System failure

As we face empty grocery shelves, the fragility of our highly consolidated food system has become clear during the crisis of Covid-19. We see a market that lacks the resiliency to shift supply lines and fill those shelves, but also a food system that does not provide (and in most cases never has provided) fair wages or adequate safety protection to workers.

While farmers have worked below their cost of production for decades, they now face the prospect of lost markets and even lower prices for livestock. Milk and produce that cannot move to processing plants must be destroyed.

Farmers who are part of the industrialized system may now face the task of “depopulating” their livestock because the system has failed. The rampant spread of Covid-19 among workers has closed processing plants across the county. Losing their markets is an economic tragedy for farmers while people go hungry. Having to dispose of their crops or animals is emotionally heart-breaking. Yet forcing meat processing workers to risk their lives is downright criminal. Industrial farming and processing is not a good system for farmers. It clearly doesn’t ensure there will be no food shortages. And it is inhumane to animals and workers.

As Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers considers making direct payments to farmers, he must consider the small farmers and farm workers rather than targeting the aid to commodity growers and agribusiness corporations as happened with previous Covid-19 aid packages. The governor should keep in mind that a more diversified food system, one with more small farms and local processing facilities, rather than one in a constant state of consolidation, is much more resilient and less susceptible to the weaknesses that we see occurring due to this pandemic.

More than 40 years ago as a graduate student gathering research data, I spent considerable time in what was then the John Morrell plant in Sioux Falls, SD. The pace of the work and the speed of production, while intense, were a fraction of what is expected of workers today. Today, working shoulder-to-shoulder at present production speeds, safe physical distancing is impossible.

The workers I knew were union members, they were paid well enough to buy cars, homes and send their kids to college. Over the past decades, the workforce is increasingly made up of immigrants and minorities, people who have been atarget for President Trump. Meat processing was always dangerous work, but Covid-19 has upped the ante.

Excerpted from: 'That This System Would Fail Was Entirely Predictable'.

Commondreams.org