Lori Walsh: This week, SDPB brings you an investigation into the fragility of the food supply chain. You can find our reporting online at sdpb.org/foodsupply.
Today, we have on a National Pork Board representative, who joins us to talk about how the pandemic has impacted hog producers, and what weaknesses may have been exposed in the supply chain. What are you hearing from pork producers around the country? Are there lessons here, or solutions for the future? Bill Even is CEO of the National Pork Board, and he's joining us to answer these questions and more.
Bill Even, welcome. Thanks for being here.
Bill Even: Thanks, Lori. It's a pleasure to be on South Dakota Public Radio, since I'm a native South Dakotan.
Lori Walsh: Wonderful. Tell us where you're from.
Bill Even: Our family farm is at Humboldt, South Dakota. That's just about, oh, 15, 20 miles straight West of Sioux Falls. So we've been there, now, five generations with currently my brother, and my son and myself in business partnership there.
Lori Walsh: All right, I want to talk about this because much of our reporting has been about people, particularly consumers, realizing for the first time, when there were limits or rations on pork products, or prices went up, or all of a sudden they couldn't get bacon, that something had gone wrong, and they associated it, here in South Dakota, with the closure of the Smithfield processing plant, after an outbreak that made national news, of Coronavirus among plant workers. Then, what we're hearing from pork producers is that this is a problem that was a long time coming.
So give us a little history, and to what sum of the problems were that many people are now just waking up to? Where do you want to start that story?
Bill Even: Sure. Thanks, Lori. Maybe, speaking from my point of view as a farmer, and in growing up in our family operation at Humboldt, you think about where we were, say, at the end of World War II. People had come out of the Great Depression, where they were worried about having enough money, they were worried about food availability. We went through World War II, and there was whole scale destruction around the world, of literally people starving to death.
The United States, whether it was through the Marshall Plan in helping rebuild Europe, and work that we did in Asia, as well as work we did here in the United States, was we decided that we were blessed with an abundance of good government, good soil, good rainfall, productive farmers, that we could build a food system that was going to be able to provide safe, abundant, affordable food for not only US citizens, but to really help people avoid starvation around the world. That food system has led to incredible lengthening of life expectancy, globally. It's helped with educational attainment in people around the world, in that they've just had more nutrition available.
When you fast forward from, say, 1945 to, say, the year 2000, we realized that the system that we had built was starting to have questions asked of it. Those questions, Lori, really started to turn into okay, safe, abundant, affordable food was table stakes, we just expect that if you're American, or live in the Western world. But, we're asking, what about sustainability? What about animal welfare? What are we doing to protect our workers, both on the farms and in the food system? We've been having these discussions, I guess you could lump them generally under sustainability now, for probably the past 15, 20 years.
And the COVID pandemic has really refocused everybody's attention on this, Lori, in that oh my gosh, we've got farmers that are having to destroy produce, or dump milk. Or, in extreme cases, having to euthanize animals, because they can't get to the consumers. We've got the food system breaking down in the middle, and then you've got consumers worried, "Am I going to be able to get meat and vegetables in my grocery store?"
So here we are today, focused on first principles, and we're asking ourselves what type of food system do we want, and I think that's where I'd start the conversation.
Lori Walsh: Some people are asking, where does it even come from? Where does my food come from? For the first time, in this really surprising way, there's an awakening, an awareness. Is there also a reckoning? I want to talk, Bill, about you said the food system we built has flaws. What went wrong?
Bill Even: I would characterize this like anything else that you put under pressure, you're going to find weak links in it. So you think about a rope, or maybe a log chain, say we had a chain. When you put pressure on it, if you're trying to pull somebody out of the snowbank in the row ditch in South Dakota, weaker links in that can give out. Anytime you stress a system, it doesn't matter if it's in the food system, or if it's in manufacturing, or if it's even the strength of the deck you've built off the backside of your house, you're going to find weak points.
