Americans are eating out less, while that may be healthier for an individual’s budget, it’s impacting both the farm industry and the restaurant industry. So much of farm production is for commercial food, meaning that bags of onions, tons of dairy, and thousands of chickens are used to going to restaurants and cafes. But now we are seeing what happens when the restaurants close.  Starbucks is a huge consumer of milk, yet many of their stores have been shuttered by the virus. The tons of gallons of milk that Starbucks normally buys from farms daily, is now only needed every three days. But milk production doesn’t stop just because schools and Starbucks are closed. Cows still needed to be milked several times daily, so the milk was being dumped.

As noted in the article, “Dumped Milk, Smashed Eggs, Plowed Vegetables: The Food Waste of the Pandemic”, most Americans do not know how to make their own onion rings at home. This means that large bags of onion primarily bought by restaurants are not bought by a regular consumer. An onion is easy enough to rebag, but other foods are much harder and more expensive to repackage. A carton of milk for a school kid is not easily repurposed into a gallon for a family. Farms can’t afford to change the packaging of their product, so they dispose of it.  Farmers are dumping their dairy, crushing their eggs, and burying their produce. 

 In this current period of American life, there are so many people who are going without. Thousands of jobs have been lost, and savings rapidly evaporating; so you would think this would be a time of less waste. However, the opposite seems to be true, food banks lack the volunteer strength or the refrigerator space to absorb all the excess produce, dairy, and meat and farms cannot afford to grow and transport produce just for charity. It will be interesting and potentially frightening to see how the new crisis affecting farms will involve. How many farms will go bankrupt? How will this impact the food we find at groceries stores? Will it get more expensive or will the price drop? Covid-19 is revealing insecurities in our food system when we can’t depend on a culture of eating out. 

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/11/business/coronavirus-destroying-food.html