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This article is taken from our IEG Policy platform dated
27/0420.
Pressure mounted on the US meat sector last week as COVID spread
through facilities, putting staff out of action. Major meat
processor JBS USA announced that it was temporarily closing down a
pork processing plant in southwestern Minnesota due to an outbreak
of the coronavirus among its employees, adding to the growing list
of meatpacking facilities shuttered because of the pandemic.
Tyson Foods also announced it would suspend operations at its
Waterloo, Iowa pork plant for an indefinite period following cases
of COVID-19 among employees.
The closures of meat plants led three dozen senators to Vice
President Mike Pence, Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue, and other
top officials about how they would protect food workers and federal
inspectors from COVID-19.
On Thursday (April 23), the United Food and Commercial Workers
(UFCW) International Union said that more than 5,000 of its food
processing and meatpacking workers had been sickened by, or exposed
to, COVID-19.
Aid welcomed
The USDA's $19 billion Coronavirus Food Assistance Program
(CFAP) - entailing $16 billion in farmer payments and $3 billion
for commodity purchases - was welcomed last week by agricultural
groups.
"The coronavirus pandemic forced the closing of restaurants,
schools and college cafeterias, causing commodity prices to fall
off a cliff and serious disruptions to food supply chains. This $16
billion in aid will help keep food on Americans' tables by
providing a lifeline to farm families that were already hit by
trade wars and severe weather," American Farm Bureau Federation
(AFBF) President Zippy Duvall said
However, USDA Secretary Sonny Perdue has already acknowledged
that more aid will be needed. "We don't expect that we've met all
the needs and we are not going to make everyone content ... we will
have to see where the gaps are to be addressed later on,"
Charter flights
The European Commission was called upon to introduce new
measures to protect farm workers from contracting the coronavirus
as thousands of migrant workers fly into help with Europe's
harvest.
EU Member states have been quick to allow seasonal farm workers
into their countries, with some countries, like Germany and
Ireland, chartering flights to get labourers onto their farms in
time for fruit and vegetable harvests.
But civil society groups claimed that workers were often living
in unsanitary settlements where physical distancing is impossible,
which puts them, and their families, at risk of contracting the
virus.
The European Commission also announced last week that it would
take some 330,000 tonnes of dairy products and 61,000t of meat off
the market this summer, as it introduces private storage aid (PSA)
for the first time in three years. The move was a response to
rapidly falling prices for butter, skimmed milk powder, cheese,
beef, and sheep/goat meat as a consequence of the market disruption
caused by the COVID-19 crisis.
Later in the week, the European Council agreed to support a €540
billion aid package following the coronavirus pandemic's financial
impact on the EU bloc's economy.
Member state actions
Poland was among the EU member states that were starting to talk
about loosening restrictions imposed as a result of the
coronavirus.
Romania has lifted a six-day long ban on the exports of some key
agri-food products to non-EU countries, which was aimed at ensuring
supplies during the COVID-19 pandemic. The country was criticized
by the European Commission for imposing the ban saying that Romania
did not have a food shortage and there was no valid, market-related
reason for the restrictions.
In the UK, the government announced plans to relax competition
rules to make it easier for farmers, processors and logistics
businesses to work together on rationalising milk deliveries during
the COVID-19 crisis.
Food security a top concern
Assessments of global food security came thick and fast during
the week, first with the release of a report by the Global Food
Crises Network which stated that, even before the pandemic broke
out, food security was worsening in the world.
The World Food Programme, shortly afterwards, put a number on
that situation, saying that the COVID-19 pandemic could see more
than a quarter of a billion people suffering acute hunger by the
end of the year.
Agriculture ministers from the Group of 20 countries pledged to
refrain from trade restrictions that could threaten food security
in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
We reported on how food riots and looting can be expected in any
country where there are huge numbers of people living in squalor in
very crowded slums and (importantly) where the lockdown has really
disrupted food distribution at a time when a lot of dispossessed
people have returned home and the infrastructure cannot get enough
food into the cities. That means India (Mumbai, Kolkata, Delhi,
Pune), South Africa (Johannesburg, Cape Town), Brazil (Rio, São
Paulo) and Mexico.
