Speaker 1: It's Monday, May eleven. I'm Oscar Ramirez from the Daily
Speaker 1: Dive podcast in Los Angeles, and this is your daily
Speaker 1: coronavirus update. Coronavirus has upended the US food system. It
Speaker 1: was always a delicate balance of demand from consumers at
Speaker 1: grocery stores and restaurants and the supply chain from farmers
Speaker 1: and food processors. But illnesses, shutdowns and stay at home
Speaker 1: orders changed everything. Farmers had crops spoil without any buyers,
Speaker 1: meat processors closed due to outbreaks, distributors lost sixty of
Speaker 1: their business volume, and food banks who relied on grocery
Speaker 1: stores and restaurants are struggling as the need has surged.
Speaker 1: Kevin Rector, reporter at the l A Times, joins us
Speaker 1: for the chaotic food system. Thanks for joining us, Kevin,
Speaker 1: Thanks for having me. I wanted to talk about the
Speaker 1: US food system throughout this whole coronavirus pandemic. It's really
Speaker 1: been upended starting on March sixteen, when the governor basically
Speaker 1: asked restaurants to shut down. I mean, it just created
Speaker 1: this whole ripple effect on how delicate the food supply
Speaker 1: chain really is in the state and in the country. Really,
Speaker 1: this is happening all over the place. Obviously we're gonna
Speaker 1: talk about California specifically, but it's particularly crazy here in California.
Speaker 1: There's a third of the country's vegetables and two thirds
Speaker 1: of the fruits and nuts are grown here in this state.
Speaker 1: So things that are happening here are affecting the entire country, really,
Speaker 1: And you've spoke to dozens of people farmers, truckers, grocery
Speaker 1: store executives, restaurateurs, food service providers, and food bank administrators
Speaker 1: to get a sense of what's going on with the
Speaker 1: supply chain here. So Kevin, tell us a little bit
Speaker 1: about that. In conversations with all of those folks, it
Speaker 1: was made clear here to me that there's really no
Speaker 1: sector in the US food system that han't been struck
Speaker 1: by this. A lot of those sectors work sort of
Speaker 1: hand in hand with one another. They have sort of
Speaker 1: stood up where they had stood up, these very complex,
Speaker 1: precise supply chains for serving the residents of the state
Speaker 1: in the ways that they were accustomed to eating and
Speaker 1: dining out things like that. But like you mentioned, when
Speaker 1: the governor sort of asked all the restaurants closed down,
Speaker 1: it totally shattered a lot of that system and forced
Speaker 1: people to find new ways to match the supply of
Speaker 1: food with the demand. One of the biggest changes right
Speaker 1: out of the gate at that point was the food
Speaker 1: service sector, which supplies not only restaurants, but schools and hotels, etcetera.
Speaker 1: With a ton of food totally shut down. Some distributors
Speaker 1: lost their business overnight. It did depend on what sort
Speaker 1: of diversification they had among their customers, so some providers
Speaker 1: for a lot of fast food restaurants and things like
Speaker 1: that that kept on with their drive through and carry
Speaker 1: out options maintained a larger centage of their business, but
Speaker 1: a lot of the industry was just decimated. At the
Speaker 1: same time, grocery store demand shot up, as everyone knows
Speaker 1: a lot more people we're flowing into grocery stores. Particularly
Speaker 1: in the beginning there there was a lot of hoarding
Speaker 1: going on. Essentially, people stockpiling food based in part on
Speaker 1: their uncertainty as to whether or not it would remain available.
Speaker 1: I think some of that was due to earlier signs
Speaker 1: that people were seeing that supplies of other things like
Speaker 1: toilet paper and paper products weren't necessarily on the shelf,
Speaker 1: and then it was sort of a vicious cycle. So yeah,
Speaker 1: it started that way and it's rippled out into a
Speaker 1: lot of other portions of the system. And that's a
Speaker 1: huge part of it. That the retail demand went up
Speaker 1: as people were trying to stockpile very early, honest, like, hey,
Speaker 1: you gotta be quarantined for two weeks, So people were
Speaker 1: trying to buy enough food for those two weeks and
Speaker 1: longer if they had to. And while that demand went up,
Speaker 1: the demand on the restaurant side went down. But that
Speaker 1: rise in the retail demand was not enough to offset
Speaker 1: what was being lost on the restaurant side, and farmers
Speaker 1: were hit especially hard to with a bunch of their
Speaker 1: crops went rotten and they had to kind of restart
Speaker 1: all over again when the restaurants weren't buying up the
Speaker 1: bulk of that food. And even still now for them
Speaker 1: is I have to imagine as tough as restaurants are
Speaker 1: going to start reopening, it's still unclear what the demand
Speaker 1: is going to be. Even if a restaurant opens up,
Speaker 1: I'm sure they're not going to be a capacity right away.
