The Miami Herald reports that millions of pounds of fresh produce are being left to die on the vine or plowed under because the shutdown of the hospitality industry — restaurants, cruise ships, schools, airlines, and theme parks — has reduced demand.

Harvesting that fruit can cost more than twice as much as simply razing it. Workers who usually make between $15-$17 an hour, paid by the amount they pick, instead earn minimum wage doing field work.  So one million pounds of green beans and four million pounds of cabbage at R.C. Hatton will be churned into mulch in the next few days.

Dairy farmers in New York are dumping milk:

Grimshaw Farms in Henderson, New York milks about 300 cows. This week they’ve dumped 30,000 pounds of milk. “We are being told there is too much milk on the market,” Grimshaw shared on Facebook. “This is very strange when we are being told many milk shelves across the country are empty. Sure hope we can remain in business after these trying times.”

So are dairy farmers in Wisconsin,who used to sell most of their milk to schools, restaurants, and food service companies.

The Wisconsin dairy industry has been dealt a harsh blow from the economy that’s been slammed by coronavirus shutdowns. About one-third of the state’s dairy products, mostly cheese, are sold in the food-service trade.

And here is a letter from Gene McAvoy of the University of Florida’s Institute for Food and Agricultural Sciences detailing what he has been hearing from growers about food dumping and losses.  This is a brief excerpt; it’s worth reading all of it.

On Tuesday, March 24, a local broker says, everything changed. From brokers, orders stopped and everything got quiet. Wednesday, the 25th, super-quiet.  Since then tomato volumes are down 85 percent, green beans are like 50 percent, cabbage is like 50 percent.  R.C. Hatton has plowed under 100 acres of green beans, around 2 million pounds, and 60 acres of cabbage, or 5 million pounds.  Florida’s tomato growers target 80% of their production to restaurants and other food service companies, rather than to supermarkets.   In this sector, growers are walking away from big portions of their crop. Tony DiMare estimates that by the end of the growing season, about 10 million pounds of his tomatoes will go unpicked.

Wait!  I’ve read this before!  I wrote the foreword to the updated edition of Janet Poppendieck’s “Breadlines Knee-Deep in Wheat: Food Assistance in the Great Depression.”

Then, the public was so appalled by farmers’ destroying food while hungry people were lining up for food handouts that the federal government had to respond.  That’s when it authorized food assistance programs, among them food stamps (now SNAP).  This program was designed originally to help farmers as well as the poor.  Poppendieck’s book explains how small farmers got left out of those policies, a decision that haunts us to this day.

So here we are with farmers destroying food and New York City providing free meals to anyone who needs one (see my post on this).

Will all this produce a much stronger safety net for everyone who has been put out of work by this crisis or is paid too poorly to survive?

Will this at last lead to agricultural policies that support small and mid-size dairy farms and farms in general? 

If COVID-19 has done anything beyond making people sick, it has made these needs clear.

This comes from ©Bill Wurtzel’s “Food For Thought about COVID-19.”

And a reader, Harvey Carroll, forwards this (original source unknown):

One of my favorite chefs, Mark Strausman, has posted instructions for a virtual passover.  Here, for example, is his video for do-it-yourself matzo.

Dayenu!

In this week’s updates of items related to food and Coronavirus, let’s start with the good news (yes, there is some).

I.  Free meals for New Yorkers

The New York City Department of Education has announced that it will make three free meals available every day for any New Yorker, at more than 400 locations.

• No one will be turned away at any time
• All adults and children can pick up three meals at one time
• Vegetarian and halal options available at all sites
• No registration or ID required

What, you might wonder, is in these meals?

• Breakfast
• Lunch

This is no time to criticize, and I won’t.

This is a monumental undertaking and city officials deserve much praise for making what look like typical school meals available to everyone.

Much praise also to the school food service and other personnel who are preparing these meals.

II.  Recognition that the lowest-paid workers are essential

The economy and society run on the work of farmworkers,  many of them immigrants and undocumented, health care employees, restaurant delivery and food service personnel, and so many others involved in our food system.  The indispensible value of their work has suddenly become visible.   That’s a good first step, but not enough, of course.

III.  An opportunity to document history

A crisis of this magnitude calls for analysis.  It’s hard to do that when you are right in the middle of it, but the Association of Public Historians of New York State has issued a call for documentation and offers suggestions about what to write and collect right now.  We can all do this and lay the groundwork for future historical analysis.  I’m interested in the food and food politics aspects that I’ve been posting about on this site.  All suggestions welcome.

IV.  A return to home gardening and cooking

Salon’s recent article about renewed interest in gardening, canning, and baking focuses attention on how difficult it has become to get seeds and find flour, yeast, and eggs in supermarkets.   My local CSA baker (Wide Awake in Ithaca) is offering sour dough starter, flour, recipes, and instructions along with weekly loaves.  It’s still too cold to plant anything up here in the Finger Lakes, but the robins are back, the forsythia is in bloom, and it will soon be time to start the peas.

Really, I can’t make this stuff up.

The USDA has just issued its 2019 report on America’s Farms.

Its main observations:

In a nutshell:

If we want land conserved, we had best hang onto small farms:

The Mexican food advocacy group, Alianza por la Salud Alimentaria, has produced this guide for taking care of your food needs during this emergency.

And here’s a general survival guide.

I don’t know about you but I’m having a hard time these days paying attention to anything other than Coronavirus.  Everything else seems irrelevant.

This announcement seems particularly tone deaf.

On March 18, the USDA’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture put this as its most important story of the day: “Daily Avocado Consumption Improves Attention in Overweight and Obese Persons”

It refers to a study jointly funded by USDA and Haas Avocado Board: “Effects of 12-week avocado consumption on cognitive function among adults with overweight and obesity.”  Edwards CG, et al.  International Journal of Psychophysiology.  2020;148:13-24.

The study’s predictable conclusion: “Daily avocado intake over 12 weeks, after controlling for covariates, improved attentional inhibition and increased serum lutein concentrations among adults with overweight and obesity.”  This was predictable because industry-funded studies almost invariably come out the way their funder hoped they would (what a coincidence!).

In this case, the Abstract goes on to say: “However, the cognitive benefits were independent of changes in lutein concentrations.”

Really?  If lutein has nothing to do with cognition, why make such a big deal of it, as is done on the Hass Avocado Board website.

Don’t get me wrong.  I love avocados.  But I will never understand why it takes this kind of “science” to sell them.  I put science in quotes because this kind of industry-funded research is really about marketing.  USDA co-sponsors such research through its marketing programs.

This kind of self-serving marketing seems even more inappropriate right now.  At least to me.

[Thanks to Hugh Joseph for sending the NIFA annoouncement].

This is what the bagged salad section of the Wegmans in Ithaca, New York, looked like early last Friday morning (right after the store opened for the day).

Thanks to Stephanie Borkowsky for the photo.