By David ‘Mas” Masumoto

Isolation. That’s the reality of this pandemic period we’re all living through.

We farmers live with isolation. We work in open spaces, much of the labor is done individually and alone. Today I find myself worrying about the impact of the coronavirus on this livelihood I’ve choosen for myself and my family as my children partner with us on our farm. Our future is now measured by generations on this land: What lies ahead beyond our trees and vines?

So I asked a few of my colleagues to share their insights. A group of friends — wise movers and shakers in the food world — were willing to express their thoughts directly, helping me clarify how a family farm can belong in a world altered by a pandemic.

When asked about the future of food, chef and food activist Jose Andres wrote me: “I would hope that the people of America no longer take their food, or those who prepare it, for granted.”

I took great comfort when he added that “our current situation is making each of us think hard about how we eat. I’m certain there will be a new respect for the ones who feed America.”

NOT ALONE

The coronavirus exposes a simple fact we farmers have known about food: we are not alone. A food chain bonds and connects people to those who grow, distribute, prepare, deliver and use food, and now we’re threatened by major disruptions. Daily, Americans now are forced to ask, where does food come from? The pandemic demands our public to think systemically; we all survive because of a food network.

I begin to feel better, not so isolated. I am part of a larger team of partners. A sage voice further calms my emotions. Alice Waters, California chef and food pioneer, shared with me that “the present crisis is reminding us that food security depends on a local food system. When we grow food regeneratively and organically, we not only produce deeply nutritious food, we also mitigate climate change. What a hopeful and delicious vision for the future.”

Farmers grow public food, our work belongs in the public sphere. A nation’s large and complicated food network is based on person-to-person exchanges. The more the people learn about food, the more they realize it’s all personal. We all work to fill a human’s body and soul with life.

The decades-old and systemic de-personalization of food made much of our food a commodity based solely on money, supply and demand. Coronavirus compels us to look at the world differently — we see neighbors, families, and people who affect our health and well-being. At the same time, food rises to the top of our human needs. We can shelter in place only if we have food.

LARGER VIEW

Now, part of my daily morning farm meetings include deep exchanges about where the our small farm fits in a larger food conversation. Our daughter Nikiko Masumoto brings a new calling and responsibility: “The Covid-19 crisis both causes and exposes fault lines in our food system. Hunger was already a problem, access to healthy nourishing food is mitigated by poverty and structural racism. Some are experiencing the feeling of scarcity and insecurity for the first time.”

On our farm, we work at a literal grassroots level and know well that the hidden hands that feed us belong to farm workers. Their plight is exacerbated by a cheap food system the industry has created. The driving economic force had been price — keep expenses low, under-pay workers, limit their access to health care, provide few benefits — all for the cause of providing the public with inexpensive food. Faced with growing economic pressures and a tightening labor supply due to closed borders, many farmers are turning to science and mechanization to solve problems, as if a meal will then magically appear on our tables with the right formula.

Suddenly nothing is easy when it comes to food. There are no quick fixes despite what some leaders proclaim. We’re rethinking how and what we eat. Michael Pollan, food writer, reminded me in an email exchange that even simple acts have become complex: “Procuring food is one of the biggest challenges of the day.”

Our small farm resides in an intricate web of relationships. Food is part of a high-touch network. From farm to truck to shipper, many hands touch our food. Distribution systems of brokers, direct sales, markets and restaurants all are parts of a necessarily complex structure that feeds us.

Jessica B. Harris, cookbook author and food historian, wrote me: “I think that we will have learned some important lessons about the commensality of the table and of the cardinal importance that coming together over food plays in our lives, whether it’s at home in the dining room or kitchen, or in a restaurant white tablecloth or burger joint, or even hunkered down on a bar stool.”

GETTING FOOD

We are witnessing the disruption to this interconnectedness. Some farmers markets are discovering sparse crowds due to a false labeling as “unsocial” places. Groceries are pulled in new directions with uneven demands yet long lines. The crushing closure of eating establishments has thrown thousands of workers into turmoil. Restaurants are trying to pivot with the birth of new take out and delivery structures. But typically, the small operator can’t weather crises. Many will not reopen and fall victim to this food storm we are witnessing.

