Covid-19 impacting agriculture, setting up meat protein shortage

The COVID-19 pandemic is impacting a wide range of economies and agriculture is among them. Due to prolong closure of restaurants and schools, dairy farmers have been dumping millions of gallons of milk into ditches and fields due to reduced consumption and disruptions caused by the virus. In Florida, farmers are plowing up or leaving vegetables in the field because of a lack of market and lack of laborers to harvest crops.

In the meat sector, big meat-processing companies have temporarily closed or reduced production at plants in Pennsylvania, Colorado, and Iowa. Smithfield Foods announced on April 12 it would close a processing plant indefinitely in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, that produces more than five percent of the nation’s pork. More than 300 processing plant workers tested positive for the virus. This places the nation’s meat supply “perilously close” to a shortage, in the words of one company executive. The bigger questions are how long the pandemic will affect our economy and thus our food supply.