By Deborah J. Comstock
July 10, 2022
Source: Len Connect
Photo Source: Unsplash, Shaah Shahidh It should be no surprise that the world’s food chain supply is in disarray. Consider the history.
First, the U.S. experienced an unmanaged COVID-19 epidemic in the past few years, with an administration that did nothing to understand or curtail its consequences. It is very difficult to work when people are sick or, worse, dying, and going to work only perpetuates the epidemic. The denial of the recent pandemic should illustrate how the current food and economic pressures evolve when taking a microeconomic view of the planet. After all, it is only a virus, and will go away in a couple of days, but the reality is that this pandemic disrupted every single aspect of the U.S. and world economies.
Secondly, the world has now experienced an unwarranted war between Ukraine and Russia. If it wasn’t known before, we now know that Ukraine is a farm economy and produces significant supplies of wheat to the world. This war caused farm lands to not be harvested, and, worse, not to be planted with usual frequency, thereby creating shortages across the globe. Now, perhaps, we can understand how food and labor shortages affect the supply chain. According to Kinsey and Co., food supplies were relatively consistent over the past five years. However, when the pandemic affected millions of people in the U.S. and the entire planet, food sales declined for restaurants, fast food locations, coffee venues and casual dining locations. These food outlets relied on a scheduled supply of food from the food chain to anticipate customer demands. When demand was not there, not only retail entities had stored food assets, but so did the farmers. During the peak of the pandemic, milk and meat products were destroyed, because the demand was not there, and food outlets were not serving, so these were lost also. As a result, farm and business entities reduced the product they grew or used to support their businesses. Things pretty much came to a standstill. When basic food supplies like the ones we rely upon in our everyday life reduce, the entire food chain reduces. Imagine the risk of farmers not knowing whether to plant or what to plant because of unknowns whether the product could get to market. Imagine food outlets like grocery and food distribution companies attempting to navigate how much to keep on hand, or whether to purchase food stuffs at all, fearing too much surplus negatively affects cold storage capacity. Now imagine all of the links in the food supply that sequentially rely upon each other to sustain the constant flow of goods to consumers. This is an intricate distribution system that Americans have come to rely upon but did not really appreciate or understand. I went to the grocery and the product I wanted was not there. Who can I blame for this? The farming community has enough on their plate trying to conduct business against vast unknowns, like weather and markets, so we don’t really blame them, but we don’t pay them enough either. Instead, we blame the government. And this current administration inherited not only a worldwide pandemic, but utter mismanagement of national and world economies. Hindsight is 20/20, but issuing tariffs on countries for supplies we depend upon is not thoughtful management but irresponsibility for not providing goods and services we do not produce enough of that affect the economies of the individual citizen. Bullying techniques do not work well when cooperation and shared responsibility for the citizens of any country are at stake. This is why we elect leaders.
Finally, when vaccines took hold and people could work and have money to spend, there was a shortage of goods and supplies. When scarcity occurs, inflation also occurs; a natural byproduct of a supply chain that was severely disrupted not only by unqualified governmental officials but also by irresponsible individuals who refused to understand the macroeconomics of pandemics, wars and now the better understood food supply chain
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