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Decentralize Food
Our highly centralized industrial food system is one of the largest threats to our future food supply, and must be decentralized in the name of resiliency. On a large scale, scarcity is not the issue - movement and access are. Tens of millions of pounds, or at least $1 billion in value, of American-grown produce rotted in fields or was shredded back into the soil as of spring 2020. This type of mass dumping occurs almost exclusively in industrial supply chains, compared to smaller and more biodiverse agricultural networks. American agriculture depends on migrant workers, up to 2.7 million of whom are undocumented. General living conditions leave them at high risk of coronavirus infection. The current administration's push to lower foreign workers' wages combined with the pandemic have caused agricultural labor shortfalls. Rosario is Argentina's main grain export hub and soybean producer, and Argentina is the world's largest exporter of soymeal livestock feed. Municipal governments near Rosario blocked grain trucks, defying the federal government's order to unblock roads, citing health concerns. Soybeans are therefore not being transported to crushing plants, affecting the country's export of soybean meal for livestock around the world. Meat plants, honed over decades for maximum efficiency and profit, are now major hot spots for the pandemic. Just over 50 plants in the cattle industry are responsible for up to 98% of slaughtering and processing in America. As of May 7, fifteen major meatpacking plants were shut down, with American pork production dropped by half. Smithfield Foods' pork plant in Sioux Falls, SD accounted for nearly half of coronavirus cases in the city and county in April. In the 1980s and '90s, companies like Smithfield, which is now owned by a Chinese pork company, bought out competitors and designed huge plants that can slaughter over a million animals a year. At the same time, meatpacking became concentrated in a few states where animal feed is grown, like South Dakota and Iowa (which produces about a third of American pork supply). USDA have not provided employees with necessary protections to safely inspect many processing plants. One inspector died of COVID-19, with at least 11 others testing positive. Inspectors will increasingly decide to stay home as the situation worsens, causing more plants to close and create food shortages. People who face acute food shortage could double this year, yet America will be relatively protected at first. Lower income countries will experience the first and perhaps worst of it. Domestic food production will also grant Americans with a grace period of relatively unchanged supply. However, as the pandemic extends, there could be more and more strain on the American food supply. The information presented here is adapted from these sources: "COVID-19 and the Risk to Food Supply Chains: How to Respond?" (Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations); "The Food Chain's Weakest Link: Slaughterhouses" (The New York Times); "Iowa Sends National Guard Troops to Defend Meat Plants from Virus" (Bloomberg); "USDA Let Millions of Pounds of Food Rot While Food-Bank Demand Soared" (Politico); "Coronavirus and America's Food Supply" (Think Global Health); "COVID19 at Meat-Processing Plants Highlights Key Link, and Vulnerabilities, in Food Supply Chain" (Farm Policy News); "Strategy for the Safety of Imported Food" (US Food and Drug Administration)
Running on Cargo