How Is COVID-19 Affecting Our Food Supply?

Dr. Garrett Graddy-Lovelace is an associate professor in the School of International Service at American University. Her work focuses on global environmental and agricultural policy and the domestic and global impacts of US farm policies. Dr. Graddy-Lovelace joins me today to discuss the impact of COVID-19 on food production and distribution and how the pandemic is affecting farmers, farm laborers, and the consumers at the end of the food supply chain. 

As we are trying to get groceries for our families, we're seeing shortages of certain foods. There  are so many steps between the field or the farm and our tables, and I think it would be helpful to understand where the choke points are that may be resulting in these shortages.

For example, how much of this has to do with people panic buying or hoarding foods for fear that supplies may be more limited in the future?

I would say that's not the main driver of the supply chain disruptions. There were little spikes in certain purchases when the lockdowns first started going about a month and a half ago. But really, the major disruptions are because so much of the supply chain was going toward restaurants, school systems, cruise lines, hotels, and entertainment facilities. The sports and athletic industry is a huge purchaser of food. And so there's a lot of industrial food purchasing that got wiped out within the span of about a week once the lockdown started. All of a sudden, you had all of these farmers and producers who were geared toward bulk purchases by restaurants not having that outlet.

There's a lot of industrial food purchasing that got wiped out within the span of about a week once the lockdown started.

And the grocery store outlet is much different. Consumers at the grocery store like small portions. There has been some difficulty retooling that whole supply chain away from those big bulk wholesale channels into the different ways that we need to process and distribute food into retail channels.

Are we starting to catch up? Has the industry been able to pivot in a way that is now redirecting that food into the retail channel?

There's been a lot of entrepreneurial emergency spirit and many producers are trying to navigate how to sell online and how to ramp up their digital marketing skills and try to meet demand in households and decentralize the distribution quite radically.

Farming takes so much energy, skill, and time. To suddenly learn a new skill—online marketing and distribution—it's hard to manage that.

There are a few producers who have been able to do that rapid learning curve. However, the vast majority have not. So this is...

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