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Comment by dirtyid | Hacker News Reader

Likely coming to the US too, big suppliers are ringing very small producers to fill in orders because US can't get any Mexican farmhands in. Canada is exempting and flying in migrant labours. There's also panic in meat supply chains with Tyson strikes. I'd like to think Canada is safe but prices would probably get nutty if there's excess US demand unless we ban exports. Also migrant labours live like sardines, 20+ sharing a 2 bedroom kind of density. Huge infection vector.

RE: China, last I read, China is nominally food secure - produce enough calories to feed everyone domestically on basic staples. There's also massive waste and spoilage in the supply chain. I don't predict a famine, or 5 missing meals to revolution, but shortage of luxury items is probably expected.

That said, global food supply shortage/shock due to everyone adjusting to COVID is definitely "the cure is worse than the disease" scenario.

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I have friends who are locomotive engineers, none of them have been called out for 3 weeks. Everything is stopping.

I think the US is going to learn why it’s dangerous to centralize food supply. Most of the local farmers in my region (upstate ny) are bankrupt, and much of our production or processing of food is from far away. The half and half from my grocer is processed in Virginia.

The crisis started not even a month ago. What kind of business are people running that go bankrupt in a couple weeks?

At least where I come from, most local farmers can't "go bankrupt" as they are family businesses and have very low operating costs - worst case is sitting idle at home.

There's "family farming" where you have a plot of land handed down to you and you tend to it yourself. A few tractors with PTO extensions, and handled by your family and maybe a few local workers. You'd sell to local grocery chains and markets.

Then there's "family farming", where you have a fleet of GPS-and-climate-control-equipped John Deere's on finance and invest heavily in automated irrigation and sell to wholesalers who provide to national chains.

The former are probably fine. The latter, who provide food for the country, are generally running on huge credit lines with payments to meet and in uncertain times like this can (and regularly do) very quickly go bankrupt.

A bill to bailout farmers will pass the house and senate with broad bipartisan support.

The later in best off. They are businessmen who know their numbers. Their biggest problem now is low crop prices, a situation that goes back to 2015. An increase in demand is the best things for them.

Agriculture is considered essential infrastructure in the US and not stopped. Except they can't get immigrant labor but that is a problem for the small vegetable farmers who don't need or buy the expensive equipment anyway.

Farmers have taken the current administration very hard, and the previous administration wasn’t a bright light either, especially if you’re not a Midwest grain farmer.

Between trade policies (Canadian onion farmers, for example, are importing subsidized onions for 25% of the production cost) and the federal government no longer enforcing anti-trust law (groups of grocery wholesalers are now colluding to set prices via reverse auctions) this is one of the most bleak periods for farmers in the last century.

Other operations are like tenant farmers. Chicken producers are a great example of that. They basically own risk.

Many businesses operate on the edge or need lines of credit that may or may not continue to exist.

Im not sure where you are from, but in general, farming is a cutthroat business with small margins in the US

The exception is rich hobby farmers who have no need to make a profit and some specialty crops.

> ... none of them have been called out for 3 weeks. Everything is stopping.

I had naively assumed (in the US) that agriculture and rail would be considered essential industries and continue as usual? Is this all due to migrant labor issues?

They are, and they do. What you're seeing in Europe and the US is purely a migrant labour shortage.

A bit off topic, but regarding the railroads:

A big chunk of US rail traffic demand over the last decade has been oil, which was already dropping as pipeline construction caught up with demand under the new administration's pipeline policies.

(Tangent: For those not familiar, check out Buffet's meeting/deal with Obama admin re: pipeline policy after Berkshire picked up UP stock for cheap.)

The railroads enjoyed a virtual monopoly on additional oil transport capacity for years, but I suspect the latest drop in oil demand might signal the last element needed to completely end that era.

If true, then they might see a slight/temp bump in rail demand in a few months as petroleum storage fills up, when tanker cars are repositioned as a last resort storage option for over-supply.

Point being, the abrupt drop in rail traffic likely has more to do with the drop in oil demand than grain or any other rail transported product.

Which you could still ultimately blame on covid, but it's not necessarily representative of a collapse in multiple markets. Just oil trimming the excess.

These guys aren’t doing oil runs. In this area, the rail traffic for oil pretty much died last year.

On the other hand, with everyone being at home, and a lot of bullshit tasks being eliminated/deferred (my driver's license is automatically good for an extra 6 months), caloric demand is probably down 10%.

As our muscles atrophy, basal metabolic rates will decrease too.

Undetermined what kind of hit to population COVID will cause, but I'm estimating <1%.

demand is up in my house, proximity to food storage seems to trump caloric needs

Time to hide food around the house and make dinner a hunt.

Same here. For God's sake. I am more worried about getting diabetes than coronavirus. :p

Agreed. And it's not even due to proximity to the fridge (I work from home, distance to fridge didn't change) - but all the stress from watching the entire human civilization being dismantled by the coronavirus is making me hungry more often.

Ironically, for countries that can contain properly, maybe even net gain in life. HK doctors was talking about how flu season ended months early due to all the measures being taken. I'm guessing road fatalities, work place accidents and all sorts of other causes of death is way down.

Not to mention the massive spike in birth rates that I expect 9 months from now (sooner for China)

The prolonged stress is probably shortening some people's lives. Not sure this is a net positive even if we just count in life-years gained.

>massive waste and spoilage in the supply chain.

Maybe in the west, but not the case in China, food is relatively expensive, so very little is wasted, even poisonous rice can find snack factory buyers. Restaurant waste is colleted by small pig farms.

China's food supply chain has a lot of inefficiencies spread over many small farmsteads with old technology and poor conditions instead of highly mechanized large agriculture farms in the west. I don't remember the exact numbers but lost in harvest, storage, transportation, refining was equivalent to total food imports before it reaches consumers. There's also massive waste in food services, the number is something ridiculous like enough to feed 400 million annually. This was from a study from ~5 years ago.

What makes rice poisonous, and how is it made safe for use in snacks?

Possibly referring to this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rice#Bacillus_cereus

Rice with heavy metal such as cadmium, it's pretty common so many don't even test it, those that are unfortunate to be tested can still be sold to rice snack factories.

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