The coronavirus pandemic has stressed an already stressed agriculture sector, Ben Lilliston reports for the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy: "For more than six years, farmers have been managing low incomes, rising costs, increasing debt and bankruptcy, volatile export markets (exacerbated by President Trump’s tariff fights) and a series of extreme weather events tied to climate change. Now, the fast-moving, unprecedented covid-19 situation is creating new disruptive challenges for farmers and our food system."
Lilliston gives a run-down of how ag markets have been affected by the pandemic. In the already-hurting dairy sector, for example, "The closing of schools (which accounted for 7 percent of the fluid milk consumed in the U.S.) and restaurants (major cheese purchasers) eliminated two important markets. Co-ops are considering milk dumps to deal with excess supply," Lilliston reports.
Restaurant closures also hit the beef market, contributing to a price drop of $250 to $300 per head. "Cattle ranchers were already calling for a federal investigation into the widening gap between prices paid to producers and the costs consumers pay in the supermarket for beef," Lilliston reports. "In a tacit acknowledgement that meat industry profits at a time of covid-19 are bad optics, Tyson Foods and Cargill are temporarily lifting their prices to farmers and increasing wages to workers."
from The Rural Blog https://ift.tt/2V6Iddh How the pandemic has affected the agriculture sector so far - Entrepreneur Generations
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