East Aurora Advertiser

Food Chain Disruptions: Industry Shutdowns Have Created Challenges in Getting Food to Consumers



All aspects of the food industry have been called essential during the pandemic. Grocery stores have remained open, restaurants are providing take-out, and farmers’ markets are beginning to operate for a new season. 

Behind the scenes, the very people producing the food are struggling. Dairy farmers are laying off employees because they are receiving less money for milk and are being asked to reduce production. Some would like to recoup the loss by selling off cows to the beef market, but the waitlist to slaughter is months long at local operations. Large processing plants around the country are temporarily closing because workers are coming down with COVID-19.

Meanwhile, the supply of meat in the grocery store is not what shoppers are accustomed to seeing. Stores are placing limits on how much can be purchased, and some products are difficult to find for the supplier and consumer alike.

“There is always going to be enough food. But we might not always have as many choices as we are accustomed to. People will have to be flexible as we go through disruptions at different times,” Joan Petzen said. She is the Agricultural Department Program Leader at the Cornell Cooperative Extension in Wyoming County. “This will not last forever, but it will take some time to work through it.”

The first wave of food disruptions occurred in March, with dairy products like milk, cheese, and yogurt. When it comes to the dairy business, items are packaged for two types of customers: consumers and institutions. Items packaged for consumers are smaller and sold in grocery and retail stores, while items packed for institutions like schools are typically packaged in larger quantities. Often, milk is not processed and packaged into other products at the same industrial plant. 

When New York State PAUSE was put into place in the middle of March, the need for dairy products to be packaged for institutional use dried up overnight. Farmers who would sell milk to processors on this side of the business were suddenly left with a product that was no longer needed.

Brian Rogers has been operating a dairy farm in Springville since 1989. He owns 100 cows and they produce around 6,000 pounds of milk per day. He sells his milk to the Steamburg Milk Cooperative in East Concord, where it is redistributed to Saputo Dairy Foods in Friendship, NY. This company processes dairy and packages it for restaurant use. When many states shut down, there was no way to switch to smaller packaging. 

“They are geared to package the milk as cottage cheese, etc, in larger portions, so that it goes to restaurants and pizzerias. They package items that can’t be sold in Walmart or Tops, the consumer can’t go and get it. It is all set up in bulk for restaurants,” Rogers said. “It’s as simple as that. Nobody is at fault here. All of this packaging that was in large quantities just couldn’t go to the grocery store.”

Rogers said he was recently contacted by someone who works in Senator Chuck Schumer’s office who asked if he would consider donating the milk to the food bank or pantry. 

“Of course I said yes, but it’s not that simple. Who will process it? Who will pasteurize it? He didn’t know what pasteurization meant. It has to go through a plant. That is the problem,” Rogers said.

Petzen, of the Wyoming County Cornell Extension, said the Food and Drug Administration has responded to this and has temporarily relaxed restrictions on labeling so that these processing sites can sell food packages originally designed for restaurants in a retail store setting. Packages for institutional sites do not need to have all of the nutritional labelings that grocery store packages have, but those restrictions have been lifted to sell these dairy products on grocery store shelves.

Restrictions for the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) have also been lifted. 

“The WIC program used to be pretty strenuous, you can buy this size of this, or this type of milk, depending on the age of the child, but all of these restrictions have been relaxed,” Petzen said. She added that the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program has stepped in to help as well, which is a national program that supplies food to families who meet certain qualifications.

“There is a program to put together boxes of food to feed a family of four for a week. They need to include fresh produce, milk, and pork, and they have targeted those to be purchased from suppliers who were having problems with producing on the distribution side,” Petzen said. “The federal government has been responding to these needs.” 

There might be some remedies to the problem, but farmers are still feeling the shortfall. Rogers did not personally have to dump his milk, but he knows his cooperative was dumping milk, and the checks he receives for his milk are lower now than earlier this year.

“Nobody can hardly pay the bills. If the government doesn’t reimburse for the dumped milk, I don’t know how we are going to survive,” Rogers said. “I don’t want anyone to get sick and die, but it just seems like there should have been more thought in shutting the entire country down.” 

Earl Gingerich, Jr., a farmer in Marilla, is finding himself in a similar situation. He is not making as much on the milk his cows produce, so he has been searching for a secondary option to earn some income by marketing the cattle for meat. However, he is not able to find a facility to process his order. Larger meatpacking facilities do not exist in Western New York, and smaller operations are backed up for months.

With problems in processing dairy from farms, Earl Gingerich Jr. has dairy cows he is trying to market for meat, but is having problems finding places to send the animals. Photo by Adam Zaremski

“I would like to market the meat locally, but nobody is available,” Gingerich said. “This is a lesson to be learned in any industry. We should not be allowed as a nation for there to be so few places for processing, especially for food. When one goes down, it impacts too many.” 

Petzen said in early May, 15 percent of pork processing facilities were closed because too many employees were coming down with COVID-19. In these plants, employees work close to one another, trimming cuts of meat on both sides of the assembly line. This tight proximity allowed for the virus to spread quickly and infect large numbers of workers. Processing plants were closed to deep clean, and employees were brought back slowly to prevent this from happening again. 

It has also slowed down meat production for the American consumer.

Gary Burley runs a farm called East Hill Creamery in Perry, where he had a herd of cows for dairy, but he also ships the cows to Oaklamona when they are done with dairy to be raised for beef. He said the market is sketchy right now. Animals ready for slaughter are getting backed up, prices for beef are going down, and it’s expensive for farmers to keep cattle alive while waiting for them to go to market.

You have to keep feeding them, but then they keep gaining. Then they get too fat. They lose value and it is another way for the slaughterhouses to discount the pricing,” Burley said. “It’s a catch-22. It can be frustrating.”

Petzen said the disruption to the meat market has been tremendous, but there will still be enough to go around. It just might not be exactly what you want.

“I don’t think we are going to be out of something completely, but we may need to make different choices for a while. You might go to buy bacon, but it will be out, so you choose sausage instead.” 

What remains to be seen is the impact COVID-19 will have on produce. There are farms in the area that rely on the H-2A program for farm assistance, which is a federal program that supplies farms with migrant workers from other countries. The Department of Homeland Security has eased some of the restrictions on bringing these workers to the United States during the pandemic, but if farms are unable to get all of the hired help that they need as a fixed cost, it is uncertain what will happen during a harvest.

“So many of these things are unknowns, because we are writing the playbook as we go,” Petzen said. “Folks are working hard to see what other sources of labor that they can find, maybe people who are laid off in the community, but there are government incentives for people when they are laid off to receive money right now, and they will make more from the government than from working on a farm.”

To qualify for the H-2A program, a farmer also has to prove that he cannot get workers from his own community before he applies.  

“If you do get workers to fill the gap, you might be jeopardizing your ability to get migrant workers during a future season,” Petzen said. “I am anticipating labor challenges in fruits and vegetables, and I don’t know how it will play out when it’s time to harvest the food, especially for produce that is labor-intensive.”

Peas are the first crop to be harvested, and the growing season ends in the middle of June. Gingerich sells his peas to a packing facility called Bonduelle, and they sell packaged frozen vegetables in grocery stores under different names. He has not heard that there will be a disruption yet.

Petzen says that workers in vegetable plants work just as close together as they do in meat plants, and all eyes are on those facilities to remedy mistakes.   

“We have had the opportunity for food and safety to observe the other production plants,” Petzen said.

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