Agriculture Suffering Reeling Effects

Farmers dump milk, break eggs, plow under vegetables as COVID 19 continues.

Across the nation farmers are in despair after having to destroying their own products as the COVID 19 pandemic continues.

Even as shoppers buy out food products—and just about everything else in sight—there aren’t enough sales to offset production. Many farmers have found it difficult to repackage their goods for retail and are resorting to destroying produce, dumping milk, and crushing eggs to avoid losing profit. More than half the nation’s restaurants are closed, sales of milk, eggs and cheese are down 70%, and some 44% of the nation’s cheese is sold through food service channels.

Farmers have destroyed millions of pounds of perishable food like tomatoes, lettuce, and green beans because growers have lost a vast number of customers after the coronavirus pandemic struck. Growers said efforts to find retailers have failed, forcing them to plow under their crops.

The largest trade group for produce growers, the United Fresh Produce Association, is trying to persuade the US Department of Agriculture to distribute funding to its members quickly, said Mary Coppola, the association’s vice president of marketing and communications.

South Florida is a major producer of winter vegetables, which are harvested when much of the country isn’t growing produce. “It’s a catastrophe, it really is,” said Tony DiMare, a long-time tomato grower based in Palm Beach County, Fla. “It will be hard to continue unless we can get relief from the [federal] stimulus package or business interruption insurance. Growers felt the pandemic impact early in tourism-dominated areas where many farms sold directly to the local hospitality industry.

On the West Coast, demand for fresh vegetables also plummeted in the rich cropland near the San Francisco metropolitan area. “We are trying to shift strategy away from food service and to retail outlets, but it doesn’t happen overnight, “said Chris Valadez, president of the Grower-Shipper Association of Central California.

Many farmers are planting the same crops again in hopes that the economy will recover in time for the next harvest.