Start shipping to sell direct retailers like Omaha steaks and others, they are popping up like crazy. Restaurants won’t be the same for 2 years or more.
Fox News showed it on the news, I could not believe my eyes. Personally I think it is outrageous what these farmers are doing.
Note: this strategy does not involve government. Just ignore government.
Restaurants need to put tables outside spread at least 30 feet apart.
Landlords and governments need to allow this.
Good article!
American producers, distributors, and retailers have had months to redirect their products to eager buyers. Are they all lazy dullards with zero drive to get business? Or is government preventing them from adjusting?
Sell partially processed hogs to restaurants.
Let former restaurant cooks chop the carcesses apart. Get your fresh pork here!
Don’t forget to thank and vote for your local communist democrat as well... /s
Your chance to buy restaurant grade food at our grocery store will only be available for a few months.
The market structure is causing this disruption / effect. The markets are not structured for local delivery. In order to accommodate a shift from commercial (restaurant) chains to retail (grocery) chains requires a distribution network flexible enough at the local level to shift delivery.
This would also require changes to how food production is contracted. There is a current desire to contract production directly with farmers. This enables the commercial side to better plan with less disruption in their supply and avoid product shortages in regional areas. But it then takes that capacity out of being used for the retail chain.
I think I can take a few more pounds of butter. It is interesting that the price (of butter, for example), is not changed from a couple months ago.
I appreciate this article. Understanding the connections helps me to put my piece of the picture into context. In America we have long been accustomed to having an amazing selection of foods in the market. Apart from TP, I haven’t seen our all of local markets completely devoid of any critical item at the same time in these past months. Either I’ve found it in another market or made a reasonable substitution. It really is amazing how much the food supply chain has managed to flex and deliver food under the circumstances. I would like to see our states get things rolling to help these farmers (and their livestock) survive.
“and in 2010, eating-out spending surpassed at-home for the first time. At the opening of 2020, Rieley estimates, only “40 percent of what farmers produced may have gone into retail.”
I find that incomprehensible.
So bizarre I can’t even imagine it.
When plotted on a graph I’m sure it tracks directly with the rise in obesity.
Who can afford to eat out that often?
Perhaps this reflects 7-11 hot dogs and McDonalds and Pizza Hut.
Disclosure: I prepare 95% of my meals at home from fresh ingredients.
The sad thing is, that if you forced every single state and federal legislator to read this entire piece, it wouldn’t do a lick of good. They are all stupid people who think they are smarter than everyone else. The first thing they would do is think they could simply legislate a total restructuring of the market. That’s assuming they even give a damn whether we eat or not. And that could be an unwarranted assumption.
The democrats’ goal: make USA like Venezuela.
Along with the obvious need to bring critical manufacturing home from China and, in some cases, from elsewhere. There are additional needs, such as to make sure critical industries aren’t foreign owned, such as with Smithfield, and also that critical industries aren’t over concentrated or over-verticalized.
All these are good for price competitiveness and consumers in regular times, but for any kind of crisis, limits of concentration, such as with the big meat-processing plants, and how even domestic Big Food (e.g., Perdue) make massively indebted serfs of farmers, make our food supply, for example, more vulnerable.
Multiple, smaller suppliers at all levels are good not just for competition and American small business opportunities, but for resilience and national security.
I didn’t read the article (too long), but that will not prevent me from commenting.
EVERYTHING affects EVERYTHING ELSE!
You can’t just throw a monkey wrench (as a plumber I always objected to that term. It’s a “pipe wrench” and I’m not a “monkey”) I digress.
You can’t just throw a giant monkey wrench (societal lockdown) into the mix and think that everything else will just continue as before.
“Unexpected consequences” to the MAX! The reason that “Unexpected consequences” can’t be managed because EVERYTHING affects EVERYTHING ELSE!
As soon as you initiate a solution to a problem, you CREATE several MORE. It becomes EXPONENTIAL!
I read somewhere how people will work it out on there own. They made the point that in Grand Central Station hundreds/thousands of people maneuver the lobby without any help from anyone, without chaos. Different directions, ALL directions, yet everyone finds there own way.
Can you imagine ARROWS on the floor to follow?