Our farm’s produce broker, Cindy Richter of Fruit World, has seen a rapid shift. “The real estate inside stores is reorganizing before us as they adjust to new demands. People are thinking more about food, planning even more and using personal shopping delivery systems. But if others are buying food for people, does that eliminate impulse buying? What’s not on the shopping list matters more than ever.”

I do not farm by myself — the farm-to-fork metaphor oversimplifies the vital role people in the middle play, an idea reinforced when Dan Barber, New York chef and food leader, imparted these thoughts with me: “We ought to recognize (read: invest in and celebrate) that our food movement needs to become a food system. To get there, farm to table would benefit from a few more middlemen. Not just chefs and eaters, but millers, maltsters, butchers, processors, preservers, fermenters, and distributors.”

How we acquire food is now a bigger part of daily routines, part of a complex farm to fork food chain. Much of agribusiness had lost their place in this food chain. Growing food was no different than making widgets, it’s about production and economics. But I sense a shift is occurring with the coronavirus pandemic. Farming has been exempt from the shuttering of businesses. Rightfully deemed a vital component of life, we are now positioned to make a difference, not with monetary exchange but with the fruits of our labor: food.

“The lesson we ought to be learning from the pandemic is awe. Without it, we can treat the web of life as callously as we like, destroying habitat, creating crushes of monocultured plants and animals, tended by the most poorly treated humans on the planet,” Raj Patel, an economist and activist advised me.

EATING AT HOME

I project to our summer harvests of organic peaches, nectarines and apricots. The social connections around food are more evident. People are forced to reinvent the meaning of food. When restaurants and bars close, we are now compelled to eat at home and experience a meal in different ways. Home cooking has taken on new life — someone else is no longer preparing all our food.

“A revival of home cooking is underway. The shared meal is one of the few pleasures left to us.” Michael Pollan’s voice echoes as I walk our orchards, finding comfort, hoping our produce will join the tables of many.

Food has returned to its original communal roots. It’s a new yet old cultural ritual of the common gathering — from how to acquire food, who and how it’s cooked, how and where we partake it. But we farmers live with a pessimism, worrying about the weather, prices, pests and now a jolting change.

I worry about the restaurants we sell to and how they can survive the pandemic. A new paradigm of food may emerge, a new respect for those who provide meals for all of us. Behind every restaurant stands an band of not only chefs and staff, but also a circle of farmers and shippers and we too will change and pivot. Yet the economic fallout of today will crush plans.

As we emerge from this black hole, Michael Pollan suggested that we may “hurry back to the status quo.” This new awareness of where food comes from may be tossed aside, abandoned like gardens people planted or new home cooking endeavors. We may quickly forget about the plight of farm workers and the struggle of restaurant laborers.

My spirits tumble, part of a daily cyclical routine as this pandemic swirls around me, my farm, our family.

“There’s an expression in the Jewish tradition, ‘Tikkun olam.’ It refers to the idea of mending a shattered world, making it whole,” wrote Dan Barber.

Soon, I hope we transition from coping to hoping. It took an invisible virus to make farmers and food visible again.

“If we come out of this crisis with an abiding appreciation for the hands that feed us, and a newfound respect for the diversity of life, we’ll have learned well,” said Raj Patel with a reassuring voice.

I take refuge in these words from my colleagues. Perhaps farmers are not as isolated as we think.

TRANSFORMING FOOD CHAIN

Social change can evolve from small revisions that ripple through a system. We have an opportunity to remedy inequities and generate incremental advancements in the food chain we are bound by. A transformation may be underway as we shelter in place and rethink the foods we eat.

“I think/hope/pray that we have learned to be grateful … grateful for the farmers, for the vendors, for those who cook, and for those who serve it and celebrate them, pay them well, and understand the important and essential role that they play in our lives,” Jessica B. Harris kindly shared.

