Author: Smith

With estimates that 20+% of our U.S. packing house capacity is presently offline as a result of COVID-19 health concerns with plant workers, it’s likely that meat case inventories will see more disruption in the coming weeks. Beginning at the 3 minute mark of this week’s Farm Page, WLRY’s Mike O’Riley and Stan Smith discuss how long this might go on.

The impact of COVID-19 on the meatpacking industry has been fast-paced and staggering, as shown by the time lapse map below from Meatingplace

Thanks to Ruff Seed Farms, Fairfield Federal, Bay Food Market, the Fairfield County Cattlemen Association, Hugus Fruit Farm and Rise Land Company for your continued support of The Farm Page.

Want to learn why some of Ohio’s dairy farms are having to dump milk down the drain while some stores are limiting purchases of milk? Listen in yo the 88.9 FM WLRY FARM Page on Saturday morning at 7:00 a.m. with Crawford County Extension Educator and dairy farmer, Jason Hartschuh or catch our interview at the link below.

https://u.osu.edu/…/files/2020/04/HartschuhDairyApr.2020.mp3

Thanks to our sponsors – Ruff Seed Farms, Fairfield Federal, Bay Food Market, the Fairfield County Cattlemen Association, Hugus Fruit Farm and Rise Land Co. – for sponsoring the WLRY Farm Page and making the broadcast of these interviews possible!

Three weeks ago we visited on the WLRY Farm Page about how there was plenty of livestock and adequate supplies of meat locally, and across the U.S., but the logistics of getting it to retail outlets in a timely fashion had become a challenge as consumers were suddenly purchasing more as they began preparing more meals at home. The ‘stay at home’ orders caused restaurants to close, but meat and other food sales to escalate more quickly than meat case inventories could be replenished.

That situation has subsided, but now another challenge to meat supplies has surfaced. Some packing houses that harvest livestock throughout the U.S. are being closed, or harvest being slowed due to workers contracting the COVID-19 virus. Last week JBS closed a beef harvest facility in Pennsylvania for two weeks due to worker illness. Tyson has also closed some of their pork packing facilities.

More recently, Smithfield closed down a pork processing plant in South Dakota for three days in order to do a deep cleaning hoping to prevent further spread of the virus among workers. Shortly after that Smithfield announced that the plant, which employs 3700 workers and accounts for 4% to 5% of the country’s pork production, would be closed until further notice due to Continue reading →

Early on as Ohio Governor DeWine was issuing ‘stay at home’ orders and encouraging social distancing resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic, some grocery shoppers were experiencing occasional meat case shortages.  On his March 20 morning show, Mike O’Riley visited with Stan Smith about why we experienced those temporary shortages in the meat cases, and the longer term meat supply situation. Thanks to our sponsors – Ruff Seed Farms, Fairfield Federal, Bay Food Market, the Fairfield County Cattlemen Association, Hugus Fruit Farm and Rise Land Co. – you can hear that interview here!

Community Interviews