Coronavirus in rural America (Part XVII): Who is going to feed us?

A great deal of news coverage about food and how it reaches consumers is on offer during this coronavirus pandemic. 

The first story I want to highlight is this one, by Frank Martin for NPR, suggesting that the supply chain may be "loosening."  The idea is that because folks are stocking up on on food and other necessities, they won't continue to need truckers--at least not for several months--once their need is met.  Here's a key excerpt:

But David Ross, a logistics analyst at Stifel Financial Corp., said that after weeks of consumers stuffing so many groceries into pantries and freezers, the logistics industry might soon have to slam on the brakes. 

Ross comments:

At some point, folks will have all of the ground beef they need until July, all of the toilet paper they will need until November.  And over the coming weeks, the demand for that should drop off significantly.

Martin's story continues:

Then, truckers who have been busting their humps for weeks trying to fill orders could see demand evaporate.

Ross and others predicted a rough year for the trucking and railroad industries this year even before the coronavirus upended the world. Now their prognosis is worse. 

On Monday, Beaver Express Services, an Oklahoma-based trucking firm that had survived 77 years in the logistics business, called it quits. Its owner, Mike Stone, said the coronavirus helped whip up a "perfect storm" that crushed the company. Ross expects more stories like this in the deep recession that the pandemic is expected to trigger. 

"Any time consumer confidence is cracked and people stop buying stuff, you're not going to be moving a lot of goods," Ross said.

That story, now a few weeks old, is not exclusively about food, but it is about one of the ways that food (along with other goods) reaches consumers. 

The second--and equally sobering story--is this NPR report about the Trump administration trying to suppress wages for farm laborers.  An excerpt from the report by Franco Ordonez follows:

New White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows is working with Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue to see how to reduce wage rates for foreign guest workers on American farms, in order to help U.S. farmers struggling during the coronavirus, according to U.S. officials and sources familiar with the plans. 

Opponents of the plan argue it will hurt vulnerable workers and depress domestic wages.
The measure is the latest effort being pushed by the U.S. Department of Agriculture to help U.S farmers who say they are struggling amid disruptions in the agricultural supply chain compounded by the outbreak; the industry was already hurting because of President Trump's tariff war with China. 

"The administration is considering all policy options during this unprecedented crisis to ensure our great farmers are protected, and President Trump has done and will do everything he can to support their vital mission," a White House official told NPR. 

The nation's roughly 2.5 million agricultural laborers have been officially declared "essential workers" as the administration seeks to ensure that Americans have food to eat and that U.S. grocery stores remain stocked. Workers on the H-2A seasonal guest-worker program are about 10% of all farmworkers.

The third story I'll highlight is only moderately more uplifting.  It is by Kim Severson of the New York Times about how organic and artisanal farmers are finding ways forward as their typical customers--restaurants and patrons of farmers markets--are lost to them.  Here's an excerpt focusing on California, though the story touches on small-scale farmers in New York and Kentucky, too. 

In the spirit of the sustainable food movement’s roots, some farmers have decided to go hyperlocal. Randy Stannard runs Root 64 Farm with his partner, Sarah McCamman, on an acre of land in Sacramento. They were planning to sell their early crop of radishes and arugula to local restaurants and at a farmers’ market. The virus put an end to that. 

Instead, last Saturday they opened a little drive-through farm stand in front of their house, and are raising money with others in their community to provide 20 boxes of produce a week through December to needy families whose children attended their neighborhood elementary school. 

“We could sell everything to people who are well-off and would drive miles to come here,” he said. “But we want to make sure we get really good, high-quality food to people who need it the most and live nearby.”

A contrast to that story is this Wall Street Journal story from April 9 about farmers dumping milk and eggs that they can no longer sell to restaurant patrons.

And to that WSJ story from April 9, the New York Times responded with this on April 11, by David Yaffe-Bellany and Michael Corkery, for which part of the very depressing headline is "Food Waste in the Pandemic":

After weeks of concern about shortages in grocery stores and mad scrambles to find the last box of pasta or toilet paper roll, many of the nation’s largest farms are struggling with another ghastly effect of the pandemic. They are being forced to destroy tens of millions of pounds of fresh food that they can no longer sell. 

The closing of restaurants, hotels and schools has left some farmers with no buyers for more than half their crops. And even as retailers see spikes in food sales to Americans who are now eating nearly every meal at home, the increases are not enough to absorb all of the perishable food that was planted weeks ago and intended for schools and businesses. 

The amount of waste is staggering. The nation’s largest dairy cooperative, Dairy Farmers of America, estimates that farmers are dumping as many as 3.7 million gallons of milk each day. A single chicken processor is smashing 750,000 unhatched eggs every week.

The Minnesota Star-Tribune's story on the phenomenon is somewhat more optimistic, reporting that Minnesota dairy farmers are not (yet) dumping milk.

At the other end of the food supply chain are grocery stores, and reports are starting to emerge, including stories here and here, about their employees dying from COVID19.

The last story I'll highlight in this post is about the Trump administration backing off new,  tougher eligibility rules for SNAP (formerly food stamps), in light of the severe economic downturn.  That's a relief.  One could debate the wisdom of work requirements in the best of times (as I have done here), but there's surely no doubt that work requirements make no sense when the unemployment rate is as high as it suddenly is.