News Corona crisis
US buys dairy and meat for food banks
At the end of March, it was announced that the American government would grope considerably in its pockets to guide agricultural entrepreneurs and processors through the corona crisis. The government is now looking at options for buying up dairy products and meat, which currently have no destination, and selling them to food banks, for example.
A study by the Food and Agricultural Policy Research Institute (FAPRI) shows that the dairy and meat sectors could really use this aid. As it now appears, the average total net income of American farmers is declining by $20,1 billion. Livestock farmers receive the biggest blow in this. Cattle prices have now fallen by more than 10%.
Surpluses to the food bank
The (dairy) livestock industry in the United States (US) is now faced with huge surpluses of dairy and meat due to the closure of the food sector. As a result, American dairy farmers are forced to drain milk and more and more meat is piling on it. Various agricultural interest groups have increased the pressure on the government to buy the products that are now wasted and sell them on other markets.
In the meantime, the government seems to have given up. There were already plans to expand the agricultural sector with $15,5 billion to support† Some of this is now used to buy up the abundant produce. The products are then offered to, among others, food banks in their own country, so that the food is not thrown away.
Corona crisis hits US hard
Because the food sector worldwide is almost completely at a standstill, a large sales market has disappeared. Rabobank estimates that food demand in North America has fallen by 30% in the past month.
But it is not only the disappearance of the food sector that weighs heavily on the agricultural sector in the US. Several beef and pork farms have closed their doors due to staff shortages due to illness or even death. Smithfields Foods, one of the largest pork producers in the US, is an example of this. She closed the doors of a large pig slaughterhouse in South Dakota, because more and more employees were dropped because they were infected with corona.
Jorine Cosse
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