Strange little bottlenecks popping up all over.
From AgFunder, April 16:
Editor’s Note: Jeff Caldwell is content marketing manager at Lessing-Flynn, a marketing and advertising agency based in Des Moines, US. Previously, he was editor of Successful Farming and the High Plains Journal. The views expressed in this article are personal.
“Normal” life as we know it has been severely disrupted as the novel coronavirus Covid-19 sweeps across the planet. Families are taking precautions like sheltering-in-place and quarantining to slow the spread of the virus and enable health care workers to provide treatment for the infected. To varying degrees, this is impacting the workforce of every industry on the planet.Agriculture has not been immune to the sweeping societal changes of the last two months as everyone prepares for and adjusts to the virus. While the wide-open spaces in agricultural areas were seen early on as a potentially limiting factor for the virus’ spread, concerns sprouted about the sustainability of the ag supply chain amid limits placed on person-to-person contact from the farm gate to the grocery shelf, especially with the news that clusters of cases have been discovered in less-populated areas. And, while protections from restrictive government measures due to its “essential” status have enabled many in the industry to continue working, temporary panic-shopping among consumers, the closure of foodservice venues such as restaurants, and temporary disruptions in food processing and distribution have led to unprecedented pressures on the entire food and agriculture system.In many ways, it’s not the food supply chain itself but the logistics of distribution that has been most adversely affected in the food and ag sector working through the pandemic, according to Clay Detlefsen, senior vice president of regulatory and environmental affairs for the National Milk Producers Federation and the private-sector chair of the US Department of Homeland Security Food and Agricultural Sector Coordinating Council.“The whole system’s been turned on its head a little bit, but we have plenty of food here. Folks are concerned that if they start running out of personal protective equipment (PPE) and sanitation supplies on hand, we would ultimately be forced into shutting down some food processing plants because if you can’t supply protective equipment to workers need, you have to shut down,” Detlefsen said, adding PPE will be a fact of life in the food processing sector for the foreseeable future. “It hasn’t happened much yet, but we are still concerned about it and don’t see the light at the end of the tunnel until June or July.”
Consumer behavior dynamics“We saw hoarding behavior across the country. Some of it was temporary while some will persist longer, especially for some types of products. We are seeing bigger problems in large urban centers than in smaller urban and rural areas, but it has affected everybody,” says University of Illinois Agricultural Economist Nick Paulson. “That type of hoarding and buying behavior is a self-fulfilling problem. We ask that people resist being part of that problem.”Tracing the supply chain backward from the consumer level, the virus has caused definite disruptions in some sectors. The general trend of production will continue, but as Covid-19 pressures things like interpersonal contact, operational changes will disrupt not just what reaches the consumer, but how that happens. Analysts expect some disruptions to the supply chain, but quick action and vigilance will generally sustain the overall food supply despite those disruptions.“The first major concern is keeping supply chains functioning, primarily relating to meat, egg and dairy. We have to keep them moving. Whenever we’re dealing with biological units — hogs, cattle, dairy — we have to keep them fed and keep supplies moving to those animals. Anything that impedes that isn’t a good thing. In agriculture, as we move toward more draconian measures to control the virus, we can expect systems to be strained,” adds University of Illinois Agricultural Economist Gary Schnitkey. “Our first concerns are around workers, transportation, keeping those systems running. How will we respond when processing plants have infected workers? Given we’re looking at slowing spread rather than stopping…how we deal with [infections among processing plant workers] will be a concern and we will see some spiky erratic prices at supply points as people make changes.”April & May critical for future meat supplyScott Foote works at the junction of these components of the supply chain every day. As manager of Hoxie Feedyard in Hoxie, Kansas, Foote works in both the feed sector to support the 100,000-plus cattle in his lot and the processing side to supply fed animals to regional processors from one of four feeding facilities his family owns and manages in western Kansas. So, he works at the convergence of logistical factors that many say represent potential painpoints in the supply chain if the Covid-19 situation continues to exert pressure on society for an extended period of time....
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