How have food supplies remained so stable?

Sheepdish1

How have food shortages been avoided in most countries to date even during a pandemic? There hasn’t been any major shortages of food in countries that have a normally stable food chain.

A lot of the countries that supply food are being badly hit with Covid-19 and I’m trying to understand how there hasn’t been food shortages of certain products world wide at this stage. Or are there countries suffering more severe shortages of food than usual?

I’m not overly familiar with the overall food supply chain but I’m very grateful to live in a country that doesn’t have easy access to food. How are the food supply chains not being affected severely during a pandemic ? Or are they being affected but we thankfully aren’t being affected?

What Username Guidelines

Sheepdish1 wrote: »

How have food shortages been avoided in most countries to date even during a pandemic? There hasn’t been any major shortages of food in countries that have a normally stable food chain.

A lot of the countries that supply food are being badly hit with Covid-19 and I’m trying to understand how there hasn’t been food shortages of certain products world wide at this stage. Or are there countries suffering more severe shortages of food than usual?

I’m not overly familiar with the overall food supply chain but I’m very grateful to live in a country that doesn’t have easy access to food. How are the food supply chains not being affected severely during a pandemic ? Or are they being affected but we thankfully aren’t being affected?

There was a thread on some things that were short initially - obviously toilet roll, hand sanitizer, disinfectant, etc - but other things too https://touch.boards.ie/thread/2058071901/

Supply chains are incredibly robust and, at least for high-volume consumer products, very flexible and reactive to demand. At the start of April for example my local super valu had walls of toilet roll as they overreacted to demand from mid March, sure most people had months of supply

The other thing is that in terms of “badly hit”, I’d be thinking places like Spain and Italy. When it started over there I had images in my head of no one going to work and people dying in the streets given some reporting of it. The situation was indeed extremely grim, but not apocalyptic, essential workers continued to work as normal. Same with all transport operators.

Most of the shortages have been from increased demand as opposed to supply chain issues. There were issues with eggs but it was unrelated. Even here where meat plants were hit all over the country, there was very little interruption to supply.

hurikane

Wrong thread.

Harry Palmr

The only shortages were initial and could have occured when meat plants etc started to show Covid cases but right things were done and processing restarted after a few weeks which is plenty quick enough. Bulk transport of goods has been unaffected as far as I can tell, the production has been kept up with Covid aware systems in place on farms and other production units.

Fruit pickers

Yellow_Fern

The extremely powerful profit motive.

ILoveYourVibes

Very few people have been infected ...and also very few people currently have it.

Essential workers have been urged to go to work.

Its amazing the crap society doesn't need.

Yellow_Fern

Yellow_Fern wrote: »

The extremely powerful profit motive.

It’s more the extremely powerful not have millions die of starvation in the the streets motive. Every country has endeavoured to maintain food production, processing, distribution and sales regardless of what restrictions were put in place

Victor

1. We can normally survive from year to year with what food we produce. Not every product is available all year, but through imports, freezing, preserving, etc. many products are available for most of the year.
2. We are still eating about the same amount of food. It might be slightly different food (less dining out, more eating in, less draught beer, more cans), but overall it balances.
3. Food is still being produced and distributed as before. Again there might be slight differences, e.g. truck drivers not accompanying their cargoes on ferries and staying in their own countr, but it is much the same.
4. Brexit - supermarkets and others have stockpiled vast amounts of their products.
5. Even when customers stockpiled, e.g. with toilet roll, they soon realised they had overdone things and scaled back on such purchases over the following months.

Yellow_Fern

Deleted User wrote: »

It’s more the extremely powerful not have millions die of starvation in the the streets motive. Every country has endeavoured to maintain food production, processing, distribution and sales regardless of what restrictions were put in place

But it is really an effort of so many. Its not run by civil servants, rather millions of lorry drivers, shop assistants, farmers, butchers, fuel merchants, vets etc, who motivated by bettering themselves despite the unknowable risk.