How Is Our Food Supply Chain Changing?

Farmers are concerned about possible shortages of farm labor because of hold ups and workers visas, which could mean blueberries

and other crops could rot in the fields. Even with all of this grim news, the U. S Department of Agriculture says that there is no nationwide shortage of food due to the novel coronavirus, but these still escalating crisis clearly has put stress on the supply chain that normally enables food stuffs to get from farm fields to americans dinner tables, and to do it so efficiently that many of us probably barely even think about where our usual

bountiful supply of fresh fruit, vegetables, meats, and countless varieties of pasta. Even comes from the risk of COVID nineteen has forced food processing plants to utilize precautions that have slowed production lines and reduced the variety of products in

the interest of efficiency. Additionally, as shutdown orders deter Americans from dining out, the surge in demand for food that can be prepared at home and the difficulty of making it available to consumers while maintaining social distancing has compelled grocery stores to revamp their ways of doing business on the fly. Even after the pandemic eventually passes into memory, the changes and innovations that resulted from it may permanently

alter the way that Americans get their food. One of the biggest challenges has been that the pandemic forced a sudden drastic change in where and what Americans eat. We spoke with Doug Baker, the vice president of industry relations for f m I that's Food Marketplace in core Paraded, an association that represents the interests of food producers and

retailers across the supply chain and to the government. For every dollar that Americans spend on food, fifty four cents of that dollar goes to eating in restaurants or buying take out meals, but starting in mid March, as states began imposing lockdown and stay at home orders, all of that abruptly changed, with schools and businesses closing down in rapid succession. Americans of all ages soon we're eating all of their meals at home and needing more and more groceries.

Baker said it was almost a perfect storm. The sudden change created massive problems for farmers and food producers, who were used to growing and packaging a lot of their output in industrial sized quantities for restaurants and school cafeteria kitchens.

As a New York Times article describes, without restaurants frying onion rings of food that people seldom make it home, there suddenly was no market for fifty pound sacks of onions those are about twenty two kilos did for the vast quantities of milk that go into Latte's and other drinks of coffee shops. That left farmers with little choice

but to dump or bury their output. At the same time, paradoxically, ordinary consumers were clamoring for different foods and other products that they were afraid they might not be able to get in the future. Baker said early on it was home cleaning products, household care, personal health. Then as we came into the major spike and people were asked to be able to shelter in place, the concern became being

able to access food. Initially, people cleared the shelves of perishable products such as milk, eggs, and bread, and gradually, as fears of quarantines rose, they began grabbing up canned and frozen vegetables, pasta, ramen, noodles, and other stuff that

would last longer in a crisis. A poll conducted in mid March on behalf of the online loan marketplace lending Tree found that sixty three percent of Americans had purchased supplies related to the coronavirus outbreak, such as food, cleaning products and medication, with the average consumer spending a hundred

and seventy eight dollars and forty four cents. This unprecedented surgeon demand peaked during the third week in March, with the nation's grocery retailers seeing sales go up by thirty Baker said it was sort of like having Easter every day. After that, demand eased off a bit, with people following government orders to stay at home or else not feeling comfortable going out and possibly risking infection, or else already

having a stockpile of supplies. But by then the shift in consumption already had rocked the nation's food supply chain, in which products passed through a variety of stages before they reach the people who eat them. A food that's grown on farms goes to processing plants, where it's made into products and packaged. Then it's shipped to warehouses, which in turn deliver it to grocery stores, where it's picked off the shelves and tossed into shopping carts by the

eventual users. Usually, in normal times, the different parts of the supply chain to maintain several months worth of safety stocks so that they can cope with fluctuations in supply and demand. But according to Baker, when the pandemic crisis hit, those backup supplies throughout the system were used up in just ten days, and replenishing those supplies of food has

been tougher because of the novel coronavirus. So far, only a few facilities actually have had to suspend operations due to COVID nineteen cases among the workforce, but staying open has necessitated changes in practices that can slow down and limit output. We talked about this via email with Gregory P. Martin, a poultry Extension educator for Penn State Extension. He explained these precautions are necessary to help protect workers who may work in close proximity to each other on production or

processing lines. Hand sanitizing and dawning outerwear are normal practices and food processing plants, so additional personal protection equipment would be another layer of protection for the worker. Also spoke with Martin buck Naviche, a senior food Safety Extension associate in the Food Science Department at Penn State University whose name I hope I said correctly. He told us it has been an adjustment for facilities to adjust, for example,

to enact spacing where possible and other precautions. We may be able to tell more after a few more weeks regarding supply chain issues. In order to keep production rolling with those added measures, Bucknevitch said, quote, many operations have simplified their product offerings, and this is one thing that's noticeable at the grocery store. Less selection, for example, and fewer sizes. In order to cope with the demand, food manufacturers started cutting the warehouse step out of the chain,

shipping from their plants directly to supermarkets. But at the retail end, other challenges emerged. Stores rushed to install plexiglass snees, shields for cashiers and equip employees with protective gear. Consumers increasingly begin ordering their food online, either from stores or food delivery services such as Instacart, Fresh Direct, and Peapod.

According to Baker, before the pandemic, about three percent of grocery stores business was e commerce, and while hard figures aren't yet available, retailers have seen rises ranging from twelve to twenty. This is significant because buying groceries over the Internet turns out to be surprisingly labor intensive. The seemingly fairly small job of your going physically to the store, selecting items from shelves and bringing them to a register

for checkout and bagging turns into a flood. When so many people offload the work onto grocers, there's only so much labor to handle those orders, which is forcing grocery stores to schedule curbside pickup and delivery windows days in advance due to the demand. Additionally, the sudden surge in e commerce means that store employees or delivery service workers are grabbing groceries and products off the same shelves that old school in person shoppers are still rely ing upon,

so there's not as much there for them. To fix that problem, Baker says, some retailers have been setting up separate automated micro fulfillment centers, which get their own shipments of groceries. The micro fulfillment centers are grocery industry trend that will most likely accelerate, according to Baker. Additionally, even before COVID nineteen, retailers such as Walmart had begun to

look at using autonomous vehicles to make deliveries. At some point in the future, it may be that when you order groceries online, robots will handle much of the process of getting it to you. That could make it a lot easier to get food during future pandemics. But for the present, the American food supply chain will continue to

depend upon human labor, even with added precautions. That means our supply chain is vulnerable to COVID nineteen, especially if the virus rapidly spreads in rural areas the way that it has hit urban populations. We spoke via email with Karan Grotra, a professor of Operations, technolog G and Information

Management at Cornell University. He said categories which are produced an indoor, large scale labor intensive plants such as meat, are most at risk as social distancing is harder in these factories, Employees are financially insecure, labor is often migrant labor, and there's limited access to healthcare for these employees, so they are vulnerable, and given the high level of consolidation, even one facility or one breakout can take significant supply

off the market. Labor is the weakest link in these categories. Today's episode was written by Patrick J. Tiger and produced by Tyler Clang. For more in this and lots of other topics, visit how stuffworks dot com. Brain Stuff is production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.