Speaker 1: They're limiting how many people are going to be in there.
Speaker 1: So for farmers, it's a tough game right now. On
Speaker 1: matching that demand. One thing I heard from almost everyone
Speaker 1: I talked to is that this was not just the
Speaker 1: market was one way one day, and then it was
Speaker 1: a different way the next day, and everyone could start
Speaker 1: sort of getting in shape and getting in line for
Speaker 1: the new way the markets worked. It was just that
Speaker 1: every day, day after day, the markets were changing, and
Speaker 1: supply was changing and demand was changing, such that they've
Speaker 1: been on this whirlwind roller coaster of logistical gymnastics day
Speaker 1: after day trying to figure out what they can do
Speaker 1: to sort of shore up their bottom line and also
Speaker 1: make sure that food supply doesn't go to waste. So
Speaker 1: before the pandemic, there was this elaborate system by which
Speaker 1: grocery stores would sort of kick out excess produce and
Speaker 1: product to food banks, and then the food banks would
Speaker 1: supply these sort of local community pantries or stoop kitchens
Speaker 1: or folks who are providing meals to meet residents. But
Speaker 1: when the world changed, all of those supply chains were disrupted.
Speaker 1: Groceries were selling more stock off their shelves, and so
Speaker 1: they had less to provide to the food banks. Here
Speaker 1: in California, in Hollywood, the Hollywood Food Coalition, which has
Speaker 1: for thirty three years, served hot meals to folks on
Speaker 1: the street each night. They received a lot of food
Speaker 1: from studio productions, television and movies. They could speed hundreds
Speaker 1: of people on night just based on leftover food. All
Speaker 1: of that shutdown, so suddenly they didn't have that product.
Speaker 1: And at the same time, like you said, a lot
Speaker 1: of the farmers suddenly had a ton of produce that
Speaker 1: they were having in the old world, gobbled up each
Speaker 1: day by restaurants no longer having a market. And it
Speaker 1: talked to one lettuce grower who said they're considering shifting
Speaker 1: what they grow to grow more iceberg in Romaine, which
Speaker 1: is what grocery store buyers purchased, and less of the
Speaker 1: sort of boutique leafs that chefs used in fancy salad.
Speaker 1: So it was an array of disruptions that all hit
Speaker 1: at once. And like you mentioned, some restaurants are coming
Speaker 1: back online or learning how to do delivery, or working
Speaker 1: with the apps that people are using more and more,
Speaker 1: and so the demand on the food service sector hadn't
Speaker 1: just dropped off a cliff and then stayed there forever.
Speaker 1: It's it's climbing back up. I think it's shifting a
Speaker 1: day to day basis of people are having to evolve.
Speaker 1: Going back real briefly to what you mentioned about the
Speaker 1: food banks, I made a note on my article or
Speaker 1: on the notes, and it just simply wrote, Wow, I
Speaker 1: didn't know that a single day of production on a
Speaker 1: film or TV set could have enough leftover meals for
Speaker 1: hundreds of people on any given day. That's crazy. And
Speaker 1: and as you say, you know, things shut down almost immediately.
Speaker 1: That's all those people are left without nothing. You know,
Speaker 1: in the first three weeks of April, there was nearly
Speaker 1: two d hundred thousand people that applied for government food
Speaker 1: assistant under the cow Fresh program. Food banks were seeing
Speaker 1: thousands of people in increase that needed food. So it's
Speaker 1: very tough out there. And one of the ones that
Speaker 1: we've been hearing a lot when we hear about food
Speaker 1: supply chain is in danger our meat processors. We've seen
Speaker 1: a bunch of plants closed down due to coronavirus outbreaks.
