Posted on 04/16/2020 8:46:33 AM PDT by blam
As the coronavirus continues to infect more and more people, food supply chains have started to become more strained in recent days. It was announced yesterday; the world’s biggest pork producer is closing a primary U.S plant indefinitely after a coronavirus outbreak amongst employees.
Smithfield Foods Inc. will halt its pork-processing facility in South Dakota, which accounts for 4% to 5% of U.S pork production. The company also warned that closures across the country are taking American meat supplies “perilously close to the edge” of shortfalls. This is just one of the latest examples of the coronavirus beginning to disrupt food chains at a more significant scale rapidly.
We anticipated this, as we reported on April 1 that food supply chains were in the early stages of being strained. Many countries were preparing many weeks ago by cutting back on exports to begin stockpiling. Surprisingly, dairy farmers in the United States are starting to dump milk because there was no place for them to go as the marketplace for dairy products has been affected by the closures of restaurants, schools, hotels, and food service businesses.
One would begin to believe history might not be repeating itself, but it is undoubtedly starting to rhyme. During the great depression of the 1930s, the hardest-hit industry was farming. Farm incomes dropped by nearly two-thirds at the beginning of the 1930s. Dairy farmers dumped countless gallons of milk into the street instead of accepting a penny a quart.
During World War 1, farmers had produced record crops and livestock to keep everyone fed. However, when prices started to fell, they tried to harvest even more to pay their debts and living expenses. In the early 30s, prices dropped so low that many farmers went bankrupt and lost their farms.
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(Excerpt) Read more at goldtelegraph.com ...
I went to Costco Tuesday and there was no milk in the store. Everything else was plentiful.
An old statement I read in a history book once:
No nation in the history of the world was ever more than three meals away from widespread food riots.
When government welfare food cards went dead due to a national computer system failure, hundreds of recipients swarmed places in anger.
More fear from the fake news media
I suggest people look at different warehouse stores, not just Costco, for larger pieces of meat that they can cut up and wrap.....
it won't hurt a thing if you have extra pasta or rice sealed away, or salt/sugar etc....it will get used....
Yep, our freezer is now full. My wife thinks in an idiot. Saran Wrap and Ziploc bags are your friends.
And what did Agriculture Secretary Purdue say yesterday?
If auto manufacturers can re-purpose the factory to make ventilators,
then the processing plants can be modified to handle smaller packaging, suitable for home uses and not restaurant/commercial.
Restaurants can be allowed to repackage and sell food.
No more dumping milk or throwing away harvests.
When America sets its mind to it, it can be done.
Be this century’s Greatest Generation!!!
That’s what happens when most packaging still comes from Communist China
“”More fear from the fake news media””
I think common sense says it’s inevitable...why chalk it up to fear mongering?
I was very lucky that I thought of getting a deep freezer back in early February, good luck trying to get one now.
Look for these type of bull sh*t stories to ramp up now that the reopening of our economy is eminent!
The Fake News and Dems were hoping they could protract this out until November! Oops!
That excuse Purdue gave if true is likely based on more regulatory B.S.
Packages to be sold to the consumer have to be labeled in a certain way. Institutional packages do not have to have the same labeling. Sounds like something Trump can fix with a waiver.
Food shortage in USA? Might help cure the situation of most obese population in the world.
The supply chain/flow is seriously disrupted from the commercial to residential consumption shift.
Farmers sure as hell aren’t dumping millions of gallons of milk or turning over crops for fun.
Thread on this article some days ago:
https://theconservativetreehouse.com/2020/04/14/phase-five-supply-chain-with-a-message-from-a-dairy-farmer/#more-189128
It is certainly a possibility that should not be dismissed.
Probable? Who knows?
IMHO this is ChiCom disinfo.
Scare as many workers away from their jobs as possible to collapse supply chains.
Trump needs to get a lot more aggressive in combating it.
Milk is a particular problem as it has a short shelf life and there is limited capacity to store it.
Every school in America suddenly canceling their milk orders had to have an effect someplace.
Statement from CEO of Smithfield:
“The closure of this [Sioux Falls, SD] facility, combined with a growing list of other protein plants that have shuttered across our industry, is pushing our country perilously close to the edge in terms of our meat supply. It is impossible to keep our grocery stores stocked if our plants are not running. These facility closures will also have severe, perhaps disastrous, repercussions for many in the supply chain, first and foremost our nation’s livestock farmers. These farmers have nowhere to send their animals,” said Kenneth M. Sullivan, president and chief executive officer, for Smithfield.
“Unfortunately, COVID-19 cases are now ubiquitous across our country. The virus is afflicting communities everywhere. The agriculture and food sectors have not been immune. Numerous plants across the country have COVID-19 positive employees. We have continued to run our facilities for one reason: to sustain our nation’s food supply during this pandemic. We believe it is our obligation to help feed the country, now more than ever. We have a stark choice as a nation: we are either going to produce food or not, even in the face of COVID-19,” he concluded.
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