Dan Barber also added that “a thriving food system means an infrastructure strong enough to support all these vital food actors, to take a shattered world and patch it back together in the long run. And the long run starts now.”

On our small farm, we must constantly adapt to an unpredictable nature. And as I grow into an old farmer, I often ask how many harvests do I have left to make changes? My answer: “Next year begins now.”

David “Mas” Masumoto is an organic farmer near Fresno and author of several books, including “Epitaph for a Peach.” He can be contacted at masmasumoto@gmail.com

Link to story on the Fresno Bee website.

From a Small Business Administration announcement

President Trump has signed a bill providing additional funds for SBA programs providing COVID-related disaster assistance to small businesses:

The Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) will receive an additional $310 billion – with $60B of that set aside for distribution by smaller banks, credit unions, and Community Development Financial Institutions. 

The Economic Injury Disaster Loan (EIDL) and EIDL Advance will receive an additional $50 billion of EIDL loan subsidy funds, plus $10B in additional EIDL advances. 

One important change in EIDL contained in the bill makes agricultural producers eligible for EIDL assistance.

What’s next?  When funds ran out on 4/16, SBA shut down both the PPP and EIDL application portals to new applicants. When new funds are deployed, SBA will reopen both portals.  The PPP portal is now open.

Paycheck Protection Program Program recap. PPP is a forgivable loan from your business’s banking institution for an amount equal to your business’s typical 2-1/2 months’ payroll.  Eligible borrowers include small businesses–including agricultural operations–and nonprofits, including faith-based organizations.  The loan may only to be used to pay payroll, business rent/mortgage interest, or utilities (nothing else).  If after 8 weeks you show your lender that at least 75% of the loan was used indeed for payroll and not more than 25% was used for the other authorized purposes, the loan is forgiven by the lender.  If any of the loan is not forgiven (e.g. because you used more than 25% of the loan for the non-payroll purposes), the repayment is based on 1% interest, 2-year term, first payment deferred for 6 months.  Neither collateral nor personal guaranties are required, and there is no “means test” to qualify.  All the rules are published here.  

Minor changes.  A few minor changes to the PPP program were published in a supplemental Interim Final Rule today: All legal gaming businesses are eligible regardless of what % of their revenue come from gambling. ESOP-owned businesses are eligible.Hospitals owned by state/local governmental entities are eligible provided they don’t get 50% or more of their revenues from their governmental owners (exclusive of Medicaid).Businesses in bankruptcy, including businesses with any owner in bankruptcy, are ineligible.Hedge funds and private equity firms are ineligible for PPP. Portfolio companies of private equity funds were reminded to closely verify their eligibility before applying.And several more FAQ’s were also issued today:Agricultural producers are confirmed to be eligible provided they either have not more than 500 employees or otherwise meet SBA “small business” size standards. Cooperatives are eligible. 

Economic Injury Disaster Loan (EIDL) and Advance Program recap.  EIDL is a direct loan from SBA for lost revenue/gross profit due to the COVID disruption of your normal operations.  The loan amount is set by SBA based on an estimate of lost cash flow due to the disruption.  The EIDL loan is for business working capital needs not covered by PPP.  The repayment is based on 3.75% interest (2.75% interest for nonprofits), up to 30-year term, first payment deferred for 12 months.  The program’s initial collateral, personal guaranty, and “credit elsewhere” requirements have been loosened substantially.  An “up to $10,000 Advance” feature was added to the EIDL loan program by the 3/27/2020 CARES Act.  Every business certifies they meet the basic EIDL eligibility requirements and requests an advance in their application will receive a forgivable advance payment of $1,000 per employee, up to the $10,000 maximum.  The advance is designed to be an advance disbursement on the full EIDL loan that will ultimately be delivered once your EIDL application is processed.  Even if SBA ultimately decides you do not qualify for a full EIDL loan, the advance normally will not need to be repaid.  SBA is making every effort to disburse these advances shortly after each EIDL application is submitted.  The EIDL rules are here.

