Mid-term Concerns: Food Supply

[rcjordan]

Already Reeling from Flooding and Heat Waves, Farmers Struggle as Coronavirus Pandemic Takes Hold | The Weather Channel
https://weather.com/health/coronavirus/news/2020-04-01-farms-struggle-amid-coronavirus-pandemic

[rcjordan]

How coronavirus threatens the seasonal farmworkers at the heart of the American food supply

https://theconversation.com/how-coronavirus-threatens-the-seasonal-farmworkers-at-the-heart-of-the-american-food-supply-135252

[ergophobe]

Yeah... just convinced a friend to stock up based on this.

As per your other link, grocery sales are decreasing (though you still can't get eggs, rice, flour, pasta etc.) and so I think we'll have a time when things will be more available than they are now, but then the supply chain might get hit by closed borders and so forth. Thinking forward to that, I broke isolation yesterday and went to the grocery store and spent $500 even though I could have stayed away for another few weeks.

Also am willing to spend 2X for things like flour and oatmeal if I can find them. I did notice that in general, if you want to spend a fortune on gluten-free organic products, the shelves are still mostly full! I have my limits though. I won't pay more for rolled oats than I would pay for a fine cheese (saw some at $19/pound).

I heard an interview with a farmer a couple years ago who said (roughly from memory): "Don't kid yourselves. You have a choice. Your food will be picked in the US by a Mexican or in Mexico by a Mexican. Those are your two choices. As it becomes harder for us to bring in immigrant labor, we're buying up land in Mexico and moving our farming operations there."

So even if you can bring in the labor, "high-touch" crops just aren't grown in the US much anymore.

Some people are saying it will be like when we were kids and things will only be available in season. But it won't be. I grew up with all kinds of fruit and vegetable farmers in Vermont where we would have these ridiculously short seasons for things like strawberries and asparagus.

Now, lots of those fields are growing houses and Home Depots, which are very hard to eat without lots of condiment.

[rcjordan]

You'd better learn to like soybeans, corn, wheat, potatoes, & peanuts.  I think our farms around here can process those without much field labor.  But cabbage, for instance, takes field workers 3 times over the course of producing a single crop.  I'm not familiar with local berries or other produce like asparagus, but I did hear some farms gave them up in the past (asparagus, in particular) because they were a PITA labor-wise.

[Brad]

>high-touch

The truck farms around our major metro areas are largely gone.  There are houses built where those fields were or the remaining fields have switched to grain.

[rcjordan]

Egg farms require a boatload of cheap labor, though it's not field labor.  And we've already seen the effects of ICE on the meat processing industry.

[ergophobe]

wheat, potatoes, & peanuts.  I think our farms around here can process those without much field labor.

Perhaps, but those are among the hardest things to find at a grocery store currently. They had potatoes some yesterday because they limit people to one bag per customer.  At least in the short term, flour, potatoes and peanut butter are challenging to find.

Oh and yeast is hard to find. If you don't have your own starter, it's hard to make your own bread currently.

[Mackin USA]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victory_garden

[Brad]

I'm buying up instant mashed potato flakes.

[rcjordan]

>Victory Garden

We've tried gardening, Mackin. We suck at it.  A couple of bird-pecked tomatoes ain't gonna cut it.

^elsewhere> "Everything that seems excessive today won't seem like enough tomorrow."

This is what drives me now.  So what if I end up with a couple of cases of canned corn?  I'll donate it to the Food Bank ...or whatever organization is left standing.

[rcjordan]

"Even the honeybees normally imported from other countries to pollinate Canadian crops could become harder to source"

CAN: Food security experts warn of supply shortages, higher prices due to global pandemic
https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/food-security-covid19-trudeau-1.5520492

[littleman]

https://www.reddit.com/r/supplychain/comments/fu5wux/covid19_updates_friday_3rd_april/

Covid-19 is about to reach US farms in a major test for food supply chains - Quartz reports that one of the largest farmworker unions in the US says early polling of farm laborers suggests operators of some of the nation's largest fresh produce farms aren't taking steps to protect fieldworkers from the spread of Covid-19. That's worrying news for a food supply chain that experts, so far, have described as robust and resilient in the face of the disease caused by the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2. The nature of how the coronavirus spreads—from person to person, through droplets from coughs or sneezes, and transferred on surfaces—means that outbreaks have concentrated first in densely-populated urban and suburban zones. But it will reach rural farming areas on a delay (a pdf is available), according to data collected (and visualized over time which is quite eye catching) by the University of Iowa's Rural Policy Research Institute.

Also:

Argentina beef shipments to EU, China stall amid virus - Shipments of beef from Argentina's famed cattle ranches to the European Union have plunged to almost zero amid the global coronavirus outbreak, while sales to top buyer China have tumbled from last year's levels, industry officials told Reuters. The slump in exports underscores how the pandemic is affecting global food supply chains, with demand dented by widespread closures of restaurants and transportation of goods stymied by measures to control the virus' spread.

[Mackin USA]

>Victory Garden

RC: we suck at it also BUT our next door neighbor is excellent and we have a DEAL :-)

[rcjordan]

"In Florida, a lack of Mexican migrant laborers means watermelon and blueberry growers face the prospect of rotting crops. Similar shortages of workers in Europe mean vegetable farms are missing the window to plant."

Coronavirus Upends Global Food Supply Chains in Latest Economic Shock
https://www.usnews.com/news/world/articles/2020-04-03/coronavirus-upends-global-food-supply-chains-in-latest-economic-shock

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Farmers Dump Milk in Latest Blow to Battered U.S. Dairy - Bloomberg
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-04-02/farmers-are-dumping-milk-in-latest-blow-to-battered-u-s-dairy

[ergophobe]

Read an interesting article (sorry, don't have the link handy) on the toilet paper problem. It's not just hoarding and the problem is not going to go away soon.

The basic problem is they can ramp up production and distribution 20%, but demand is up 40%. This is because the commercial and the residential markets are completely separate. Different products. Different supply chains. Different contracts. Different packaging. Getting commercial TP into grocery stores is not a fast process.

Meanwhile, because lots of us used to crap at work, at restaurants, at gas stations and so forth and use commercial paper, but we're all doing it at home now, demand is way up for the home-grade stuff. And in this case, commercial-grade does not indicate a better product ;-)