The Future of Agricultural Food Production and Distribution

What will food production and food distribution look like after we get past the current pandemic? Hopefully we will have learned that putting all our eggs in just a few baskets is not a good strategy for the future. Farmers and consumers are both served better when we have smaller diverse farms growing our food and fiber and we are also served better by having more processing facilities for our goods.  Due to the pandemic we saw that a problem in our slaughter houses caused problems for both farmers and consumers as farmers couldn’t market their animals and shortages developed in grocery stores. This is a problem that would most likely not have happened if we had more and smaller operations for processing farm animals and delivering the product to stores. Fortunately, local butcher shops were able to pick up some of the slack and this benefitted local farmers and consumers. This is a good way to get local farms connected with consumers and provides the highest quality of product. It also provides a layer of safety in the event another pandemic or other issue strikes slaughter facilities.

I am wondering what others think the future might look like in agriculture and food distribution. Do we go right back to what we were doing or do we try and diversify? Bigger is not always better and that is true in food production as well as other industries.