Got you now. There are lots of deer in my neck of the woods also.
That whole endangered thing is 100% a person that doesn’t dodge deer every year when deer season cranks up.
Around the time of your grandfather, the US has a population of about 120 million, a very sparsely populated land: a land of opportunities. Most lived within their means, i.e. very friendly to the environment. Judging by the pictures, they were frugal with their food, too. Compare that with today.
This is a very anecdotal thing. Let us see … how many people and for how long do you think all those deer around your grandfather’s place would feed? I’m guessing, not too many people and not for very long. Highly fanciful to think that the USA of today can simply switch back to USA of early 1900s (or maybe mid 1800s) and start hunting and foraging for food! Its not the guns that is the problem (but since arguing about owning guns are all the rage in the US, it becomes the lightning rod for all such problems). Coming to the main problem, it is how to ship food (even if it is hunted game) to where the demand is. In that example, demand (poor neighbors) and supply (local deer) were in the same place. That does not scale too well when you take the entire nation as the example.
by the end of the Depression , it is said the forests were eerily quiet from the lack of animals, because they were all hunted and eaten
Americans don’t want tomatoes, squash and onions – they want twinkies, doritos and frosted flakes
And 60+% of the population are obese. Not just overweight, but obese. Unbelievable, but true.
Wheelchair obese where I live, and some are in their twenties/thirties.
That made me laugh. True.
LOL – You asked a question, my answer?
Crony capitalism – My understanding is that the potato famine had nothing to do with potatoe shortages and everything to do with hording and making money.
I have the food, pay up or starve. LOL!
the potato famine was the Irish Holodomor, a forced starvation exactly as the Russians did to the Ukranians. The Brits went to Ireland and confiscated food, stock, seed and other supplies, took them to the ports under guard and sailed away
Commodity/farm prices dropped to the point in the great deprssion that farmeers burned their crops and plowed them into the ground rather than sell them because they lost money on every sale. Worse they slaughtered animal stock and buried them in vast trenches, even as so many had no money to buy food with and were begging for food (under the republican administration of Hoover).
In the mid-term elections of 1930 (first year into the Depression) the dems took over congress and would not let Hoover do anything. Then they got FDR and supported many of what were Hoover’s programs.
Here is how we can assure things will be exactly the same – partisanship is exactly the same.
Someone must be blamed and it’s always the other side.
Interestingly enough the rich never seem to starve.
those slaughters will shortly be underway now that the packing houses have closed
Yes, they cannot go on feeding the animals without hope of sales and profit.
I live in a semi-rural area of West-Central FL. Our local farmers markets and butchers have plenty of stock on hand. It is people in cities and densely populated suburbs who are experiencing the shortages. There is going to be a HUGE exodus from those places (most of which have sky-high property taxes, to boot) when the dust settles on this fiasco.
Where Bam_Man? I live in west central FL (near Homosassa/Crystal River) also and would do anything not to be raped by Publix and Winn-Dixie everytime I shop. Having just moved from Oregon (closed on my house on the 6th) food here is astronomical compared to the PacNW, and Walmart is like shopping in the Soviet Union. What kills me are the lack of good bread (at under $6 per loaf anywway) eggs at $2.70???? That is almost three times what I paid in Oregon. Half and Half is double here. Ice cream also double. Oh well, I can do without it. But meat is crazy here. So few national brands for things like frozen burritos, breakfast sausages, fruit juice is very spotty, and good beer? Forget it.
Small world! I live in Lecanto at Black Diamond Ranch – probably very close to you. I used to live in Sugarmill Woods and still own two rental properties there. My wife and her mother shop for eggs/produce at Hernando Fresh Market which is on Route 41 just outside of Inverness. Also for meat, she goes to Angus Wholesale Meats in Dunellen. There are others around here also. Good luck to you and stay well, Herkie!
Yes, I looked at houses in Black Diamond and it is a great place, but the $192 per month HOA was just more than I was willing to pay. I live in Sugarmill Woods and the HOA is 8 bucks. Thanks for the tip, I have to go to Ocala BMW for a service appointment tomorrow so I will stop in and see if I can score some decent sausage and steaks.
can I come down and swim with the Manatees?
Sure, Mish! If you’re ever in this area, please let us know.
Be careful gentlemen. I have been around since the days of Fedwatcher and thirdston and js kit. Mish has honored me twice by replying an email to items I have sent. I come here first to read Mish and second to read Bam_Man. I remember mish visiting another excellent Commentor years ago and that did not turn out well. I want to read both of you for a long time to come. So I have now registered to comment just to let you know.
Mish,
You can also see lots of manatees during the winter at Blue Springs State Park about an hour north of Orlando. Last time I visited there were quite a few swimming slowly in Blue Spring.
Of course you can Mish. There are mantee tours and glass bottom boat tours at manitee populated springs all over. Up near Tallahassee is one of the best in Wakulla County at Wakulla Springs state park. It is said to be the largest freshwater spring in the world. Mammoths and mastedons used to go there to drink and they would sometimes fall in and drown, you can still see their bones down there.
I’ve got a solution for your bread problem: buy a Dutch/French oven and bake it yourself. I haven’t been buying bread for years. The same for brownies, cookies, and so on.
I actually bought a sack of whole wheat flour and a huge bag of yeast just to start making my own because $6 per loaf for decent bread is just robbery. There are not more than 30 cents worth of ingredients in that loaf, and I know bakers need to make a profit as well, but damn, I am not buying private jets for bakers.
I’m 15 minutes south of downtown Orlando. Our 2 Publix’s have mostly been good on food with an occasional shortage of meet, eggs, milk. 10 minutes further south is an air conditioned produce mart that has been business as usual this whole time with no shortages. No meet there though. It’s interesting to watch the rotation of what the mass hoarders want each week.
View the manatees in manatee county! And shop at Detwilers Farm Market !https://www.detwilermarket.com/
The real problem here is supply lines. Farmers who sell to the restaurant industry do not have a direct supply line to the grocery stores, so their perishable goods go bad before they can find new customers and mechanisms to get their goods to market.