US farmers and cattle producers surviving on emergency food banks
from Natural News
In April, the biggest meat companies in the U.S. – Cargill Inc., JBS USA, Smithfield Foods and Tyson Foods – had to suspend production at around 20 slaughterhouses nationwide, resulting in concerns of a potential mass meat shortage. In response, the Trump administration invoked the Defense Production Act to keep processing facilities open despite the pandemic.
However, Jackson-Smith explained that these plants can only stay open if they have a labor force to rely on.
Meatpacking plants employ one of the more vulnerable workforces in the food sector. With the consolidation of the meat processing sector, the loss of some very large processing sites could affect the majority of America’s meat supply.
According to a New York Times article, out of 800 USDA inspected slaughterhouses in the U.S., only 50 factories slaughter and process 98 percent of the beef. Most of these facilities are owned and operated by the four big meat companies.
The coronavirus outbreaks at food processing facilities confirm that food processing is a huge bottleneck in the U.S. food system. Standard regulations for food safety and health don’t always work in favor of small- and medium-scale processors and mom-and-pop retailers.
To help relieve the strain on the agricultural sector, the Trump administration announced the Coronavirus Food Assistance Program in April, which issued $16 million in payments to ranchers and farmers. Additionally, it allocated $3 billion in bulk purchases of dairy, meat and produce that would be distributed via food banks.
Many appreciate the federal aid, but some are worried that it will take more than this to help food producers recover from the pandemic.
The American Farm Bureau Federation, the leading farmer trade group, said that the aid package won’t cover livestock that is winnowed. In a statement to Reuters, the USDA reported that the payment program “is still being developed, and the agency has received more requests for assistance than it has money to handle.”
The relief may also take a while to roll out. Officials suggest that it may take at least one month for food to be packaged and redirected to foundations, food banks and other places in need of aid.
Experts have several recommendations to prevent far-reaching disruptions to the U.S. food economy in the future.
Dairy farmers dump milk onto ground
Tanaka and her team suggest that the country start moving away from concentrated food supply chains. They believe that more regional supply chains can adapt. To ensure that food products are re-channelled when a segment of the food supply chain breaks, diverse sizes and types of farms, processing plants and distributors should be made part of every regional supply chain.
Others warn that significant changes are also associated with certain financial concerns.
Vincent Smith, a professor in agricultural economics at Montana State University, explained that the main dilemma that needs to be addressed is the reforms that may cost more than the food waste being produced. Smith posited that it may better to let a farmer dispose of milk and compensate that farmer, but not all dairy farmers, for any losses.
Because of this short-term crisis, Smith concluded that the best course of action may be to offer food aid cash transfers to the households needing help and letting the private market respond to the pandemic in their own ways.
At least we have meat to export. People are going to have to pull their belts in up in the Northern Hemisphere.
Thanks Terry the US situation is similar to the Chinese banning our meat exports, but fortunately we can get other markets in Asia.Editor
The effects of this so called coronavirus appears to be having the same effect of a military attack on the societies of the people, the destruction of the economy, the destruction of food supplies, the destruction of the small business sector that is so important to the way we all live, is evident, its as if this virus is some form of silent military attack with governments supplying a form of band-aid solution that makes governments give the illusion that they are helping when in fact, the governments, in fact, in a large degree, have instigated or allowed the instigation of this attack against the freedoms of the people of our lands. From Whitlam on, there has been an agenda to destroy the local strength of this countries ability to be self sufficient in order to drive the “international” corporate agenda for world governance but the very word “international” stems from a communistic agenda that has a history of death, destruction and starvation, even though the theory of a one world communist order may seem good, the reality is loss of freedom, destruction and death.
This COVID 19, is already set in motion a massive downturn in our freedoms and human rights. the more I have researched the hidden esoteric system of governance used by the corporate governing system, I have noticed that the loss of human rights has been designed into the system leaving our societies in a dangerous place. Our freedoms may have been taken for granted and our trust in government was given without vigilance in relation to just who was at the helm of this governing ship. The surrendering of arms by Howard, was also planned in order to aid the enemy in order to carry out its hidden occupation of our land using foreign “trust territories” deriving from foreign districts passing themselves off as the government of our people and of our lands…
This may be more than “we the people” making a stand against such tyranny, we the people must comprehend the very hidden system that landed us into their foreign corporate jurisdiction, rendering us as nothing more than trustees to a foreign military occupation, leaving us with no human rights and no legal connection to the very lands we were born on… Yes, the people we trusted in government and their police were the hidden enemy of the free world all along… The opposite to “Freedom” is slavery and slavery is a crime so all those that are against freedom are criminals…
Gates is putting money into the meat companies producing vego meat.. This is in line with the push to remove meat as an option because they know it will weaken people. They are using this contrived non ussue ( cordova) to promote their one world goverment agenda – parasites..
The depopulation agenda continues to march right along. Shut down plants, break the supply chains, essentially destroy the ability to produce and transport food. But hey, the government will give the masses some fiat money to sit at home while the food system collapses.
Throw in the Grand Solar Minimum – https://gumshoenews.com/2018/12/03/professor-zharkova-explains-super-grand-solar-minimum-and-coming-ice-age/ and that fiat money won’t be enough to purchase hardly anything, if it is available in the first place.
I fully expect that those who prepared and created a ‘victory garden’ will be demonized by the MSM as a bunch of selfish hoarders. Rather than celebrate rugged individualism, the masses will be prompted to attack those who will not follow the herd.