JUDY WOODRUFF: COVID-19 is disrupting the
farming industry on many levels. The Trump
administration recently announced that it
will spend $19 billion to help farmers.
But, as Stephanie Sy reports, they aren't
the only ones who need help.
STEPHANIE SY: The cows still have to be milked,
but dairy farmers are dumping millions of
gallons of their output.
Endless acres of lettuce remain unpicked at
the peak of the spring harvest..
JACK VESSEY, President, Vessey and Company:
It is very difficult, not just for me on the
economic side, but emotional side as well.
STEPHANIE SY: And tractors are destroying
crops, plowing them back into the ground.
MAN: You can see all these beautiful beans
on these plants that were scheduled to go
to the restaurant industry.
STEPHANIE SY: The closure of restaurants and
schools has shut down the food service industry,
forcing farmers to make difficult decisions.
But if there's so much food, why are grocery
store freezers so empty? Repackaging and rerouting
supply is an involved process, says Dave Puglia,
president and CEO of the Western Growers Association.
DAVE PUGLIA, President and CEO, Western Growers
Association: If you think about a grocery
store, you're going to see something on the
shelf that's packaged for you, as a consumer.
You go to a restaurant, they're buying in
bulk. So we can't, unfortunately, flip that
infrastructure over all that quickly.
STEPHANIE SY: And what about donating the
food to charitable food organizations, so
desperately in demand right now? Food banks
only have so much storage, and getting the
surplus to them also costs money.
DAVE PUGLIA: That farmer has to decide whether
to spend the money to harvest it, which is
the most expensive part of farming in the
produce industry.
So, if you already know you're taking on a
100 percent loss, do you want to make it 160
percent by harvesting a product that doesn't
have a profitable home?
STEPHANIE SY: Meanwhile, the livestock industry
is facing other problems. Meat processing
plants around the country have suspended operations
due to outbreaks, including one of the nation's
largest pork plants in South Dakota.
The Smithfield Foods plant in Sioux Falls
had hundreds of employees test positive for
COVID-19, and at least one has died. In rural
Georgia and Iowa, the virus has claimed the
lives of six employees of Tyson Foods, and
other Tyson plants have dozens of cases.
And in Greeley, Colorado the JBS beef plant
has temporarily closed after at least four
workers died of the virus. One of them was
Saul Sanchez, whose daughter and co-workers
accuse the plant of not taking precautions
soon enough.
BEATRIZ SANCHEZ RANGEL, Daughter: Now they
have everything. Now they're spacing them.
Now they're putting pictures everywhere. But
it's too late. I mean, it's not too late for
those employees, but it's too late for my
dad.
STEPHANIE SY: The plant closures may be necessary
to ensure worker safety, but they also mean
farmers are running out of places to take
their livestock, and the potential for a meat
shortage looms.
Thom Petersen is Minnesota's agriculture commissioner.
THOM PETERSEN, Minnesota Agriculture Commissioner:
It's been really vast. I mean, it's really
affecting just about every sector of agriculture
right now.
Pork is probably hit the hardest, but also
egg farmers, our ethanol farmers, beef. It's
really across the board. And it's going to
get worse, probably, before it gets better.
STEPHANIE SY: That may also hold true for
farmworkers.
MANUEL BRUNO, Farmworker (through translator):
We work in the fields, and then we have to
put in extra effort to get the work done,
so that families have food in their homes.
If there are no workers doing this, there
won't be food in the stores.
STEPHANIE SY: In the COVID-19 pandemic, they're
considered by the government essential workers,
but many are working without essential benefits.
BERNARDITA, Farmworker (through translator):
I have to work to pay the rent, the bills.
These things don't wait for you.
STEPHANIE SY: Like many other farmworkers,
if Bernardita falls sick or stops working,
she doesn't have a safety net. According to
the U.S. Department of Labor, about half of
farmworkers are undocumented immigrants.
BERNARDITA (through translator): I don't have
papers. I don't have the same benefits as
someone who has papers.
STEPHANIE SY: Dr. Eva Galvez is the daughter
of farmworkers from Mexico and works at a
community health center outside Portland,
Oregon.
Tell me what your greatest concerns are when
it comes to farmworkers' health and COVID,
19.
DR. EVA GALVEZ, Family Physician: You have
got families living together. So it makes
social distancing hard. We know that, oftentimes,
they are traveling to work in a truck, and
they're all piling up together.
And it's really hard to do social distancing
there. Even things -- something as simple
as washing your hands off can be really difficult
if your handwashing station is far from your
station.
STEPHANIE SY: And farmworkers that spoke to
the "NewsHour" said they weren't getting adequate
information.
SALVADOR, Farmworker (through translator):
They have never spoken to us about the virus.
Everything we know, the care we take, the
precautions, we know thanks to the news, what
we watch on television, on social networks.
