The coronavirus has massively disrupted the food supply chain. Before the crisis, over half of Americans’ food dollars was spent outside the home, at restaurants and other food service locations Many famers who sold produce to restaurants have now found themselves without a market for their crops, as the food-service industry has largely shuttered.

While farmers would like to sell their excess produce to grocery outlets or donate it to food banks, they’re up against an inflexible supply chain that is specialized for the end customer. Longstanding contracts between farmers, restaurants, schools and grocery stores determine how the crops will be packaged and processed. So it’s just not easy to find new markets and set up new distribution channels. 

All this means that mounds of fresh produce are being destroyed or left to rot in the fields. And while the White House announced a billion farm relief package in April, many farmers worry that it won’t be enough.

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Why Farmers Are Destroying Their Crops

Why Farmers Are Destroying Millions Of Pounds Of Food

| Vertical farming | 19 Comments
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19 Comments

  • Sunny Choudhary
    Reply

    Its funny how non farmers are giving suggestion to people who have worked the land for generations.
    They know better about what to do with their produce than you.

  • Larry Smith
    Reply

    The "Corona-virus" is a manufactured HOAX, created by the powers-that-be, whose purpose is to starve, impoverish, and ENSLAVE us !!!!! WAKE UP, PEOPLE !!!!

  • aa. gg.
    Reply

    This stupid evil country of ours, all of this is by design, to make us suffer and impoverished us, through MONEY and destroying crops, this is absolutely outrageous so stupid

  • Dead Parroting
    Reply

    3:48 "All this means is that tens of millions of pounds of fresh produce are either rotting in fields or being destroyed, even as food banks are facing a 70% increase in demand…" That's the (corporate controlled) government we have in place. Rather than pay farmers for a product they have already produced, create trucking routes for out of work truckers and logistics workers, and supply the needy public in a time of crisis, they would rather drop fat stacks of cash directly into the laps of millionaire owners and investors of corporations who run the production and supply chain, bypassing millions of workers and overlooking their needs, in order to keep the wealthy comfortable while the public that elected them and fuel their businesses with labor and revenue get a pittance to, maybe, keep them alive.

  • John Paul Freeman
    Reply

    I implore you all!! To go visit farms near you, see for yourself what the situation is and have conversation with farmers and see if they are happy to let you take as much waste as possible before it rots or is destroyed…
    Food is going to be a weapon to force vaccinate you.
    IF the farmers turn you away and would rather destroy the food…. then take it!!!
    Don't let them win… stop helping them!!!

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