I think what we've found here is the weak point in understanding, how do we move food from the farm to the consumer, in a fashion that meets some basic principles? We mention the food has to be safe, we know that animal welfare needs to be taken care of public health needs to be protected, and the environment needs to be protected in this process. These things, Lori, I think what we found is that all of them have to work together. If you emphasis one to the detriment of any of the others, you're going to have bad outcomes. In other words, if you ignore animal welfare, you're going to have animals that aren't healthy, and potentially could lead to food safety problems. If you ignore public health, you're going to have food safety, or workers that don't feel comfortable or safe going to their jobs. All of these things need to work in a coordinated fashion.
I think what we saw, Lori, was that things fell out of their coordinated fashion, and there were people making decisions only on one proof point, rather than thinking about this as a food system.
Lori Walsh: All right. So now that we know more, and are thinking more deeply, and asking maybe better questions, some people have argued that once Smithfield workers go back to work, you get those lines moving again, you maybe make them move a little bit faster, we make up for lost time, nothing needs to change. Other people are saying, "That would be a mistake, lots needs to change, and we need to get started on it." What are your thoughts about what needs to change? That's a big question, so you tell me where you want to start with that question.
Let's start with what's most urgent, that needs to be addressed right now?
Bill Even: Absolutely. I think these are big questions, and I would say the most urgent thing that the food system faces now is ensuring the safety and health of everybody. It doesn't matter if you're a farmer, if you're working in a feed mill, if you're working in the barn, if you're driving a truck, whether it's a truck hauling animals, or a truck bringing the food to the grocery store, or you're working in the food system. It doesn't matter if you're working at Hy-Vee, or Fairway, or John Morrell, or Kraft Foods, or a dairy plant, the expectation is that we need to make sure that the public health piece is managed inside of that.
The one advantage that the executive order brought, the Defense Production Act that the Administration put into play here, a couple of months ago, is all that that order did was prioritize personal protective equipment and testing for the food industry. When you think about that, priority number one is always our hospitals, first responders, and folks that need to have the PPE to keep themselves safe. Then, there's the Wild West outside of all of that, and what the Executive Order did to help with the first priority, Lori, was to move the food industry up as an essential, a critical infrastructure so that they could get the PPE necessary to make their workers feel safe and comfortable going back to work.
Lori Walsh: Longer term, what are some of those conversations? How do we avoid getting in this place again? By this place, I mean specifically I want to talk about how the stoppage of work at one plant, or at plants across the country, one at a time, as it rolled out across the country, could lead to such desperate times for pork producers, where animals had to be euthanized, which is what nobody wanted. How do we make sure that we don't get there again?
Bill Even: Well, I think one of the things that's being talked about a lot is the supply chains, and the links of supply chains, whether their global, or intrastate, or even interstate. That's a big discussion that's happening right now in the industry, as everybody starts to double check and say, "What's the best cost system that I need to build?" That's different than the least cost system, but a best cost system says, "Okay, I'm going to need to have some slack in the chain, some resilience inside of a system, here."
Now, that's going to come with a cost. Any time that you take efficiencies out of a system, whether it's how you're feeding your animals, or the route that the UPS truck takes to your house, there are trade offs there. You're either going to burn more fuel, you're going to burn more feed and energy, you're going to add impacts to climate change. Or, I think for your consumer listeners, you're going to add cost. You have to be comfortable adding the minimal amount of cost to take care of the problem, which, in this case, is resiliency.
The one advantage that we've had, I would say in the Western world, is we've been able to produce food relatively efficiently, and at very affordable prices that, frankly, that's freed up disposable income that's allowed people to build better homes, buy a third car, buy extra flat screen TVs. That money has gone elsewhere into the economy, and helped build and grow the economy because you haven't had to spend it on food. I think the question in front of us, Lori, is are people willing to spend more money on food, to have certain attributes, or resiliency baked into the system? Ultimately, in a free market economy, they're going to vote with their pocketbook.
We could build a system that may meet your resilience goals, but it's going to come with some trade offs in the form of higher cost, or in some cases, less efficiency that could increase, for example, climate change impacts. There's no free lunch, I guess is what I'm saying, Lori.
