Add vegetables and fruit to the growing food supply crisis caused by the coronavirus hitting processing plants.
As it has with keeping meat plants operating, the Trump administration is being urged to keep canning operations going or risk seeing vast amounts of food plowed under, likely leading to empty shelves at grocery stores and food banks this summer and fall.
“It’s important that we don’t have issues with food security,” said Republican Indiana Sen. Mike Braun, a key member of the Senate Agriculture Committee. “We need to be careful.”
Braun said that he is urging Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue to add vegetable and fruit processing plants in President Trump’s executive order keeping meat processing facilities open during the coronavirus crisis.
“It remains critical that our nation’s canneries and frozen food suppliers are able to keep shelves stocked with a full supply of non-perishable foods,” he wrote in a letter.
Braun, who has a businessman’s perspective on the crisis, added, “This industry operates on extremely short harvest and processing windows. It is particularly vulnerable to shortages in labor and personal protective equipment (PPE), or other regulatory and administrative barriers that could disrupt the harvest window. For example, our nation’s annual supply of canned and frozen corn, green beans, tomatoes, peaches and peas are harvested and packed within the span of two to three months.”
In an interview, he was especially worried about how a can shortage would hit food banks and those who aid the poor. Braun, back home in Indiana, also noted that local farmers are dumping milk because of consumer and processing issues. Farmers in Florida are already plowing under tomatoes, squash, and other crops.
He said that the nation is at a critical crossroads of reopening the economy before it falls into recession.
While urging care not to move too fast in areas where the virus is still hot, he is pushing for a gradual resumption of business and is concerned that further delays will sink the economy into a recession similar to the years that followed the 2008-2009 economic crisis.
