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turbinetree

(24,703 posts) Sat May 2, 2020, 11:36 AM May 2020

Turns out letting 'efficient' monopolies control our food supply was a terrible idea

Published 1 min ago on May 2, 2020
By Claire Kelloway, Washington Monthly- Commentary

For many Americans, grocery shopping has become an intensely stressful experience. To maintain social distancing, people must queue before entering stores. Once inside, they must scramble to find increasingly scarce products, including household staples from milk and eggs to pork and beef. Others can no longer afford to go to grocery stores. Instead, they wait for hours to get goods from food banks that are also running short on supplies.

But in a seeming paradox, farmers are destroying their products—including many of the same goods that stores lack. Dairy Farmers of America, the country’s biggest dairy co-op, has called many of its members and instructed them to dump their milk. The cooperative has estimated that farmers are now dumping up to 3.7 million gallons of milk per day. Sanderson Farms, a chicken processor, smashes 750,000 eggs each week. Farmers have been plowing their produce into the ground.

How is it that Americans can face shortages, and in some cases go hungry, while farmers face a glut so large they’re deliberately wasting food? A number of recent stories have noted that America’s food supply chain has proven unable to adjust to the new COVID reality. In particular, food processors and distributors that serve shut-down commercial customers, like restaurants, aren’t able to retool in order to send food to retail outlets like grocery stores, where demand is high. But that just begs the question: why is the supply chain set up in this now obviously risky way?

Decades of consolidation have made food systems more vulnerable, say experts. Beginning in the 1980s, the federal government allowed more agribusinesses to merge and grow largely without restraint in the name of efficiency—before, antitrust and other policies helped keep these industries decentralized and competitive. Consequently, a small number of giant, often vertically integrated, firms, produce and distribute the bulk of food in the U.S. Their hulking and specialized supply chains are not so efficient in the face of disruption.

https://www.rawstory.com/2020/05/urns-out-letting-efficient/

You think its time to break up big Ag control over the supply chain, monopolies usually fail.........history says they do every time.......

3 replies

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Turns out letting 'efficient' monopolies control our food supply was a terrible idea (Original Post) turbinetree May 2020 OP

I don't really think Big AG is the problem, it's the sudden change. In fact, for those living in Hoyt May 2020 #1

Big Ag has always been a problem. Wellstone ruled May 2020 #2

I live in a rural area and there is plenty of fresh meat from local butchers. Midnight Writer May 2020 #3

Hoyt

(54,770 posts)

1. I don't really think Big AG is the problem, it's the sudden change. In fact, for those living in

Reply to turbinetree (Original post)

Sat May 2, 2020, 12:05 PM

May 2020

large metropolitan areas, it's likely better not being dependent on a bunch of unorganized, underfunded, etc., small farmers. Obviously, Big AG might be a problem in other respects.

There are a number of articles on this topic, including this one from NYT:

". . . . . . The closing of restaurants, hotels and schools has left some farmers with no buyers for more than half their crops. And even as retailers see spikes in food sales to Americans who are now eating nearly every meal at home, the increases are not enough to absorb all of the perishable food that was planted weeks ago and intended for schools and businesses. . . . . .

"The widespread destruction of fresh food — at a time when many Americans are hurting financially and millions are suddenly out of work — is an especially dystopian turn of events, even by the standards of a global pandemic. It reflects the profound economic uncertainty wrought by the virus and how difficult it has been for huge sectors of the economy, like agriculture, to adjust to such a sudden change in how they must operate. . . . . .

"The quarantines have shown just how many more vegetables Americans eat when meals are prepared for them in restaurants than when they have to cook for themselves. “People don’t make onion rings at home,” said Shay Myers, a third-generation onion farmer whose fields straddle the border of Oregon and Idaho. . . . . .

"Over the decades, the nation’s food banks have tried to shift from offering mostly processed meals to serving fresh produce, as well. But the pandemic has caused a shortage of volunteers, making it more difficult to serve fruits and vegetables, which are time-consuming and expensive to transport. . . . ."

Much more at: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/11/business/coronavirus-destroying-food.html

Wellstone ruled

(34,661 posts)

2. Big Ag has always been a problem.

Reply to turbinetree (Original post)

Sat May 2, 2020, 01:02 PM

May 2020

ADM and Cargill Lobbyist's gave us what we see today. Once the rules were changed to kill off the Co-ops by these two,the game was over. And now you are living their dream.

First to go was the Oil Refineries of North Dakota and Montana who were gobbled up by Continental Oil. Oilmen from Texas bought into Meat Companies and Dairy Processors, others as a Tax Dodge just to mine out the employees Pension Funds and load the Company up with debt and Bankrupt the whole mess. The same folks came in a bought all these BK companies and merge them into larger firms staff with non Union starving workers and Illegals.

Midnight Writer

(21,768 posts)

3. I live in a rural area and there is plenty of fresh meat from local butchers.