Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff, a production of I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: Hey brain Stuff, Lauren Vogelbam here. If you've been to
Speaker 1: a supermarket in the past month or so, you may
Speaker 1: have been shocked by the empty shelves and curtains of
Speaker 1: eggs that cost twice as much as usual. You may
Speaker 1: also have seen the news that a major meat processing
Speaker 1: plant had to shut down indefinitely because employees tested positive
Speaker 1: for COVID nineteen and just in time for spring harvest.
Speaker 1: Farmers are concerned about possible shortages of farm labor because
Speaker 1: of hold ups and workers visas, which could mean blueberries
Speaker 1: and other crops could rot in the fields. Even with
Speaker 1: all of this grim news, the U. S Department of
Speaker 1: Agriculture says that there is no nationwide shortage of food
Speaker 1: due to the novel coronavirus, but these still escalating crisis
Speaker 1: clearly has put stress on the supply chain that normally
Speaker 1: enables food stuffs to get from farm fields to americans
Speaker 1: dinner tables, and to do it so efficiently that many
Speaker 1: of us probably barely even think about where our usual
Speaker 1: bountiful supply of fresh fruit, vegetables, meats, and countless varieties
Speaker 1: of pasta. Even comes from the risk of COVID nineteen
Speaker 1: has forced food processing plants to utilize precautions that have
Speaker 1: slowed production lines and reduced the variety of products in
Speaker 1: the interest of efficiency. Additionally, as shutdown orders deter Americans
Speaker 1: from dining out, the surge in demand for food that
Speaker 1: can be prepared at home and the difficulty of making
Speaker 1: it available to consumers while maintaining social distancing has compelled
Speaker 1: grocery stores to revamp their ways of doing business on
Speaker 1: the fly. Even after the pandemic eventually passes into memory,
Speaker 1: the changes and innovations that resulted from it may permanently
Speaker 1: alter the way that Americans get their food. One of
Speaker 1: the biggest challenges has been that the pandemic forced a
Speaker 1: sudden drastic change in where and what Americans eat. We
Speaker 1: spoke with Doug Baker, the vice president of industry relations
Speaker 1: for f m I that's Food Marketplace in core Paraded,
Speaker 1: an association that represents the interests of food producers and
Speaker 1: retailers across the supply chain and to the government. For
Speaker 1: every dollar that Americans spend on food, fifty four cents
Speaker 1: of that dollar goes to eating in restaurants or buying
Speaker 1: take out meals, but starting in mid March, as states
Speaker 1: began imposing lockdown and stay at home orders, all of
Speaker 1: that abruptly changed, with schools and businesses closing down in
Speaker 1: rapid succession. Americans of all ages soon we're eating all
Speaker 1: of their meals at home and needing more and more groceries.
Speaker 1: Baker said it was almost a perfect storm. The sudden
Speaker 1: change created massive problems for farmers and food producers, who
Speaker 1: were used to growing and packaging a lot of their
Speaker 1: output in industrial sized quantities for restaurants and school cafeteria kitchens.
Speaker 1: As a New York Times article describes, without restaurants frying
Speaker 1: onion rings of food that people seldom make it home,
Speaker 1: there suddenly was no market for fifty pound sacks of
Speaker 1: onions those are about twenty two kilos did for the
Speaker 1: vast quantities of milk that go into Latte's and other
Speaker 1: drinks of coffee shops. That left farmers with little choice
Speaker 1: but to dump or bury their output. At the same time, paradoxically,
Speaker 1: ordinary consumers were clamoring for different foods and other products
Speaker 1: that they were afraid they might not be able to
Speaker 1: get in the future. Baker said early on it was
Speaker 1: home cleaning products, household care, personal health. Then as we
Speaker 1: came into the major spike and people were asked to
Speaker 1: be able to shelter in place, the concern became being
Speaker 1: able to access food. Initially, people cleared the shelves of
Speaker 1: perishable products such as milk, eggs, and bread, and gradually,
Speaker 1: as fears of quarantines rose, they began grabbing up canned
Speaker 1: and frozen vegetables, pasta, ramen, noodles, and other stuff that
Speaker 1: would last longer in a crisis. A poll conducted in
Speaker 1: mid March on behalf of the online loan marketplace lending
Speaker 1: Tree found that sixty three percent of Americans had purchased
Speaker 1: supplies related to the coronavirus outbreak, such as food, cleaning
Speaker 1: products and medication, with the average consumer spending a hundred
Speaker 1: and seventy eight dollars and forty four cents. This unprecedented
Speaker 1: surgeon demand peaked during the third week in March, with
Speaker 1: the nation's grocery retailers seeing sales go up by thirty
Speaker 1: Baker said it was sort of like having Easter every day.