Program changes.  Agricultural producers are now eligible for EIDL assistance.  .  

To apply for EIDL assistance, watch the SBA EIDL program page for the reopening of the EIDL application portal – https://www.sba.gov/funding-programs/loans/coronavirus-relief-options/economic-injury-disaster-loan-emergency-advance.

CDFA’s State Water Efficiency and Enhancement Program, SWEEP, provides grants to implement irrigation systems that reduce greenhouse gases and save water on California agricultural operations. Eligible system components include (among others) soil moisture monitoring, drip systems, switching to low pressure irrigation systems, pump retrofits, variable frequency drives and installation of renewable energy to reduce on-farm water use and energy.

CDFA has selected 725 projects for grants, covering over 127,100 acres. $72.2 million has been awarded to date, with more than $47.7 million in matching funds contributed by awardees.

By CDFA Secretary Karen Ross

As we take this moment to note the 50th anniversary of Earth Day, I’d like to call attention to our farmers, ranchers and farm workers; and the great work they do every day, no matter what Mother Nature throws at them. The twist that they—and all of us—are dealing with this year brings a whole new test of their adaptability and resiliency. 

They are meeting the challenge the only way they know how – through hard work and dedication in working with their employees to deliver food to grocery stores and food banks while simultaneously contending with a collapse of other parts of the supply chain. And they’re doing all that while maintaining all-important environmental stewardship. 

The livelihood of farmers and ranchers is tied to the land and to our communities – the understanding of natural cycles; sowing, tending and harvesting; conserving, recycling and streamlining; learning and improving. These cycles and so many more are at the heart of farming.

Every day is Earth Day in agriculture. Our farmers and ranchers are restoring the health of our soil, turning dairy emissions into energy, conserving water, reducing and optimizing fertilizer use, protecting pollinators, incorporating wildlife conservation into their business plans, and doing dozens of other things that contribute in real, quantifiable ways to combating climate change. And because of California’s leadership role in agriculture, we are also a beacon for other growers around the world to learn about what works and multiply our successes on their own land.

I’m proud of everything our farmers and ranchers and farm workers are doing, and I’m honored to be part of a department that helps them achieve these goals. I want them to know that we’re here for them through this crisis, and we will move forward with them when it’s over. 

I wish you all a 50th anniversary of Earth Day that is full of progress and optimism.

As international observers of Earth Day recognize its 50th year this week, CDFA would like to note an essential relationship between farmers and the Earth that goes back many centuries.

Farmers and ranchers are stewards of the land while providing for sustainability of life and the Earth itself.

CDFA offers several grant programs to help facilitate that stewardship, including the Healthy Soils Program.

Learn more about CDFA’s Office of Environment Farming and Innovation.

By Dan Walters

The first few days of the coronavirus crisis revealed that the veneer of civilization may be thinner than we assumed.

Americans quickly stripped supermarket shelves of toilet paper, paper towels and other household commodities. The panicky, almost riotous, invasion of shoppers even moved one Sacramento grocery chain to hire off-duty police officers to stand by and keep order.

Several weeks later, toilet paper is still in short supply, but stores still have adequate, if not overly abundant, stocks of a much more important commodity — food. Farmers, farmworkers, truckers, food processors and grocers have continued to do their vital work, often at the personal risk of becoming infected.

What would happen were the situations to be reversed, with shelves of food empty while those with toilet paper still stocked? It would get very ugly very quickly and history tells us that the survival instinct would kick in and other commodities folks also have been stockpiling — guns and ammunition — would come into play.

That scenario, thankfully, is highly unlikely to occur, but we should be aware that the incredibly complex system that delivers foodstuffs to stores and then to our tables is feeling the strain.

