An Economist with Kerns and Associates expects the economic pressure on the pork supply chain resulting from COVID-19 to get worse before it gets better. Disruptions caused by efforts to contain COVID-19 have impacted all points of the pork production, processing and delivery chain.
Dr. Steve Meyer, an economist with Kerns and Associates, describes this as a demand disruption piled on top of an ample supply satiation with a roadblock thrown in.
Clip-Dr. Steve Meyer- Kerns and Associates:
The first thing that happened was the shelter in place safety precautions that have been taken all over the United States and Canada that reduced food service demand dramatically. Retail demand has been very good because people have had to buy more product through grocery stores but the problem is you can shift products very well between those two. The best example of that being bacon, which has been our darling for the last few years because of its use as food service.
Those lines that produce food service bacon, that product coming out of those lines looks very different from the product that goes into our grocery stores. You don't just flip the switch and go from food service to retail. The food service operation side has certainly been hurt. The retail side has been hurt because they've spent a significant amounts of time in the United States without stock.
If you walk into an empty meat case, there’s no way to generate sales out of that rascal. Obviously, the producer is getting hurt by these very low prices that tend to go lower every day and the fact that now we can't get our hogs moved. There very well could be either market hogs or the weaned pigs that are following them into a barn that are going to be destroyed. That represents a huge loss and, because of the loss of food service demand, packers have struggled as well and now some of them have to close plants.
Source : Farmscape