Missouri Farm Bureau Director Eric Bohl said the COVID-19 pandemic has left everyone in the industry in the same distressed predicament.
“Prices have been plummeting on everything, corn, soybean, mike, pork and beef,” Bohl said. “They’re all going down because demand has fallen so much and the economy remains shut down. No one’s going out to restaurants; schools are closed meaning no demand for milk and other things. I don’t think anyone will be having a good year and the goal now is to just keep them going so hopefully they can bounce back next year.”
But with the hit to the industry being as sharp as it has been, Bohl said surviving the crisis may be harder for some farmers than others.
“The thing we’re seeing is that this pandemic is having the most impact on livestock,” he said. “You’re starting to see whole plants shut down, like in South Dakota, where they just closed a pork packing plant. Things like that causes backup in the whole chain. When animals have to stay on the farm longer before finding someplace to go, it really causes havoc.”
Things aren’t much better in the cattle industry, where Bohl said higher-end cuts of meat once reserved for prime steakhouses suddenly have no place to go, causing further strain on the industry.
In all, Bohl pegs the restaurant and school market farmed goods consumption at about 40%.
“All that product’s got nowhere to go now,” he said. “It’s really creating a tough market.”
All the uncertainty comes on the heels of heavy flooding in 2019 that left more than 1.3 million acres of land destroyed.
“It’s possible there could be loss of businesses in the agricultural industry from this because it wasn’t in great shape to begin with,” Bohl added. “While other parts of the economy may have been humming along, the industry was riding a six-year low.”
Bohl said a few of the actions taken or announced by the federal government may be able to help stave off some of the damage and keep some operations in business.
“The devil will prove to be in the details,” he said. “The goal is not to make anyone have a profitable, but to keep them in business. I think everyone is still holding out hope that things will be better by this time next year.”
