Broken chains

"Maybe we needed this. Maybe it was a wake up call. Most of us (me included), have taken our supply chains for granted. All the way from the producers (farmers and ranchers), to the processors, to the truck drivers, to the grocery stores."

If you are not ready for what is coming, you might want to be. For those still having trouble finding enough TP or sanitizing wipes, that was just a prelude as to what is coming. Our supply chains are breaking. I am hearing that more and more now from various sources. Actually, it does not take a degree in rocket science to figure this out. Meat packing factories are shutting down, and cows, pigs and chickens cannot get processed. Then, empty shelves at grocery stores are sure to come.

Actually, the only source which has said we will NOT have a meat shortage this summer is our Ag Secretary, Sonny Perdue. How we will not, he did not say. But he is convinced we will work our way through this. The problem however, is the recipe we have been using for our meat packing plants, does not work well in the era of COVID - 19. In fact, it is disastrous. To get our meat packing plants back online, using proper OSHA practices to ensure worker safety, will take a major reclama. And we don't have the time for a major reclama this season.

Our food supply, once thought to be robust and steady, we are now finding out is not so much. A virus so small, that it is invisible, has done a job on our food supply. And when our food supply takes a hit, so does much of the world which also depends on our steady food supply. In my 70 years on this planet, a constant food item has always been ground beef for hamburgers. Always. This summer, ground beef might start becoming rare, expensive, or both. Is that the farmers and ranchers fault? Absolutely not! They are brimming over with livestock and poultry. They just have no place to sell their products with the meat packers being shuttered.

Where do we go from here? What do we do? Are we stuck? First off, there was a story on the news yesterday about a pig farmer with 3,000 pigs ready to be sold for butchering. But - no place was operating. So he was stuck, looking at the possibility he might have to "de-populate" his pigs. When the town folk heard about his situation, 400 families each volunteered to buy one of his pigs. They would buy a pig, and then find some local place to have it butchered and processed. Not a fix, but it is a start.

With all the money the government is throwing around these days, I would have expected some of it going into the meat packing facilities. Let's face facts. This virus is not going away, and until we get a solution to how these meat processors can operate safely, we will continue to have a meat problem. 

Maybe we needed this. Maybe it was a wake up call. Most of us (me included), have taken our supply chains for granted. All the way from the producers (farmers and ranchers), to the processors, to the truck drivers, to the grocery stores. We now have a better appreciation for each of those links on the chain. Let's get this fixed America. Once again, the eyes of the world are upon us.