Hellobee Boards

I'm concerned! Not enough to really do anything about it but yeah it's crossed my mind. All these assumptions that everything's fine don't really account for a shutdown that's several months long, IMHO. But we'll see - I hope we're wrong.

Just wanted to pass along this resource: https://eden.cce.cornell.edu/

It's geared toward the agriculture community, but as an informed person you might find it helpful.

On a small scale a lot of this depends on how prepared a given farm is. You might have heard about closures of beef processing plants where COVID-19 has swept through their workforce. You're right that many seasonal produce farm workers live in very tight quarters and if farmers aren't proactive about providing additional space and personal hygiene supplies, they will lose a good deal of their workforce. The added cost of this is going to force some farms to shut their doors if the pandemic extends into the harvest season. If farms weren't proactive about bringing up H2A workers, which account for about 10% of seasonal ag labor, they will have challenges bringing them up now.

This will be crop-specific too. So for example, hand-harvested crops like lettuce would be harder hit than mechanical crops like wheat and corn. Basically your fresh produce is what could become a challenge. Not a "crop," but meat and poultry purchased in a larger grocery store is more likely to be affected than what you might buy direct from a farmer, due to the size of processing plants (what you buy direct from a farmer is more likely to be processed at a smaller, local plant).

Something VERY helpful you can do to prevent farms from going under and to maintain the supply chain is find out how to buy produce from your local farmers. Many farms only do wholesale and are now having to figure out how to do direct to consumer sales. In my area, that means we actually have increased access to local produce right now because farmers and vendors have had to be very creative. So poke around your local distributors (the ones that supply institutions and grocery stores) and you may find they have a pick up window, or are even doing customer deliveries. One big thing here was that there are some vegetable cooperatives and farms that rely on sales of flowering plants grown in greenhouses to maintain their seasonal produce business. Usually a huge portion of these sales go to churches which couldn't happen this year, so they pivoted and did drive-through flower pickup for customers. It was very successful. Don't be scared of farmers markets right now--vendors are doing a lot to protect themselves and their customers--they don't want to get sick either. So in summation, look for how you can support small-medium farms because they already have such small margins that they are in danger of having to close if they can't pivot to direct to consumer sales.

For dairy, until the kinks get worked out of the system continue buying milk, but also increase your consumption of other dairy (yogurt, cheese) if you eat it. Purchasing processed dairy like this will help stabilize the market until they get milk in more direct-to-consumer packaging.

International food trade probably won't suffer much. There hasn't been any action to reduce produce coming in from other countries.

I’m also in Ontario and just read an article on CTV about this exact thing this morning. Yes, processing plants are losing workers with Covid outbreaks and I’m a little concerned the longer it goes on. I have been sourcing things from other areas as someone else mentioned. Friends of ours are farmers so we can buy grass fed beef direct. I just ordered our produce from a wholesale place that’s now doing home consumer deliveries. I know there is a milk and dairy home delivery in our city as well. It’s pricey compared to the grocery store but would be an option if needed. I am thinking about doing a CSA or similar as well, which I have looked into for the past few summers but never did it. All of this is not because I’m afraid the supply chain will break down completely but more that I don’t feel like my regular grocery store is taking enough safety precautions so I don’t want to go in person. I hate going there and not being able to get what I want as well since it’s such a production to get food now.

So this week I have produce delivery, next week a grocery pick up order, and I will maybe go to Costco in person if needed depending because I feel they are taking good precautions.

I am starting to worry about this a bit. I want to believe that we will have access to food for the duration but expect that there will be some products that are more scarce than others. We are stocking up and prepared to ration as needed.

@Becky: Thank you for all the ideas and information. I will start looking around for local farm options. We are trying really hard to support local right now. I think that is a behavior that we will continue to prioritize.

@gotkimchi: Thankful for our small garden we started last year and already working to expand it. DH and the boys planted more seeds yesterday.

I'm actually not concerned. Sure there might be a shortage on some specific items so if there is one brand of something that you HAVE to have, it might be best to stock up. And it might mean that prices are a little higher for awhile and/or you may have to use alternatives to buy food (farmers markets, CSA, etc.) vs just going to one big box grocery store. But I know that my lack of fear right now comes from a place of privilege.