U.S. agriculture faces $20 billion loss from coronavirus

According to a report from the University of Missouri, the COVID-19 outbreak could lead to $20 billion in U.S. agriculture losses this year. Instead of seeing the U.S. ag economy grow by 2.8% this year as initially projected in January, the report now expects consumer expenditures to drop by 2.2% relative to 2019—amounting to a 5% overall drop from the forecast, or a $20 billion loss of net farm income, reported The St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

Collectively, the effects to farmers stretch “pretty much across the board,” said Pat Westhoff, a professor and director of the school’s Food and Agricultural Policy Research Institute, which produced the report. Impacts can vary from product to product, the report notes, but the loss of key, high-volume buyers like restaurants and schools has led to falling prices for many commodities, from livestock to crops. For example, school closures have hurt milk demand and cratered prices.

In addition to low prices, food production, processing, and shipment have all been affected. Recent worker illnesses have sparked meatpacking plant shutdowns and created supply chain bottlenecks for livestock producers like hog farmers. The report states that prices for feed cattle have fallen 11.5% compared with earlier projections for the year, while hog prices have dropped 9.1%, and milk prices have declined 8.8%.

Westhoff said that production of labor-intensive crops, such as fruits and vegetables, could be most affected by the pandemic, because of their heavy reliance on manual laborers who could be at risk from the virus. Emergency border closures could prevent migrant workers from coming into the country to work those fields.