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Food growers/suppliers destroying their food because restaurants, schools etc. closing... but are people eating less?
We're hearing more and more reports about how dairy farmers are pouring milk down the drain, hog farmers are slaughtering/burying their herds because their normal buyer are closing etc. They point out that the usual restaurants, school districts etc. are closing and not buying their food any more.
But are people actually eating less?
No. The need for food hasn't changed. They're just eating at home instead of in restaurants, or their kids getting lunch at schools etc.
Could we be looking at a sudden lack of food in the next few months (or longer) due to producers not producing?
And/or, could it be a result of the huge nationwide hoarding we've seen in the last few months? Now people eating just as much, but are using the food they have in the freezer or on the shelves, instead of going out and buying more every few days? Maybe most of the people with basements full of food, after buying hugely a month or two ago, now are buying very little this month and the next?
The problem is that we still need that food -- but those supply chains aren't set up to get it and there doesn't seem to be a will with those farmers to find out how to change their systems.
The dairy farmers dumping milk are the ones who make the pats of butter for restaurants. They didn't bother to see how they could change what they do to avoid doing that.
There is nothing to indicate people are eating more or less. People are eating differently.
All the breakouts of COVID-19 in the beef/pork production plants will see us having a decline and a price increase.
For milk, I believe it is a packaging/processing issue. The processing facilities are configured to produce a certain amount of large containers (for institutional cafeterias) and tiny cartons for schools. Neither of which are in much demand right now, but neither of those can be instantly converted to bottle gallon and half-gallon jugs instead. I assume they are looking at whether the production lines can be retrofitted at a reasonable cost to meet the shift in demand.
My understanding is that many farmers sell their produce to distributors. Some distributors package and sell those products to grocery stores (in this case, those farmers are getting their products to market). But other distributors package for larger institutions and restaurants (these products aren't getting to that market because it's shut down for the most part). The packaging is different.
The later packages 100 egg containers, milk in huge 15 gallon bags, etc. Stores are not set up to sell that kind of thing and would most people be willing to buy those things? By the time you retool the packaging for the consumer market, this whole thing might be over and then you'd have a glut of consumer goods and none for restaurants and schools. Would it be worth the expense of retooling all those processing facilities?
So to sell their goods, the farmers would need to find new distributors willing to take/buy their product to clean, process, and package the goods for a different market. But that begs the question, are these farmers under contract to supply to only one company? Can they break that contract? And are other distributors willing to take the goods? Or are those consumer store distributors working at capacity and have no room to take on more product?
All this would also take time to do. And as we all know, fresh food spoils. So until something is set up and in place (assuming anyone is really working towards that), the food would go bad. So what can a farmer do but dump food in the meantime.
It's a lot more complicated than the average consumer knows. It's not like we are talking about little mom and pop truck farms and dairies that sell to farmers markets. And I admit, I am no expert. I am only parroting what I've read and learned recently.
I've been going into grocery stores a few times per week over the past several weeks and notice more then ever that almost every single person in there, except for a very small number, have a shopping cart plum-full all the way up to the very top full of groceries. The express line has no one in it when I go through to pay for my half dozen or so items. So people seem to be buying more for sure. Now if they are eating all of that food before it expires is anyone's guess.
Sooner or later that stockpiled food is going to run out. Farmers now killing off livestock, plowing crops under, and dumping milk down the drain. Now Trump cuts immigrations and just where will the farm labor come from? Don't tell me Americans are going to do manual farm work. I seen this before where the locals complained about immigrants working the farms while they were out of work. The state stopped farms from using immigrant labor and farmers were forced to hired American workers. Most didn't last to lunch time on the first day. Other went home and never came back. Farmers took a major loss as crops rotten in the fields.
Look for empty shelves at your store and it will only get worse. The main reason...failed leadership.
Under Trump the US is a ship without a rudder.
What a nauseating waste. Why wouldn't they at least donate it somewhere? I don't understand people sometimes.
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