STEPHANIE SY: That's only part of what leaves
these workers more vulnerable, says Armando
Elenes Secretary Treasurer of the United Farm
Workers.
ARMANDO ELENES, Secretary Treasurer, United
Farm Workers: The stimulus bill excluded workers
that are undocumented, so they can't collect
unemployment. The additional $600 a week that
other people are getting, they can't get that.
STEPHANIE SY: Some farmers do have protections
in place.
Jim Cochran is the owner of Swanton Berry
Farms in Davenport, California, a union grower
with 25 workers, who have benefits.
JIM COCHRAN, Owner, Swanton Berry Farm: You
know, I don't want anybody who's sick working
at the farm. A way to assure that is to pay
their wages during any time that they might
be sick.
STEPHANIE SY: But even farmworkers under a
union contract are concerned.
VERONICA, Farmworker (through translator):
What would happen if one of my colleagues
got sick with this virus? The company would
automatically close. They would send us home.
What are we going to do without getting paid?
STEPHANIE SY: In California, there may be
some temporary relief, after Governor Gavin
Newsom announced $75 million in state funding
for undocumented workers. From the crop pickers
to farm owners, COVID-19 is taking its toll.
THOM PETERSEN: We have had five years of down
prices. We have had farmers that I know personally
take their own lives. We have had a lot of
farmers with really high stress.
STEPHANIE SY: Pressures on U.S. farmers were
compounded in recent years by the Trump administration's
trade war with China. Bankruptcies for family
farms shot up 20 percent last year.
THOM PETERSEN: And so I just ask people to
keep farmers in their thoughts as we go into
this as well.
STEPHANIE SY: The pandemic is making the already
risky farming business even more unpredictable,
not only for the people that make up the farming
industry, but for the nation's food supply.
Part of the Trump administration's plan to
bail out farmers includes the government buying
$3 billion to buy some of that produce that
we have seen wasted on farms. And they're
trying to find ways to distribute it to food
banks.
Joining me now to discuss how the epidemic
is affecting the business of farmers, we're
joined by Amy Mayer from Ames, Iowa. Amy is
the agriculture reporter for Iowa Public Radio
and Harvest Public Media.
Amy, you have covered deadly disease outbreaks
among farm animals such as avian flu. And
farmers always seem to have to adapt. How
is this pandemic different?
AMY MAYER, Iowa Public Radio: There's a couple
of ways, I think, that it's different.
For one thing, with a livestock disease outbreak,
that is something that really impacts farmers
first, and the rest of the public may find
out about it after they have been dealing
with it for sometime. And other people may
not really feel it has a direct impact on
their lives.
With this one, obviously, the entire country
was affected pretty much all at the same time.
And so, in that sense, farmers are right alongside
of the rest of the population.
The other thing that is important is there
are certain types of challenges that farmers
can anticipate and they insure themselves
against, such as a severe weather event and,
to some extent, livestock diseases.
Clearly, this is something that nobody saw
coming, nobody had any kind of preparation
for.
STEPHANIE SY: I want to talk about what is
happening at the meat processing plants.
When it comes to those COVID-19 clusters,
Amy, are companies (AUDIO GAP) responsibility
at all, and are they doing anything differently
now?
AMY MAYER: We're seeing a little bit of variation
among the different companies.
We have heard that, in some cases, temperatures
are taken as workers enter the building each
day. Some of the companies may have given
masks or face shields to employees, although,
in other cases, it seems that's been up to
employees to provide for themselves.
We're getting scattered reports of Plexiglas
dividers going up in between the different
stations on the line. Those are something
that wouldn't normally be there.
But there have not been specific required
guidelines from any federal agency or even
many of the state and local agencies about
what the companies could or should be doing.
STEPHANIE SY: And, clearly, a lot of employees
are now being sent home. And these meat processing
plants, some of them are having to suspend
operations.
Should consumers expect meat shortages to
result from this?
AMY MAYER: Right now, what we have been hearing
is that there won't actually be shortages
of meat in the big picture.
What consumers may start to see is that the
cuts of meat, the types of meat that are available
at their grocery stores may be a little different
than what they have been used to, or may not
get refilled into those cases at the grocery
store as quickly as they have become accustomed
to.
It's important also to remember that restaurants
and other institutions that serve food have
been shut down. And that happened before we
started seeing the problems with the processing
plants. That's meant a lot of the meat that
you talked about being redistributed to food
banks may ultimately also be able to be repackaged
and redistributed and become available, where
supermarkets might have some cuts that normally
would just be at fine dining establishments.
STEPHANIE SY: Amy Mayer of Iowa Public Radio
and Harvest Public Media, joining us from
Ames, Iowa.
Amy, thank you so much.
AMY MAYER: Thanks for having me.