The closure of restaurants, schools and other commercial purchasers of food is a heavy financial blow to everyone in the system. Farmers are plowing up fields of lettuce and other fresh produce for a lack of workers to harvest them, and customers to buy what they harvest. Dairy farmers still must milk their cows, but many are dumping what they produce due to sharply reduced demand not only for fluid milk but cheese and other dairy products too.

California is, as everyone should know, the nation’s top agricultural producer, but we have often tended to take that fact for granted. In certain circles — especially among environmental and social justice activists — farmers are dismissed as greedy despoilers. They wrongly imply that there’s no need for large-scale industrial agriculture, and that small-scale organic farmers can meet our needs.

This crisis should tell us otherwise and whenever it ends, we should emerge with a new appreciation for those who grow, harvest, process and deliver our food — and show that regard in tangible ways.

We should end the decades of bickering over water and build the new storage and conveyance projects that will give farmers what they need to maintain and enhance production as well as meet the demands of families and other water users.

We should honor the men and women who work in the fields while most of us shelter in place to avoid infection. They should be fairly paid for performing the difficult and often hazardous tasks that put food on our tables, even if it means higher retail prices.

We should, as with water, end the decades of bickering over immigration and provide undocumented immigrants — as many as three million in California alone — who work in the fields, in construction and in myriad other important industries a dignified pathway out of the shadows and into legalized status and citizenship.

Concurrently, we should make it easier and more lucrative for foreign nationals who wish to work seasonally in California agriculture to come here. It’s shameful that President Donald Trump’s administration is contemplating a reduction in guest worker wages to ease the financial burden on farmers. That sends precisely the wrong message because a shortage of reliable labor is one of agriculture’s biggest headaches.

Some say the coronavirus crisis changes everything. It should change our complacent and sometimes hostile attitudes about agriculture.

Link to article on CalMatters web site

From the California Grown Blog

An Open Letter to Our Nation’s Retailers and Food Distributors from CDFA Secretary Karen Ross

Thank you! As much of our daily lives has changed in significant ways, you continue to serve in providing an essential function for all of us.  What we once took for granted as normal routine, going to the grocery store, has fundamentally changed.  You – retailers, your stores, and all team members throughout the food distribution system – are our heroes and we thank you!    

Our California farmers, ranchers and farmworkers understand the challenge this crisis has delivered to our retailer partners:  to manage adequate supply, maintain efficient distribution, and most of all provide a safe shopping environment for customers and employees.  All of this has been accomplished with a level of care, service and dedication that makes us proud to be part of your supply chain.  

We are thankful for the warehouse workers pulling double shifts, the truck drivers who are adding routes, the direct-to-customer services that are being offered, and the new outlets being created to provide food.  We are grateful for retail employees in-store, delivery drivers, and those working at headquarters who have helped us adapt to a new way of life by providing a sense of order in these uncertain times.   

California producers are here for you. Each harvest provides a brighter future, and together we will do what we’ve always done to provide healthy nutritious food (and beautiful flowers) for your customers, our neighbors and communities across this state and nation.    

We commend you for your ongoing efforts.  Your work and service has been nothing less than world class.

Link to letter on California Grown Blog

By Farrah Lynn Ezzeddine

I pulled on my surgical gloves, readjusted my face shield and took a deep breath. Waiting in a line facing me were unmasked seniors and young people. Their primary worry is not the coronavirus pandemic. Nor is it toilet paper. It’s food.

Every Tuesday and Friday about 300 Bay Area families count on the Richmond Emergency Food Bank to provide them with a month’s supply of food. That’s 1,200 families a month. Since the coronavirus outbreak, every Tuesday and Friday may be their only chance to receive food one month.

I heard about the Richmond food bank through a senior in my community, who called to see if I would replace her and other volunteers who pack and distribute food twice a week. I signed up and assured them I could find others. But, volunteers are not as easy to find during this foreboding pandemic.

As the COVID-19 threat continues to shut down the nation, food banks are not exempt. Although allowed to remain open, about 100 food pantries have closed in the San Francisco Bay Area in the last month. The primary reason for the closures is that most of the volunteers are also those most vulnerable to the pandemic: people over 65.