Speaker 1: After that, demand eased off a bit, with people following
Speaker 1: government orders to stay at home or else not feeling
Speaker 1: comfortable going out and possibly risking infection, or else already
Speaker 1: having a stockpile of supplies. But by then the shift
Speaker 1: in consumption already had rocked the nation's food supply chain,
Speaker 1: in which products passed through a variety of stages before
Speaker 1: they reach the people who eat them. A food that's
Speaker 1: grown on farms goes to processing plants, where it's made
Speaker 1: into products and packaged. Then it's shipped to warehouses, which
Speaker 1: in turn deliver it to grocery stores, where it's picked
Speaker 1: off the shelves and tossed into shopping carts by the
Speaker 1: eventual users. Usually, in normal times, the different parts of
Speaker 1: the supply chain to maintain several months worth of safety
Speaker 1: stocks so that they can cope with fluctuations in supply
Speaker 1: and demand. But according to Baker, when the pandemic crisis hit,
Speaker 1: those backup supplies throughout the system were used up in
Speaker 1: just ten days, and replenishing those supplies of food has
Speaker 1: been tougher because of the novel coronavirus. So far, only
Speaker 1: a few facilities actually have had to suspend operations due
Speaker 1: to COVID nineteen cases among the workforce, but staying open
Speaker 1: has necessitated changes in practices that can slow down and
Speaker 1: limit output. We talked about this via email with Gregory P. Martin,
Speaker 1: a poultry Extension educator for Penn State Extension. He explained
Speaker 1: these precautions are necessary to help protect workers who may
Speaker 1: work in close proximity to each other on production or
Speaker 1: processing lines. Hand sanitizing and dawning outerwear are normal practices
Speaker 1: and food processing plants, so additional personal protection equipment would
Speaker 1: be another layer of protection for the worker. Also spoke
Speaker 1: with Martin buck Naviche, a senior food Safety Extension associate
Speaker 1: in the Food Science Department at Penn State University whose
Speaker 1: name I hope I said correctly. He told us it
Speaker 1: has been an adjustment for facilities to adjust, for example,
Speaker 1: to enact spacing where possible and other precautions. We may
Speaker 1: be able to tell more after a few more weeks
Speaker 1: regarding supply chain issues. In order to keep production rolling
Speaker 1: with those added measures, Bucknevitch said, quote, many operations have
Speaker 1: simplified their product offerings, and this is one thing that's
Speaker 1: noticeable at the grocery store. Less selection, for example, and
Speaker 1: fewer sizes. In order to cope with the demand, food
Speaker 1: manufacturers started cutting the warehouse step out of the chain,
Speaker 1: shipping from their plants directly to supermarkets. But at the
Speaker 1: retail end, other challenges emerged. Stores rushed to install plexiglass snees,
Speaker 1: shields for cashiers and equip employees with protective gear. Consumers
Speaker 1: increasingly begin ordering their food online, either from stores or
Speaker 1: food delivery services such as Instacart, Fresh Direct, and Peapod.
Speaker 1: According to Baker, before the pandemic, about three percent of
Speaker 1: grocery stores business was e commerce, and while hard figures
Speaker 1: aren't yet available, retailers have seen rises ranging from twelve
Speaker 1: to twenty. This is significant because buying groceries over the
Speaker 1: Internet turns out to be surprisingly labor intensive. The seemingly
Speaker 1: fairly small job of your going physically to the store,
Speaker 1: selecting items from shelves and bringing them to a register
Speaker 1: for checkout and bagging turns into a flood. When so
Speaker 1: many people offload the work onto grocers, there's only so
Speaker 1: much labor to handle those orders, which is forcing grocery
Speaker 1: stores to schedule curbside pickup and delivery windows days in
Speaker 1: advance due to the demand. Additionally, the sudden surge in
Speaker 1: e commerce means that store employees or delivery service workers
Speaker 1: are grabbing groceries and products off the same shelves that
Speaker 1: old school in person shoppers are still rely ing upon,
Speaker 1: so there's not as much there for them. To fix
Speaker 1: that problem, Baker says, some retailers have been setting up
Speaker 1: separate automated micro fulfillment centers, which get their own shipments
Speaker 1: of groceries. The micro fulfillment centers are grocery industry trend
Speaker 1: that will most likely accelerate, according to Baker. Additionally, even
Speaker 1: before COVID nineteen, retailers such as Walmart had begun to
Speaker 1: look at using autonomous vehicles to make deliveries. At some
Speaker 1: point in the future, it may be that when you
Speaker 1: order groceries online, robots will handle much of the process
Speaker 1: of getting it to you. That could make it a
Speaker 1: lot easier to get food during future pandemics. But for
Speaker 1: the present, the American food supply chain will continue to
Speaker 1: depend upon human labor, even with added precautions. That means
Speaker 1: our supply chain is vulnerable to COVID nineteen, especially if
Speaker 1: the virus rapidly spreads in rural areas the way that
Speaker 1: it has hit urban populations. We spoke via email with
Speaker 1: Karan Grotra, a professor of Operations, technolog G and Information
Speaker 1: Management at Cornell University. He said categories which are produced
Speaker 1: an indoor, large scale labor intensive plants such as meat,
Speaker 1: are most at risk as social distancing is harder in
Speaker 1: these factories, Employees are financially insecure, labor is often migrant labor,
Speaker 1: and there's limited access to healthcare for these employees, so
Speaker 1: they are vulnerable, and given the high level of consolidation,
Speaker 1: even one facility or one breakout can take significant supply
Speaker 1: off the market. Labor is the weakest link in these categories.
Speaker 1: Today's episode was written by Patrick J. Tiger and produced
Speaker 1: by Tyler Clang. For more in this and lots of
Speaker 1: other topics, visit how stuffworks dot com. Brain Stuff is
Speaker 1: production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts my heart Radio,
Speaker 1: visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
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