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Meat Production Not Down Much, Corn & Soybean Planting Way Up from 2019

By Cory Allen Heidelberger on 2020-06-30

Despite outbreaks of coronavirus at meat factories across South Dakota and the nation, neither pandemic nor plant shutdowns appear to be leading to the foodpocalypse Smithfield CEO Ken Sullivan warned us about in April. The USDA says we’re making about as much meat as last year:

According to the United States Department of Agriculture, meat production was down somewhat between January and May of 2020 compared to January and May of 2019.

Total meat production from January-May 2019 was 22,425.4 million pounds. During that same period in 2020, it was 22,030.2 million pounds. That’s a difference of 395.2 million pounds or a drop of about two percent [Todd Epp, “USDA Reports Meat Production Numbers Down Slightly During the Coronavirus,” KELO Radio, 2020.06.30].

Not only not down but way, way up amidst coronavirus is our crop acreage. USDA says that, compared to wet wet 2019, South Dakota farmers have planted 24% more acres of corn, 49% more acres of soybeans, 20% more oil sunflower, 4% more sorghum, and 41% more oats. Nationwide, we have 3% more acres in corn, 11% more in soybeans, but 11% less in cotton.

Alas, California agrindustrialists say their growers are going to lose $141M to $480M on leafy greens, $144M to $280M on berries, $140M on table grapes, $164M to $311M on citrus, $486M to $728M on nuts, $49M to $125M on cherries and tree fruit, and $450M on other vegetables, largely from fresh fruits and vegetables that were in season when coronavirus fired up and thus couldn’t be sold to the usual big food service buyers.

Published in South Dakota

8 Comments

  1. Debbo 2020-06-30 20:43

    My quick guesstimate of crops in my neighborhood is that cornfields outnumber beans.

    I’ve seen 3 fields of a crop I can’t identify as I drive past. It just occurred to me they could be hemp. Any report on SD’s hemp crop?

  3. Cory Allen Heidelberger Post author | 2020-07-01 09:23

    The Cheyenne River, Flandreau Santee, Oglala, Rosebud, Sisseton-Wahpeton, Standing Rock, and Yankton tribes all have USDA-approved hemp plans. USDA indicates the State of South Dakota has not yet submitted its plan for review.

  4. John Tsitrian 2020-07-01 09:50

    Some of the production slack is being taken up by imports. We’ve imported over a billion tons of beef through June, up 3.3% over last year during this period. Haven’t found numbers for pork and poultry. My general sense is that we could have imported our way through a crisis, as I’m sure Brazilian-owned meat giant JBS wouldn’t mind seeing. https://beef2live.com/story-united-states-beef-imports-204-107547

  5. Cory Allen Heidelberger Post author | 2020-07-01 10:34

    Interesting observation about increased meat imports, John. I pause and think that we couldn’t rely on imports, because you’d think meatpacking plants everywhere would be hit by coronavirus and thus decrease production… but then Mother Jones reports that Europe’s abattoirs haven’t seen outbreaks nearly as bad as ours, because their governments have leaned toward protecting workers rather than corporate profits and because Europeans run smaller slaughterhouses at slower line speeds:

    With slaughter operations spread across smaller plants, German meat companies have been able to close individual facilities with coronavirus cases and shift production to other locations. “You don’t reap the same economies of scale,” [UN Food and Agriculture Organization’s Josef] Schmidhuber said, “but you are more resilient to shocks like Covid-19.”

    So far, there’s been no sign of the sort of meat shortage like the one underway at US grocery stores, says Tim Koch, an analyst at the German agricultural market research firm AMI. “We have plenty of meat for sure,” he says, though he noted that could change if a larger share, like 20 to 30 percent, of German slaughterhouses were to close.

    Line speed is another factor. American meat workers aren’t just working in larger facilities, they are often working faster than their European counterparts, too, says James Ritchie, assistant general secretary of the Geneva-based International Union of Food, Agricultural, Hotel, Restaurant, Catering, Tobacco and Allied Workers’ Associations, a federation of 427 trade unions from across the world.

    Slaughter line speeds have long presented major concerns for worker health and food safety in the United States, where some employees have resorted to wearing diapers because they don’t have time for bathroom breaks, Ritchie says. Those conditions could make it impossible to comply with coronavirus precautions, he said: “You can’t even stop to cough into your hand or your elbow because the line speeds are so, so fast” [Bridget Huber, “How Did Europe Avoid the COVID-19 Catastrophe Ravaging US Meatpacking Plants?” Mother Jones, 2020.06.13].

    Slow down, stay small, protect your meat supply. Not that hard. Pass the bratwurst.

  6. Debbo 2020-07-01 13:45

    UK farmers are putting heavy pressure on their PM, Boris Johnson, to ban chlorine washed chicken and hormone treated beef as he works on a trade deal with the USA. Rural areas are a big part of his base.

    In the meantime, the Farmers Union is pressuring Economic Oaf to get a trade deal done for farmers here. Gonna get dicey .

    is.gd/0zDP85 No paywall.

  7. jerry 2020-07-01 15:19

    Meat production is full of Covid19

    “Revealed: Covid-19 outbreaks at meat-processing plants in US being kept quiet
    Testing has found positive cases at North Carolina facilities, but officials refuse to release the information” https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/jul/01/revealed-covid-19-outbreaks-meat-processing-plants-north-carolina

    Testing and those darn other precautions are just to much work. Let’s import some products from Brazil, we all know that country is Covid free.

  8. Debbo 2020-07-02 16:30

    Get ready for robots in your fields. From Numlock News by Walt Hickey.

    “No Tiller, All Killer

    “Over 900 million acres were farmed in the United States in 2017, and 104 million of those acres were farmed no-till. That’s up 8 percent since 2012, and means that those acres were farmed without plowing or cultivation techniques that disturb the soil and kill weeds, but also disrupt the microbial life of the soil and cause topsoil loss and watershed destruction. The trade-off of no-till is then relying on chemical weed control, which can be some gnarly stuff. One solution in development is robotic mowers that keep weeds at bay while allowing plants to grow without a chemical shock and awe campaign. The future of this — one being worked on by a U.K. based agricultural robotics startup — is more targeted weed removal with devices that could autonomously patrol for weeds in fields. Chemical weed control costs between $25 and $60 per acre, so a device below that is the target.

    Georgie Smith, OneZero”

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