Perhaps we haven’t even seen the most critical yet unseen danger of Coronavirus outbreak. While most of industries and facilities are shut down – people have realized that perhaps we could live without them.
But the greatest danger of Coronavirus outbreak is when the virus reaches the farmers all over the world in rural areas – affecting agriculture and food production. It has already started happening in USA, India, and most other countries where the lockdown is causing a food shortage which will soon turn into a crisis by the end of April.
This is the harvest season, and lockdown means that most of the produce will not reach the market
Farmers all over the world will be harvesting wheat in April, and if the lockdown affects the availability of equipment and transport – then we are looking at a severe crisis for basic staple food here.
Farming takes months of planning and timely hard work, and it allows very little flexibility to reduce or increase production on demand. Farmers who farm fruits and vegetables are already desperate beyond measure since perishable items are grown on a very strict schedule and even the delay of a day can spoil the entire produce.
Chalmers Carr, a farmer from South Carolina, said in an interview to CNN:
“A peach that is good today is not good tomorrow. That’s how quick things ripen. For blueberries and strawberries, if you leave them on the bush or the vine one extra day, they’re virtually worthless. Even more forgiving crops, like bell peppers, have a short harvesting window of two to five days.”
There is a shortage of workers and drivers, and it’s leading to spoilage of fresh fruits and vegetables
Quarantine and lockdown across countries have brought another trouble to the farmers. Most farmers need labourers in their fields, then they need a supply chain that takes their produce from the fields to warehouses and then to grocery stores.
After the lockdown, there is a shortage of farm workers, warehouse employees, and truck drivers – and that means the fresh fruits and vegetables are getting spoiled in the fields and grains will not be able to reach the stores in time.
Expect a sharp increase in food prices, then an extreme crisis
The economists predict that this will initially cause a sharp spike in the food prices, after which the crisis will arrive and then the pricing model for scarce will float at an arbitrarily high value.
The pandemic is also affecting the import and export of food items. Countries which grow fruits and vegetables to export, are redirecting their supplies within their nation and this could create a shortage in countries like US which rely on importing their food.
Farmers are still expected to go out and work, which puts them at extreme risk
Farmers are the most important members of society right now, apart from medical workers. We have seen that the world can still function with all the CEOs and Businessmen sitting on their asses, but we need the actual working-class people to keep the world running.
The travesty for farmers is that even during the quarantine period, they are expected to go out and work in their fields so that the world doesn’t run out of food. So the farmers run the risk of falling sick, and then being rendered unable to care for their families.
If the farmers also start practising self-isolation then the world will run out of food within weeks
On the other hand, truck drivers not working at the moment has already brought a momentary crisis as the food shortages have begun cropping up at grocery stores due to the bottlenecks in the supply chain.