On my first day at the food bank, me and two other volunteers put one carton of eggs, one canister of oatmeal, two slabs of cheese, and an unidentifiable pastry in a white plastic bag. We did this one hundred times. By my third day, the bi-weekly load of grocery store donations had dropped. No bread this time and the bananas are more black than yellow. Also the lines to receive food had grown longer. We turned down five people, one of them because they had picked up some food earlier in the month, the other four because there just wasn’t enough food to hand out.

As panic buying empties out shelves, grocery stores have less and less food to donate. Similar to most public health issues, COVID-19 is not just a threat to one’s immediate health. Like a ripple effect, it has extended its tentacles into issues of food, housing and income, as well as domestic safety and mental health. As tens of thousands of Californians experience job loss and growing financial instability during the statewide shelter-at-home orders, many will join the ranks of the unemployed, undocumented, single-parent, homeless, sick, elderly and disabled who cannot afford food.

How you can help: Check your local food bank’s website for what support it needs. If healthy and able-bodied, you could volunteer. If you have extra food, you could donate it. If you are self-isolating, donate money online, raise awareness by sharing food bank messaging on social media, and advocate for support at the federal level. 

And be mindful: the first week of every month is a critical time because WIC/SNAP benefits — food stamps — are received by low-income families. Give these families a chance to stock up. Be aware of a WIC shelf tag and try to limit purchases of those items.

After safely removing my gloves before heading home, I thought about viruses and trees. A cluster of trees acts as an ecosystem and sacrifices nutrients for sick or struggling trees in an effort to keep all of the trees healthy. Our human community is struggling in the battle against COVID-19 and, like the cluster of trees, we need to do what we can to help those in our cluster. 

As we practice social distancing in the fight against the coronavirus, let us not forget those in our community.   ____

Farrah Lynn Ezzeddine is an epidemiology masters student at the Harvard School of Public Health, ezzeddine@hsph.harvard.edu.

Link to story on the CalMatters web site

By David Yaffe-Bellamy and Michael Corkery

In Wisconsin and Ohio, farmers are dumping thousands of gallons of fresh milk into lagoons and manure pits. An Idaho farmer has dug huge ditches to bury 1 million pounds of onions. And in South Florida, a region that supplies much of the Eastern half of the United States with produce, tractors are crisscrossing bean and cabbage fields, plowing perfectly ripe vegetables back into the soil.

After weeks of concern about shortages in grocery stores and mad scrambles to find the last box of pasta or toilet paper roll, many of the nation’s largest farms are struggling with another ghastly effect of the pandemic. They are being forced to destroy tens of millions of pounds of fresh food that they can no longer sell.

The closing of restaurants, hotels and schools has left some farmers with no buyers for more than half their crops. And even as retailers see spikes in food sales to Americans who are now eating nearly every meal at home, the increases are not enough to absorb all of the perishable food that was planted weeks ago and intended for schools and businesses.

The amount of waste is staggering. The nation’s largest dairy cooperative, Dairy Farmers of America, estimates that farmers are dumping as many as 3.7 million gallons of milk each day. A single chicken processor is smashing 750,000 unhatched eggs every week.

Many farmers say they have donated part of the surplus to food banks and Meals on Wheels programs, which have been overwhelmed with demand. But there is only so much perishable food that charities with limited numbers of refrigerators and volunteers can absorb.

And the costs of harvesting, processing and then transporting produce and milk to food banks or other areas of need would put further financial strain on farms that have seen half their paying customers disappear. Exporting much of the excess food is not feasible either, farmers say, because many international customers are also struggling through the pandemic and recent currency fluctuations make exports unprofitable.

“It’s heartbreaking,” said Paul Allen, co-owner of R.C. Hatton, who has had to destroy millions of pounds of beans and cabbage at his farms in South Florida and Georgia.

