What COVID-19 Plant Closures Reveal about the Pork Industry: Could There Be Pork Shortages?

In a statement, Smithfield Foods CEO Kenneth Sullivan was unapologetic about the slow plant closure and did little to calm the fears of already anxious consumers. “It is impossible to keep our grocery stores stocked if our plants are not running,” he said. “We have a stark choice as a nation: we are either going to produce food or not, even in the face of COVID-19.”

Sullivan’s narrative that perhaps Americans will face pork shortages if the plants can’t stay open is worth a deeper look. For decades, the pork industry has invested heavily in getting bigger — in bigger farms, packing plants, and larger corporations calling the shots. As a result, today the US has a record number of hogs on farms, but after decades of pork processing plant consolidation, the remaining plants are so huge that shuttering just a few creates nationwide bottlenecks. Meanwhile, despite empty supermarket meat cases, hog farmers’ prices crashing, and thousands of sickened plant workers, the big meatpacking companies are doing just fine. Smithfield’s parent company, the Chinese WH Group, posted a 32 percent jump in profits at the end of March.

Supply Chain Problems

So what’s happening with those supermarket shelves? As with products from milk to toilet paper, pork shortages that shoppers are encountering can be traced to demand shifting overnight from wholesale and foodservice to retail sales. Foodservice accounts for about one-quarter of all pork consumed in the US; with those markets having suddenly disappeared, some of the supply formerly bound for sports arenas and schools can be redirected towards grocery stores, but changing supply chain logistics and packaging — from a 20-pound box of bacon to a 12-ounce consumer package, for example — cannot be done overnight.

A Growing Industry

Growing the demand and political climate for pork is surely good for hog farmers, right? NPC says that every dollar a pig farmer spends on the pork checkoff gives a return of $25.50 in producer value in terms of market growth, promotion, and other benefits. But many smaller hog farmers dispute that claim, saying that as the industry has consolidated, the spending helps only the largest producers and the bottom lines of the big meatpackers.

Alongside meatpacking plants, hog producers have also consolidated. The number of US hog farms has dropped nearly 90 percent since 1980, but the total number of hogs has increased by more than half since 1997. Correspondingly, the average size of a hog farm (which are now almost exclusively giant indoor “factory farms”) has grown as well, to nearly 6,100 animals. The farmers who remain mostly produce hogs on contract for the big meatpackers, and have seen the prices they are paid fall almost steadily since the mid-1990s, forcing them to compete by adding ever-more animals. Most striking, according to the most recent USDA numbers, the largest 40 hog producers added nearly 200,000 sows (female hogs) in 2017. Where there were 666,000 hog farmers in the 1980s, now these 40 producers have control over two-thirds of all breeding sows in the country.

As you might expect, the lobbying efforts of the National Pork Producers Council reflect priorities of the big business interests they represent. For many years, they have fought efforts to level the playing field for small farmers, increase livestock industry competition, increase labeling transparency, and expand environmental regulations.

Frustrated with an industry group that worked against them using their own money, pork producers voted to end the mandatory checkoff in the early 2000s. In a statement still relevant 20 years later, cattle farmer Rhonda Perry, a former hog farmer and now director of Missouri Rural Crisis Center (MRCC), said at the time, “For years, the NPPC has been using our money to represent the interests of corporate factory farms and meatpackers. We’re sick and tired of losing money hand over fist due to consolidation in the pork industry.” President Bill Clinton’s USDA began to dismantle the mandatory checkoff, but the decision was reversed by the incoming George W. Bush administration, and both NPC and NPPC have continued to drive pork promotion and policy in the decades since.

Envisioning an Alternative

Land Stewardship Project and MRCC are members of Campaign for Family Farms and the Environment, a multistate coalition that advocates for investment in regional farmers and food systems. A network of regional meatpacking plants would return more of the consumer’s dollar to farmers, and would spread out risk — the closure of one plant for an illness outbreak would not hobble national production. The coronavirus pandemic has exposed the weaknesses of a consolidated food system, the group says, pointing to the insecurity now faced by farmers, workers, and consumers, while Smithfield and other industry giants not only profit, but potentially use the crisis to roll back existing worker safety regulations. CFFE calls for a government response to the pandemic that prioritizes access to safety net programs for farms and small food businesses, prohibits loans to new factory farms, establishes a moratorium on new food industry mergers, and more.

While temporary supply chain disruptions mean we may have to wait longer than usual to bring home our bacon from the supermarket, we should consider how we would like to see our food produced when we eventually emerge from the pandemic. Today, the closure of just a few plants disrupts supply, sickens hundreds of workers (killing some), and threatens farmer livelihoods. But groups like Campaign for Family Farms and the Environment help make the case that there is another way for the nation to produce food, one which spreads profits to farmers and workers rather than extracting it, and builds in enough resilience to survive the next crisis.