Lori Walsh: Talk a little bit about confined animal feeding operations in pork production, because people started thinking more deeply about that. You know, 900 hogs in a barn, and one of the questions that came up was we've got lots of land here, why can't they just be outside for a while? Is the system of CAFO contributing to the pressure that is put on producers, and to the fragility of the system?
Bill Even: I think the answer to that is no. Again, I put on my farmer hat, and we raise cattle now. But, we grew up raising hogs as well. And, the reality is the term CAFO is more if a bureaucratic term. The reality is it's a barn. You put horses in a barn, you can put cattle in a barn, you can put milk cows in a barn, you can put pigs in a barn, you can put chickens in a barn.
I grew up, as a little kid, my father had hogs, they were indoors and outdoors. And disease problems, and weather related problems that we had with pigs, they don't have a hair coat like, say, cattle do, or horses do, that can withstand the harsh weather, certainly in the Dakotas. So what we slowly did, over the years, is we brought our hogs onto concrete, and had some indoor outdoor operations. And ultimately, your goal is to bring them inside, where you've got them in a climate controlled environment, year round. It's better for the health of the welfare of the animal. This isn't a criticism, you can still raise hogs outdoors. My father did, I did.
But, when you think about, what are those trade offs, there are some trade offs in those systems. Where we're at, as a nation, in raising pigs is that we've got a cross section of folks that raise pigs in every imaginable approach. Some use huts out on pastures, others use modified indoor outdoor facilities, and some use all indoor facilities. Ultimately, if you're thinking about how am I going to take care of the welfare of animals, it's going to boil down to the husbandry of the people that are caring for the animals. Outdoor ones need to be bedded more, they need to be protected from the cold and protected from the heat. Indoor ones need to be managed differently, you need to make sure there's adequate room in the barn in order for the animals to get access to feed and water. I could say, in my experience, it's somewhat been easier when I've worked in a barn, because you can interact with the pigs in that type of a setting.
But, we believe in choice, I guess, Lori, we're not here to dictate a style or an approach, but rather are you taking care of your animals, regardless of where they're being housed?
Lori Walsh: Before I let you go, what do you want to leave consumers with? Because what I think what a lot of people are hearing is if we look at solutions to the problems that have been exposed because of the virus, a lot of the answer comes to price, and consumers being willing to pay more for what they put on their table. Is it that simple, is that something that consumers just need to be on board with, to brace themselves for? And then, maybe be left out of that, if you're not the kind of person who can afford the price tag of that. How should people who are just walking through the grocery store thinking about this, think about what they can do? How can they be part of making the system better? And, what's ahead for them?
Bill Even: Thanks, Lori, a wonderful question. About less than 2% of the American public's involved in agriculture, and so we think of everybody else, you're our consumers, you're our customers. We take pride in growing crops and animals to provide food for not only the US, but other places around the world.
I would answer your question in saying that the food is here, it is available. The real issue is there's no silver bullet to any of this, there are trade offs. So when you think about designing your food system, we've got to sit down as a nation and decide, here are the things that we would like in our food system, here are the trade offs that will happen with that. And then, here's what this is going to cost.
And, on thing I know that's in the front of mind of a lot of people now is the current recession that we're in, record unemployment, we haven't seen this level of unemployment since the Great Depression. That's what my dad grew up in, as a little kid. These are very real things that you can have a food system with all kinds of bells and whistles, and it's going to have high cost. And, what does that mean to those folks that maybe are out of a job, or can't afford it? On the flip side, you don't want a system that's so lowest common denominator that you're trading off, or impacting animal welfare, or food safety, or the environment.
I'd say, there's an old joke that for every complex problem, there's a simple answer, but it's completely wrong. I think the biggest risk for your listeners and consumers is to think there's one simple answer to this. And the reality is we have to sit around the table, and look at this as a system, understand the trade offs. And then, let's make a decision together, that's how we do things in the US.
Lori Walsh: Bill Even is CEO of the National Pork Board. Bill, you're welcome back anytime. Thank you so much for being here with us today, we appreciate your time.
Bill Even: My pleasure, Lori. Thank you.