The widespread destruction of fresh food — at a time when many Americans are hurting financially and millions are suddenly out of work — is an especially dystopian turn of events, even by the standards of a global pandemic. It reflects the profound economic uncertainty wrought by the virus and how difficult it has been for huge sectors of the economy, like agriculture, to adjust to such a sudden change in how they must operate.

Even as Mr. Allen and other farmers have been plowing fresh vegetables into the soil, they have had to plant the same crop again, hoping the economy will have restarted by the time the next batch of vegetables is ready to harvest. But if the food service industry remains closed, then those crops, too, may have to be destroyed.

Farmers are also learning in real time about the nation’s consumption habits.

The quarantines have shown just how many more vegetables Americans eat when meals are prepared for them in restaurants than when they have to cook for themselves.

“People don’t make onion rings at home,” said Shay Myers, a third-generation onion farmer whose fields straddle the border of Oregon and Idaho.

Mr. Myers said there were no good solutions to the fresh food glut. After his largest customer — the restaurant industry — shut down in California and New York, his farm started redistributing onions from 50-pound sacks into smaller bags that could be sold in grocery stores. He also started freezing some onions, but he has limited cold-storage capacity.

With few other options, Mr. Myers has begun burying tens of thousands of pounds of onions and leaving them to decompose in trenches.

“There is no way to redistribute the quantities that we are talking about,” he said.

Over the decades, the nation’s food banks have tried to shift from offering mostly processed meals to serving fresh produce, as well. But the pandemic has caused a shortage of volunteers, making it more difficult to serve fruits and vegetables, which are time-consuming and expensive to transport.

“To purchase from a whole new set of farmers and suppliers — it takes time, it takes knowledge, you have to find the people, develop the contracts,” said Janet Poppendieck, an expert on poverty and food assistance.

The waste has become especially severe in the dairy industry, where cows need to be milked multiple times a day, regardless of whether there are buyers.

Major consumers of dairy, like public schools and coffee shops, have all but vanished, leaving milk processing plants with fewer customers at a time of year when cows produce milk at their fastest rate. About 5 percent of the country’s milk supply is currently being dumped and that amount is expected to double if the closings are extended over the next few months, according to the International Dairy Foods Association.

Before the pandemic, the Dairymens processing plant in Cleveland would produce three loads of milk, or around 13,500 gallons, for Starbucks every day. Now the Starbucks order is down to one load every three days.

For a while after the pandemic took hold, the plant collected twice as much milk from farmers as it could process, keeping the excess supply in refrigerated trailers, said Brian Funk, who works for Dairymens as a liaison to farmers.

But eventually the plant ran out of storage. One night last week, Mr. Funk worked until 11 p.m., fighting back tears as he called farmers who supply the plant to explain the predicament.

To repurpose those plants to put cheese in the 8 oz. bags that sell in grocery stores or bottle milk in gallon jugs would require millions of dollars in investment. For now, some processors have concluded that spending the money isn’t worth it.

“It isn’t like restaurant demand has disappeared forever,” said Matt Gould, a dairy industry analyst. “Even if it were possible to re-format to make it an 8-ounce package rather than a 20-pound bag, the dollars and cents may not pan out.”

Those same logistical challenges are bedeviling poultry plants that were set up to distribute chicken to restaurants rather than stores. Each week, the chicken processor Sanderson Farms destroys 750,000 unhatched eggs, or 5.5 percent of its total production, sending them to a rendering plant to be turned into pet food.

Last week, the chief executive of Sanderson Farms, Joe Sanderson, told analysts that company officials had even considered euthanizing chickens to avoid selling them at unprofitable rates, though the company ultimately did not take that step.

In recent days, Sanderson Farms has donated some of its chicken to food banks and organizations that cook meals for emergency medical workers. But hatching hundreds of thousands of eggs for the purpose of charity is not a viable option, said Mike Cockrell, the company’s chief financial officer.

“We’re set up to sell that chicken,” Mr. Cockrell said. “That would be an expensive proposition.”

Link to story on the New York Times web site.