There's a big concern hanging over the food industry: the prospect of production workers testing positive for coronavirus. If significant numbers of farm workers needed to be quarantined, it could prove impossible to replace them.
The continuing availability of agricultural workers illustrates the paradox of America's food supply in the age of COVID-19.
Slaughterhouses, dairies and vegetable producers say that they are open for business, ready to feed the nation. Howard Roth, president of the National Pork Producers Council, wrote in aFood distributors and wholesalers in the middle of that supply chain, meanwhile, are trying to perform logistical miracles, re-directing truckloads of food from shuttered businesses toward places where people now crave it — mainly grocery stores.., a fruit and vegetable wholesaler in Philadelphia.
The problem, Levin says, is that different customers want slightly different things. Schools and other institutions buy boxes of loose"petite" bananas, with 150 bananas in a box."Grocery stores don't want those," he says."We're losing a lot of occasions, regular things like birthday parties or weddings, where people normally get together," says"For the beverage world, those are occasions for consumption.
When it happens, the response likely will go beyond sending that individual home — although that alone can be catastrophic to field workers who are paid, in part, based on their production. This week, the United Farm Workers unionVegetable growers are considering policies that would require quarantine for everyone who worked in close proximity to the infected person. That could easily include two dozen or more people.
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