Speaker 1: People they're getting sick and they've had to change a
Speaker 1: bunch of stuff in their processing plants to accommodate that.
Speaker 1: Just as there was sort of increasing demand on processors,
Speaker 1: including as some processing facilities were shut down because it outbreaks.
Speaker 1: There was this added need to better space out employees,
Speaker 1: so you were looking at increased demand at the same
Speaker 1: time you were looking at the need to have fewer
Speaker 1: employees on a production line or things like that. So
Speaker 1: a lot of meat processors have sort of scrambled to
Speaker 1: reshape how they operate and in order to meet higher
Speaker 1: demand for packaged meats and groceries, but at the same
Speaker 1: time keep their frontline workers safe. And that's part of
Speaker 1: this picture. It hasn't always gone that way for either
Speaker 1: meat processors or for grocery stores. We are seeing employees
Speaker 1: in the food sector falling sick, and there's pushback from
Speaker 1: unions and other advocates for these workers to say that
Speaker 1: the companies who employ them need to be doing more
Speaker 1: to ensure their safety. And that does take careful consideration.
Speaker 1: It's another logistical hurdle that these companies are dealing with,
Speaker 1: just as they are dealing with all of these other
Speaker 1: logistical hurdles in terms of matching supply with demand. And
Speaker 1: it's a top to bottom thing. We've talked about the distributors,
Speaker 1: the restaurants, the processors, the farmers, all that, but truck
Speaker 1: drivers also there's been an ebb and flow in how
Speaker 1: they've been operating. Early on, the demand for their services
Speaker 1: was huge because everybody was doing all this kind of
Speaker 1: panic buying, and now that's kind of leveled off a
Speaker 1: little bit. So for smaller trucking companies, it's hard to
Speaker 1: keep them in business. It's hard to keep the haulers
Speaker 1: pulling all the freight because there's just not as much anymore.
Speaker 1: Some folks in the trucking industry told me that they're
Speaker 1: sending out drivers to carry certain halls at a loss
Speaker 1: because before all of this happened, there was a shortage
Speaker 1: of truck drivers in the country, and companies work hard
Speaker 1: to build up stable staffing and have good truck drivers
Speaker 1: working for them, and they don't want to lose all
Speaker 1: of that now, so they've been taking jobs at a
Speaker 1: loss just to keep their truckers rolling. That's another example
Speaker 1: of how they rippled out. A lot of the food
Speaker 1: service industry companies relied a lot on truck drivers to
Speaker 1: move products across the country and from one area to another,
Speaker 1: and a lot of that fell off. Folks in the
Speaker 1: food sector growers and food service sector companies and food
Speaker 1: banks and all sorts of different folks are trying to
Speaker 1: reroute transport capacity to where it needs to be so
Speaker 1: that food doesn't go to waste and people don't go hungry.
Speaker 1: The government is trying to step in. USDA has put
Speaker 1: up plans for billions of dollars to reroute some of
Speaker 1: the supply on the produce side into the food banks because,
Speaker 1: like you mentioned, the lines that these food banks are
Speaker 1: getting longer and longer, so there is a lot of
Speaker 1: effort out there to figure out the transportation of all
Speaker 1: this food as well. I mean, it's tough to predict
Speaker 1: when some like this will happen and upend the entire
Speaker 1: food system, but it really just shows us how delicate
Speaker 1: the balance is and how one little thing affects everything else.
Speaker 1: You know. Looking to the future, we're gonna have to
Speaker 1: see what type of new system maybe we can implement
Speaker 1: that compare you know, people and some of these institutions
Speaker 1: that need the food with those that have the food supply. So,
Speaker 1: I mean, hopefully we can get this under wraps, but
Speaker 1: for now, it's just a chaotic thing right now and
Speaker 1: no end in sight really until things get back to normal,
Speaker 1: if they ever do, so, we'll have to keep an
Speaker 1: eye out for all of that. Kevin Rector, reporter at
Speaker 1: the l A. Times, thank you very much for joining us. Thanks.
Speaker 1: I'm Ostar Ramirez and this has been your daily coronavirus Upteve.
Speaker 1: Don't forget that. For today's big news stories, you can
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